How to create a rewards strategy that meets the needs of all ages
Being in tune with different generations and their needs is an important part of a good reward strategy.
By definition, reward strategy covers all the rewards an employee receives for performing their work. This starts from the salary but can extend into incentives, bonuses and pay.
Depending on your workforce, different things are relevant and valuable for different people. Pensions are a classic example. Companies could invest 10% of everyone’s salary into a pension, which would be a great thing to do, but maybe the younger ones don’t yet have pensions at the top of their minds.
They may not mind this perk, but it won’t be the deciding factor that makes them sign a job contract with one employer over another. Maybe they’d prefer a pay increase or extra holiday time instead.
Finding the right reward strategy is all about understanding where your employees are in their lifecycle and giving them the choice to pick a reward system that fits their needs.
Another example is sports benefits. For some, they’re great benefits to include. For others, not so much. At work, as in life, people are different and have different needs.
Going beyond flexibility
The discussion about flexible rewards has been around for a while and is nothing new, but what will be interesting is how benefits and bonuses will change to be more in tune with new generations coming into the workforce.
Generation Z will be greatly influenced by huge changes that are going on in the world (Covid-19, inflation and the cost-of-living crisis and whatever else 2023 may bring).
They are more aware of resource scarcity as well. And maybe for this generation offering a sport benefit won’t be as effective as offering mental health days or the possibility of spending some of their work time doing voluntary work.
What stops development in this area is often the heavy setup to put such flexibility into place. For small companies, it’s fairly easy.
HR DataHub, for example, chose to create a wellbeing fund where every employee can spend £50 on whatever they like. But imagine a company with over 100,000 employees and what the effort would be to put such a fund in place.
The true essence of a multi-generational reward strategy lies in understanding different generations and which rewards truly matter to them, and connecting these insights with a flexible set-up that allows a bespoke reward strategy for different employees.
And doing this in incremental steps and embracing a slow and steady change.
In partnership with HR DataHub
HR DataHub is your go to tool to make sure all your reward decisions are data backed.
