Hiring and maintaining employees is no longer just about offering a good salary and a decent workplace. Coveted talent now looks for companies that provide various secondary benefits, from profit sharing to health insurance. These employee incentives can make or break the deal for candidates and existing employees.
Since most businesses went digital and almost all job applicants arrive through company websites and social media, communicating these incentives is essential. They should be available on numerous sources such as to entice new candidates to send in applications and existing employees to stay on board.
What is an Employee Incentive?
Employee incentives are any additional benefits workers receive that are not directly tied to their salary or an hourly wage. As it may seem obvious, these benefits are added to the worker’s salary and shouldn’t impact overall pay.
Over the years, several standard employee benefit packages have been standardized. These may include private health insurance, profit sharing or stocks, referral programs, and holiday and birthday gifts. Yet, these are just a small sample of the entire range of possibilities.
For example, some companies add extra vacation days for employees with a good track record. Others reward employees by paying extra to their retirement fund. In general, employee incentives can be absolutely anything as long as they seem to benefit them.
Why Are Employee Incentives Important?
Employee incentives are a big selling point for the company. Nowadays, it’s hard to attract great talents as they have so many opportunities. A company should offer far more than just a good salary. Some even look for aspects such as social accountability.
Benefits and incentives, however, remain the primary reason (after wage and other aspects are considered) why some employees may choose to stay or join the company. Additionally, it makes the company more competitive against other industry players.
It should be, however, approached carefully. Not all employee incentive programs will be of equal effectiveness, but all of them will cut into budgets. Most companies stay with the classic benefits outlined above because they are effective and reliable while not overly expensive.
Although there should be a consideration for the industry, your company works in as you may be able to get great benefits cheaper. For example, healthcare might get insurance or routine checkups at a better price than a company in any other industry, making the benefit more attractive to the business.
8 Ways to Inform Employees About Incentives
Email (marketing)
Emails are the classic, tried-and-true way to inform employees and candidates about incentives. While you can send out an email through your regular mail software as Gmail, certain solutions, such as Sender, will let you automate the entire process.
Additionally, instead of sending disparate emails to employees and candidates, creating a newsletter and including incentive news is another option. After all, if you’re constantly working on improving employee incentives, there will often be news about them.
Employee applications
Larger corporations will have a dedicated application that allows employees to enter offices and receive various types of information. These apps are perfect for any updates regarding existing incentives.
For candidates and people outside the company, you will have to revert to emailing or messaging as they won’t have access to the application. Still, these benefits are essential to marketing your business to talent.
Internal and external website
Many companies will list some or all of the employee benefits on their career page. It works as a way to update external candidates and existing employees. However, using an internal homepage or the intranet might be a better decision for the latter.
Additionally, various pop-ups can be created on the internal website that informs about any important updates regarding employee incentives.
Surveys
While not a direct way to inform about updates regarding employee incentives, surveys can help collect feedback about existing ones and allow workers to pick out the benefits they want the most. As such, surveys are both a way to communicate about incentives and a way to select the correct ones.
Public relations campaigns
HR and PR activities can intersect in a wide variety of factors, and employee incentives are certainly one of the intersections. PR teams can create campaigns that inform the industry at large about how your company approaches employee incentives.
In turn, these campaigns will reach many potential candidates and promote your brand’s image. It should be noted, however, that you should always inform employees first before engaging in any PR activities. Getting the news about employee incentives from a third party will seem disingenuous.
SMS
SMS is a somewhat forgotten medium of communication; however, it has the benefit of being much more instantaneous than emails. Unfortunately, the characters in SMS messages are quite limited, which means they only serve well when a quick notice has to be delivered.
HR software
Many larger companies use HR software to manage contracts, sign paperwork, and collect data about the company. Certain solutions will let you message employees, on a large scale, making them perfect for communication about incentives.
Knowledge sharing sessions
Once employee incentives are in place, some companies choose to carefully track their effectiveness and add or remove them accordingly. These practices and knowledge are extremely valuable to other companies and the industry.
As such, creating knowledge-sharing sessions and events can serve as both a way to communicate about employee incentives and as a way to add value. Additionally, these sessions themselves can serve as great marketing tools as they greatly improve a brand’s visibility.
Email templates to inform about incentives
Even with such a large pool of choices available, emailing remains the primary method, especially for existing employees. Additionally, for most companies sending out emails will be easy as they will have existing marketing solutions (e.g., Sender), which will be able to take care of the communication.
To make things easier for you, here are a few email templates that will make the process much easier. Remember to edit them to not make it seem that they were completely automated carefully.
Referral program
Hello everyone,
As you know, here at [Company_name], we are always looking for ways to make things better for you. So, we are excited to announce our Employee Referral Program. Refer qualified candidates, and we will provide you with [add financial or any other bonus for the referral]
Valid applicants will have to meet these criteria:
[add specific criteria]
If you know someone who you think would be a good fit for our company, let us know through [add contact details for the person responsible for the referral bonus program]. Don’t hesitate to contact them [or the department] if you have any questions!
Thank you,
[Your name]
Stock options
Hello all,
We have been working hard towards finding ways to reward you for all the hard work you’ve been doing. After a long process, we have decided upon an employee stock option program! Employees who have been with us [set amount of time] will be granted [or be able to purchase] [amount of options].
Each of you will receive a customized offer that will provide more details on the entire process. If you agree to get options, our [responsible department] will send over all the contractual details.
Be sure to contact [responsible person] if you have any additional questions! We hope this change will help us all work more closely together and achieve even greater results.
Regards,
[Your name]
Healthcare
Hey everyone,
We have some exciting news! We have collaborated with [healthcare provider] to get everyone special discounts for [healthcare services] as part of our employee benefits program.
You can find all the benefits provided by [healthcare provider] on [company website or HR software with all the information]. These benefits are all provided automatically, so you don’t need to sign anything. They will be applied once you visit [healthcare provider clinics].
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact [responsible department or person]. We will be sure to answer them as soon as possible!
Regards,
[Your name]
Conclusion
Communicating about employee benefits can be done in a multitude of ways. Yet, emailing remains one of the most popular and easiest methods to do so. With the help of email marketing solutions and some additional software, raising visibility about your employee incentives has become extremely easy.
Other methods, such as hosting conferences and public relations campaigns, are possible. However, they take up significantly more resources and are more complicated to perform.
