Merit raises, employee appreciation gifts and awards, and incentive travel are effective ways to build employee morale and company pride. Aside from these obvious choices, the importance of day-to-day morale boosters cannot be overstated. While it is important to provide memorable, enticing incentives that will encourage employees to reach sales goals and improve their performance, it is also important to make sure they feel appreciated, trusted and respected on a daily basis.

Improving employee morale on a daily basis through showing them respect and making them feel appreciated is much simpler than it may seem. Little things like ensuring that each employee is given equal time and recognition during meetings, making sure they know you are aware of and appreciate the long hours they are spending on a project and not looking over their shoulder every second of the workday go a long way towards showing them that they are trusted and appreciated, resulting in improved morale and productivity.

Another simple way to boost morale and productivity is to provide both small and large incentives. For example, an annual incentive cruise for top salespeople should be supplemented with smaller competitions or incentives, such as gift cards or personalized items they can use at work that can be given out for making weekly or monthly sales goals.

Everyone knows that incentive travel is an excellent way to reward employees for increasing sales or meeting goals. It can increase company pride, build and maintain team morale and encourage employees to continue performing at their best. Incentive travel is more cost-effective than handing out raises to show your appreciation to your top performers, and can help companies retain good employees, even when tough economic times may not allow for increases in pay.

But, there is more to incentive travel than just showing your appreciation and building company pride. Incentive travel can mean more to employees than you might know. Depending on their income level and family status, being able to put in extra effort to receive incentive travel may give them travel opportunities they might not otherwise have. By providing opportunities that they might not be able to afford to experience otherwise, you are giving your employees a particularly appealing reward that they are sure to appreciate.

Knowing this, you can enhance incentive travel packages even more by adding little extras that will not cause you to incur significantly higher expenses, but will be meaningful to your employees. For example, you could include a gift certificate for dinner for two in their destination, a gift card to a store where they might purchase things they need for the trip, or tickets to a show or event happening during their stay.