The Experience of Total Rewards: 3 Things You Can Do Right Now, For Free
One of the things I appreciate the most about working here at Spire Labs is the vast array of perks that come with being on this team. While I mean no offense to any of my former employers, this is the first company that I have worked for that has a fantastic Total Rewards program in place for its team members, and the first time that I have experienced the beautiful harmony of genuine work-life balance as a reward of that program, while still working incredibly hard to ensure the success of my team.
If you are unaware of what a Total Rewards program encompasses, there are a lot of great resources out there to help you learn more. For instance, this article from Aon Hewitt, which defines Total Rewards as “everything an employee gets from the employer that they find rewarding” and can include compensation, benefits, professional development, and more. Essentially, anything a company does to attract, retain, and engage their team is their Total Rewards package.
In the linked article, they also provide the illustration, below, which I found to be incredibly helpful in understanding what a Total Rewards program includes.
While each of these four quadrants is equally valuable, Aon Hewitt does make the following statement, in regards to trends seen in current leading companies:
“While virtually every organization provides rewards in each of the four quadrants, many leading companies are keenly interested in finding ways to shift more of the total rewards elements up and to the right. This is because we know that more personal and experiential rewards create a stronger emotional bond between employees and the company.”
We currently offer unlimited PTO, a flexible work schedule, holistic health coverage, disability insurance, and multiple other perks that our team has reported being very happy with. While all of those Benefits are wonderful components of our Total Rewards program, let’s focus on the upper half of the chart. Here are three things you that we’re doing at Spire Labs to encourage development within our team, which I would recommend:
- Cultivate a collaborative culture. Our team shares our successes, our shortcomings, and everything in between. Keeping a culture of openness within an organization promotes growth, as team members share what they are learning, what activities they are doing, and encouraging one another to do the same.
- Recognize employee accomplishments. A study by the APA in 2012 found that “half of all employees who say that they do not feel valued at work report that they intend to look for a new job in the next year,” and acknowledging the success of your team is a direct way to combat them not feeling valued. At Spire, we are very purposeful in recognizing one another for any accomplishment — no matter how big or how small it may be.
- Remove barriers. At Spire, we have more autonomy and freedom in our roles than I had really ever dreamed possible, prior to working here. Our team trusts one another, and therefore we accomplish “the impossible” on a regular basis because we are not limited by micromanagement or hierarchy. Remove whatever barriers may be holding your team back, and watch them soar.
Bonus: In addition to having a great impact, all of these can be offered for absolutely no cost!
I would love to hear more about your Total Rewards program. How can we go about focusing on that top half of the Aon Hewitt diagram, and strategically promote development within our teams?
