How You Can Benefit From Individually Rewarding and Recognising Your Employees

A common perception of today’s younger generation is their self-centredness. It is not all that surprising then that our latest APAC Workforce Insights report found that people in Asia Pacific (APAC) tend to prefer to be treated as individual employees.

What was more outstanding were the motivations for this preference: recognition for individual skills and talents, or reward for their personal contributions. Such a deep preference was observed across the region – from India to Singapore, Vietnam to Malaysia.

Whereas rewarding your employees as a collective was sufficient in the past, organisations will need to tailor their rewards and recognition systems to better cater to each individual employee. While such customisation might incur greater costs, there is much to gain as well.

Better Internal Alignment

To customise your rewards and recognition systems for each employee, you need to understand how each of them ticks.

Take the time to develop a deeper connection with your employees. Understand their motivations at and outside of work. Appreciate their talents. This will help your organisation tailor the goals and achievements for each individual employee.

With personalised goals for each employee, your workforce will be more aligned to their own individual goals. More importantly, they will be more aligned with your organisation’s goals. This gives your employees the best chance to meet their individual targets and better contribute to your success. Your teams can then truly be greater than the sum of its parts.

Enjoy Greater Loyalty

Personalising rewards for each employee will not only motivate them, but also help them feel more appreciated as individuals rather than as a mere cog in their team.

An enhanced sense of self could, ironically, benefit their team. With each member taking more responsibility for their work to hit their individual targets, the entire team will naturally become more productive.

Admittedly, this could lead to a clash of egos, and eventually, as cited by 41% of our respondents, a loss of collaboration. However, a synergetic team of individuals pulling together would lead to greater employee satisfaction and, more importantly, greater loyalty to the cause.

Enhanced Employer Branding

In the intense race to attract and retain talent, every little something helps. Today’s digital world of reviews and ratings has not spared the corporate world either. Websites like Glassdoor and Indeed provide prospective employees with a window into the workings of an organisation, influencing their decision on whether to take up that job offer.

Once you have successfully implemented an individualised rewards and recognition system, promoting such progressive employment practices externally would put your organisation in a better light to prospective employees. This could serve as your organisation’s unique value proposition, helping to attract top talents to your organisation.

With this preference for individuality trending in traditionally high-paying sectors like legal and banking & financial services, a nice pay check and luxurious benefits will no longer be enough. Even within today’s cost-reduction measures, organisations across all sectors need to find ways to do more with less. You will need to be more creative in attracting and retaining top talent.

What better way to do so then to implement tailored employee rewards and recognition. This can inspire greater quality of work and potentially lower turnover costs. There may not be an “I” in team, but you can certainly have an “I” when it comes to your rewards and recognitions.

Learn more about the trends driving a more personalised workforce in our Q3 2018 APAC Workforce Insights report.