How should we reward employees of our agencies? Of course, you want to pay them fairly. You want to give them good benefits. You want them to have a flexible work schedule, all of that.
We often erroneously assume that everyone wants to be compensated number one, by money, or number two, based on what we want to be compensated by, which for many agency owners and leaders, is driven by monetary success. But for many of your employees, that may not actually be the thing that they value the most.
They may value time off, they may value a bonus or a raise. They may value perks like plane tickets or theater tickets or a spa day. They may benefit or love the idea of having the opportunity to have a new educational experience that maybe is a little more expensive than they can afford, or that you would normally invest in.
It is worth the time and energy to explore with each of your team members what motivates them and what actually matters the most to them which allows them to help you build at least part of their compensation plan in a custom way that serves them and their family, whatever that may be.
I think you’re going to be surprised that it actually is oftentimes less expensive to the agency what they want versus what you are going to give them. And so it’s worth the conversation. And if nothing else, it makes them feel seen and heard and thought of as an individual and that you care about what makes them happy. So it is a win win win all the way around and is worth having that conversation.
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Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Boston. We are here with one of our peer groups. And one of the conversations we had today was around motivating employees. And so, of course, you want to pay them fairly. You want to give them good benefits. You want to have a flexible work schedule, all of that. But how do we reward employees? And one of the conversations that we were having was this idea that oftentimes we assume that everyone wants to be compensated number one, by money, or number two, based on what we want to be compensated by, which for many agency owners and leaders, is driven by monetary success. But for many of your employees, that may not actually be the thing hat they value the most. They may value time off, they may value – they may value a bonus or a raise. They may value perks like plane tickets or theater tickets or a spa day. They may benefit or love the idea of having the opportunity to have a new educational experience that maybe is a little more expensive than they can afford, or that you would normally invest in. But where we landed was it is worth the time and energy to explore with each of your team members what motivates them, what kind of compensation? Anything from having a lawn service, or snow removal service, to maid service for their home, to a shopping spree, to a plane ticket, to electronics, to an extra day off, to a bonus, whatever that may be exploring with each employee, what actually matters the most to them, and allowing them to help you build at least part of their compensation plan in a custom way that serves them and their family, whatever that may be.
In many cases – what's awesome about this – in many cases, some of the things that our employees may want don't actually cost us real dollars. We can probably use airline points or Amex points for some of those things. So dive in, have the conversation, listen, and then think about how you can motivate each person by giving them a little taste of something they value more than some of the other things that you would give them. I think you're going to be surprised that it actually is oftentimes less expensive to the agency what they want versus what you are going to give them. And so it's worth the conversation. And if nothing else, it makes them feel seen and heard and thought of as an individual and that you care about what makes them happy. So it is a win win win all the way around and is worth having that conversation.
