As South African companies prepare for a new year and the return of employees to the office following the festive season break, the matter of attracting and retaining top talent is gaining increasing prominence. Faced with a challenging local and global economy and a pervasive scarce skills challenge, companies are seeking new measures and tools to help them recruit, motivate and engage their employees.
According to Steve Mallaby, Chief Executive at Adumo Payouts, employee incentive and rewards programmes can play a leading role in rewarding top performers, driving good workplace behaviour and creating an attractive employer brand that can help ensure a steady stream of talented candidates.
“Employee incentive and rewards programmes provide companies with a powerful tool to recognise employees, reward outstanding performance, encourage compliance with workplace regulations – such as health and safety measures – and augment salaries and bonuses,” says Mallaby. “Used well, employee incentive and rewards programmes can drive higher levels of talent retention, helping companies retain scarce and valuable skills that can drive the company’s overall success.”
Adumo Payouts – formerly Innervation Rewards – provides bespoke programmes that enable South African corporates to recognise, incentivise and reward the positive behaviour of their employees. The company works with several hundred top South African companies, providing incentive and rewards programmes, employee benefit disbursements, and expense management through a range of card and mobile payment products.
Lack of engagement hurting productivity, growth
Mallaby says that South African companies that want to lure scarce talent or keep top performers from seeking greener pastures elsewhere should use incentives and rewards to drive higher levels of employee engagement. Data has found generally low levels of employee engagement among workers, with one global study finding 85% of employees globally are not engaged in their work.
“Engaged employees are 17% more productive than their less engaged peers, with 69% of employees in one study saying they’d work harder if they were better appreciated,” says Mallaby. “Companies with an engaged workforce also enjoy 10% higher customer ratings, 20% more sales, and 21% higher overall profitability.”
Workplace safety gets a welcome boost
Driving higher levels of productivity is not the only workplace issue facing South African companies. In industries with high standards for workplace safety, such as mining and manufacturing, employee engagement can be critical to ensuring compliance with safety regulations and maintaining generally high levels of workplace safety.
“Research has found an 81% decrease in employee absenteeism and 58% reduction in employee safety incidents among highly engaged workforces,” says Mallaby. “For companies that have to meet high levels of workplace safety, a strategic incentives and reward programme can transform their occupational health and safety capabilities. By building a reputation as an employer that offers a safe workplace environment, companies in the mining and manufacturing sectors can more readily lure workers into their fold.”
Ease of disbursement, flexibility key to incentives and rewards success
Mallaby says the most effective employee incentive and reward programmes offer high degrees of simplicity and flexibility. “Companies often risk falling into the trap of complex, opaque incentive programmes and a lack of flexibility in how rewards are disbursed. For example, if employee rewards can only be spent at one or a few stores, it can lead to lower levels of satisfaction, and undo many of the benefits of having an incentives and rewards programme in place.”
To ensure the programme achieves its goals of rewarding top employees and driving higher levels of satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, Mallaby advises a flexible approach. Companies today can leverage established rewards platforms that allow employees to spend rewards on what matters most to them.
For example, the Mastercard-backed prepaid gift cards offered by Adumo Payouts allows companies to allocate funds directly to employees’ preloaded cards, which can then be used at any store that accepts Mastercard. “This provides employees with convenient and secure access to their reward, and the gift of choice in how and where that reward is spent,” says Mallaby. “The flexibility offered by this also helps drive a positive employee experience where individual tastes and preferences are catered for, further driving engagement and boosting employee satisfaction.”