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.
If it was not for the hard work and dedication of its employees, no company would grow to its full potential and meet sales and customer satisfaction goals established each year. Hardworking employees that ensure the store is open on time each day, your clients are treated in a professional manner, sales goals are met and exceeded, or that new accounts are acquired regularly need to know that they are appreciated and deserve to be rewarded for their commitment to your company’s success. While not every company can afford to give out regular raises or huge bonuses, businesses with even a very small budget can afford to provide their employees with a memorable, appealing employee recognition cruise.
Employee recognition incentive cruises do not have to be two-week excursions that journey to the Caribbean or the Greek Isles, although these are certainly options that your employees will never forget. There are many options for mini cruises that are as short as one night, or can be two to four days in length and are quite affordable. For example, Southern California companies can opt for short cruises that travel up the coast or to Mexico, Pacific Northwest companies can opt for cruises to Canada and companies located in the South can reward their employees with a weekend Bahamas cruise.
Explore your employee recognition cruise options by comparing ships and prices at Seasite.com, the only group cruise planning resource online.
Are you looking for unique, affordable ways to motivate staff, award employees who met their sales goals, or encourage cohesion, communication and camaraderie among your team members? If so, you may have already discovered that many team building and employee incentive options are rather expensive and may not fit your budget. This is particularly true during the current economic crisis, which has forced more and more companies to get creative when searching for ways to reward or motivate their team as the funds for these types of activities shrink. And, as luck would have it, when team building and employee appreciation budgets are getting tighter due to dropping profits is exactly the time when you need your team to be more motivated and cohesive than ever.
Thankfully, there are plenty of affordable options available that will allow you to create an exciting team building experience or incentive for less than $200 per person.
Here are some examples:
• Organizing ride-alongs for employees to experience the exhilaration of a stock car racing around a track • Scheduling full- or half-day white water rafting trips • Arranging one- or two-day customized nature or outdoor adventure programs at a local wilderness area • Finding a local company that offers bungee jumping
While determining if alcohol will be a part of your event, there is one important occasion that is often overlooked: champagne toasts. Even clients who want no other alcohol served during the duration of their event may want a champagne toast to celebrate meeting their sales goals, welcome a new CEO or simply to congratulate their employees on a job well done throughout the year. Champagne toasts are very common, and even expected, if there is any sort of celebratory air to an event. Being easy to organize and affordable to plan, a simple champagne toast may seem like something that requires no additional thought, but meeting planners can sometimes overlook an important aspect of planning a successful toast that all attendees can enjoy.
This often overlooked component is the touchy situation that can arise when there are non-drinkers in the room. For starters, no one should be left out or made to feel uncomfortable during a toast. Therefore, it is imperative that a non-alcoholic alternative, such as sparkling cider, is readily available and is served alongside the champagne – avoiding putting an attendee in a situation where they must ask if there is a non-alcoholic option. Whether they are in recovery, adhere to religious convictions or cultural mores that forbid drinking, or simply choose to not indulge, the passing out of beverages prior to the toast should be a seamless process where no one will even notice which selection each attendee chooses.
