Motivating employees is a challenge every business owner faces at some point in their journey. Many believe that money is the only way to achieve this goal, most commonly through higher salaries. However, this can be difficult for some companies—like startups with tight budgets—to offer. Fortunately, there’s an alternative: non-monetary incentives.

This article will explore everything you need to know about non monetary incentives. We’ll cover the basics of non-monetary incentives and take a look at a handful of popular examples that you can offer at your own business.

What are non-monetary incentives?

Starting from the very beginning, let’s explore what non-monetary incentives are. As the name implies, these are a form of compensation that does not involve money. However, unlike traditional workplace benefits, businesses typically offer incentives to reward particular behaviors or outcomes. This means that workplace incentives can have unpredictable costs for your firm from month to month, unless you opt for non-monetary incentives. This leads us nicely to our next point of discussion: why you should offer such incentives in your business.

Why Your Business Should Offer Non-monetary Incentives

One of the main reasons why your business should offer non-monetary incentives is the cost. The majority of such incentives don’t involve large upfront costs for your company. This will allow you to reward your team in different ways, without having to worry about going over budget.

Top 7 Non-monetary Incentives for Businesses of All Types

Let’s now jump into our main topic and explore 7 non-monetary incentives that any business can offer. The incentives we’re going to cover are the following:

• Flexible working hours
• Professional growth programs
• Leadership opportunities
• Recognition and celebration
• Teambuilding activities
• Additional time off
• Physical gifts and rewards

Flexible Working Hours

Flexible working schedules are one of the most popular non-monetary incentives out there. They cost nothing to implement and offer a lot of advantages in terms of employee work-life balance and well-being. That said, flexible work arrangements can have their challenges as well, like their susceptibility to time theft. However, productivity tools like time tracking software can help you avoid these entirely. We’ll cover how such apps can help you take advantage of various non-monetary incentives a bit later in this article.

Professional Growth Programs

According to Forbes’ Beyond Money: The Real Reasons Employees Stay Or Leave, the top reason why employees choose to quit is a lacking career progression path. You can ensure this doesn’t affect your team by offering them adequate professional growth opportunities. If your business can afford it, these can take the form of training programs and courses. However, you may achieve the same effect by dedicating some of your staff’s time to learning each week.

Leadership Opportunities

Leadership opportunities are tied closely to our last point of discussion. They can be an excellent way for your employees to learn new skills. However, even less significant leadership roles—like taking ownership of a project—can provide your staff with a sense of autonomy. Check out our article on employee autonomy to learn more about its impacts on your business.

Recognition and Celebration

Recognizing your team’s work is one of the most obvious ways to motivate them. You can go beyond just thanking them for their efforts by recognizing their work publicly, like through social media. Efforts that result in noteworthy achievements may even warrant celebrations, which is an excellent form of team-building. Conveniently, this is our next point of discussion.

Teambuilding Activities

Hosting team-building activities can be an excellent way to boost your team’s engagement levels. However, it’s important to ensure that you host activities that your staff will appreciate. Good examples of these are team lunches or volunteering trips: these can help your employees connect without costing a fortune like traditional corporate parties.

Additional Time Off

Offering extra time off can be a perfect non-monetary incentive for different types of achievements. You can offer extra PTO to your best-performing employees or teams that completed projects ahead of schedule. Moreover, you may do this by either offering entire days off or allowing your staff to work less on a day like Friday.

Physical Gifts and Rewards

Physical gifts are not only an excellent way of rewarding your staff’s performance. They’re also an opportunity to build brand awareness through various types of merchandise. By rewarding your top performers with branded items, you can expand your firm’s visibility while reaping the motivational benefits of an incentive. However, it’s important to choose items that your staff will enjoy and use. Otherwise, your efforts will feel more like a marketing exercise rather than an effective use of a non-monetary incentive.

Tools That Will Make It Easier to Offer Non-monetary Incentives

Before closing off this article, let’s briefly take a look at a couple of tools that will make it easier for you to offer various non monetary incentives to your staff. These are:

• Time tracking software
• Task management tools

Time Tracking Software

A lot of the incentives we discussed in this article can benefit greatly from time tracking software. For example, you can use one to dedicate a set amount of time to learning in your team’s schedules. Time tracking apps are also perfect for tracking your staff’s performance to identify who you should reward with a non-monetary incentive in the first place.

Task Management Tools

Task management apps are another excellent way of finding your team’s best performers. Simple metrics like which of your team members completed their work ahead of schedule can help you in this. However, when combined with our previous tool, you can get even better results.

Feature-rich time tracking apps like WebWork are perfect for this purpose. They’ll provide you with detailed insights into your team’s performance, helping you make better decisions for your employees.

Concluding Thoughts

Non-monetary incentives can be an excellent way to motivate your employees. Offering a variety of rewards for reaching specific performance targets will boost your team’s productivity. Over the long run, effectively taking advantage of such programs will allow you to get the most from your team—speeding up your company’s growth.