Staff Retention Through Rewards

Staff retention through reward designs:

There are ways, other than salary structures, to retain talent in an organisation. It has been suggested that management should design rewards complementary to a person's lifestyle. This raises the question of why, and also how, we motivate an individual.

It order to attract and retain high quality employees, money, is usually the initial basic motivating factor. However once you have a talented employee in your company the question is what aside from money will ensure that they continue to be a high performing motivated employee and stay with the organisation?

To create a motivated workforce, managers need to understand the needs and what drives employees. Emotions play a significant role in employee motivation (McShane, Olekalns & Travaglione 2010) and it is important to understand the individuals that make up your teams.

Managers must ensure that employees feel valued and as such it is necessary that employees have clearly defined job roles and understand how their contributions fit with the company goals. Ensuring employees understand what is required of them allows for a fair rewards system (that may not be entirely based on monetary rewards) to be developed. Companies need to recognise and reward their best employee's, as high performers will deliver results even in a harsh climate (Keeping top talents on board 2010).

However rewards systems and money are not always the only motivating factor to encourage work place performance and the four drive theory recognises the role emotions play in motivating and engaging employees and how important it is to balance out the four drives- Acquire, Bond, Learn and Defend within the workplace.

The four drives theory encourages workplaces to give opportunities to its employees to fulfill all four drives within their job or organisation, therefore engaging them in their work. Engaged employees are