Small, personal rewards drive big organisational wins

Small, regular, and personally meaningful rewards are effective wellbeing boosters as well as a strategic lever for employee performance and business growth.

A few years ago, Gallup CEO Jon Clifton warned that “There is an emotional recession happening in workplaces”. Disengagement, declining morale, and poor wellbeing are harming our organisations.

A few years on from that and the problem still feels out of reach. But a growing number of employers are turning to their employee benefit schemes to better support their workforce in an effort to improve engagement.

According to new research, employee wellbeing is now the number one reason why global organisations offer employee benefits. But alongside traditional employee benefits, flexible, personalised rewards that employees can use to enhance their lives in meaningful ways are becoming increasingly common.

These aren’t just perks; they’re strategic tools designed to enhance workplace culture and improve employee wellbeing.

In my world, app-based, reloadable wallets are starting to dominate as the main way to deliver more personal rewards. These cards and apps allow employers to fund regular, discretionary rewards for employees - enabling people to spend monthly stipends on anything that brings them joy, from meals out to new trainers or books.

Many organisations also use them as wellbeing stipends, encouraging employees to invest in their own mental and physical health in ways that suit them best.

Other employers use them as a reward designed to improve employees’ lives with small, lifestyle enhancing payments. But across all use cases, these “wallets” are making a significant cultural and organisational impact.

The science of small, frequent rewards

Harvard University research shows that across cultures, flexible reward mechanisms like these “wallets” drive higher employee satisfaction, which in turn improves cultural and organisational outcomes.

This is due to a phenomenon known as “dose response” - the idea that smaller, regular incentives lead to greater effort and higher quality work than lump sum or infrequent rewards.

The inherent autonomy of these micro-rewards fosters deeper and longer-lasting behaviour change, aligning rewards with personal values rather than external expectations.

The same study showed that reward variety and fungibility (e.g. allowing employees to choose how to spend their reward) helped avoid “satiation” and maintained engagement over time.

Employees are able to decide themselves what this ‘benefit’ is and how best to make their lives better, maintaining a sense of novelty and emotional impact. We see wide ranging use cases from enabling social activities like meals out or the cinema, to wellbeing enhancers like gym classes, walking boots or classes.

Even when used as a wellbeing stipend, these rewards are shown to lower stress, anxiety and depression. They also improve employee happiness.

When used as a wellbeing stipend, these tools yield a 1.5x to 6x ROI, demonstrating how these “Wallets” support reward and benefit teams’ number one priority.

Tangible business impact

But the benefits of these types of ‘wallets’ go far beyond wellbeing and engagement. There’s rich evidence showing how impactful they can be to organisational success, which is critical in building an effective business case for investment:

Performance increases by 25-44% when these types of rewards are used for personal enjoyment.
Employees receiving at least one non-monetary benefit work 13 minutes more per week than those who don’t.
Employers offering non-monetary benefits like these see a 6.7% increase in weekly work effort.

Ensuring our people are satisfied with their reward is critical in driving other organisational outcomes too. Studies of 100 US firms found that employee satisfaction with their reward drives profitability.

When employee satisfaction with reward impacts retention, just a 5% boost in retention can increase profits by 25% or more. Again, this is critical as “recruiting enough qualified talent” is one of HR’s biggest issues for 2026.

Why they work so well

Unexpected rewards activate dopamine neurons more intensely, making spontaneous top-ups especially powerful. Job satisfaction also rises when employees perceive fairness in compensation and have input into their reward design - both of which are enabled by flexible, personalised reward systems like these ‘wallets’.

By giving employees the freedom to choose how they’re rewarded, organisations can turn everyday moments into meaningful benefits that drive outcomes far beyond engagement.