How do you reward your employees when times are tight?

I know that we all like to get a pay rise and that we often expect these once a year.  However, when budgets are tight, pay rises are often the first thing to be put at risk.  Worse, some companies are presently giving a message around pay cuts. So, if you can’t give a pay rise to your people how do you show them that you appreciate them and reward them in other ways?

In my experience, there are a number of things that you can do, in the short term, which are almost as valuable as pay.  The simplest is to say “thank you” and “well done” and even to tell people how much you appreciate them.  Writing this, it almost sounds cheesy, but I know it works.  I may be a sucker for a sweet word, but every time I’ve been told “thank you” it’s made me feel special and has a longer term effect than a 1-2% pay rise.  Ok, so not as powerful as a 10% pay rise but good nevertheless.

So, how often have you stopped to say well done to people?  More importantly, how do you make people believe in the sincerity of your words?  A lot of people can be fairly sceptical about words of praise.  The key is not to make the comments in passing but to invest some time telling your employees why you appreciate them and to give specific examples of things that you think they did particularly well.

Also, people really appreciate honesty so if you can’t give a pay rise, explain why and make your team feel they are bought into the company and share a common challenge.  I appreciate that this needs to be balanced with the fact that some people could find this information scary and unsettling but at least if you are explaining and showing people what they can do to help.  Then, at least, it looks like you have a plan to get the business back on track and that it’s in everyone’s interest to make an active contribution to that plan.

There are a few other things you can do to reward people.  The first of these is to make rewards and discounts available to your employees.  There are a number of organisations that specialise in the delivery of employee rewards.  Discount vouchers, reward vouchers, and cash back services are gaining in popularity and there is a long history of giving extra discounts direct to employees via specialist websites.

For example, we run a service called MyPayRewards which is attached to our electronic ePayslip and online payslip archive services.  Any company that takes one of our secure edocument delivery solutions, which by the way will also save them money in reduced print and post costs, also has the chance to offer MyPayRewards to their employees.  We have a team of people dedicated to finding discounts and offers and making them available by an easy to use website.  We also display the best offers, often exclusive to us, via our electronic payslips so that when employees get paid they can make immediate savings. 

These employee reward schemes also enable employers to buy discounted retail vouchers for their employees too.  This means that rather than offering a pay rise, you could instead give your employees a one-off voucher discount card.  For example, one of the companies that we work with sell Love2Shop reward cards to employers.  The employer can fix the amount they want to load on the cards and then give them out to their employees as and when they think they should.  The employee can then use these cards at a range of very well known retail outlets.

What do other people do?  Have you ever given or receivde a non financial reward that has made a big impression on you? Why not share your views with others.

Plus if you want to know more about our ePaylips, Portal or MyPayRewards products you can browse: sslpost.com, email: dawn.baker@sslpost.com or talk: 08456 425 425

Sending documents from Sage 50 software

Imagine you could have a full audit trail on every document you sent...

Apologies, up front, for specifically writing about one of our own products but it’s relevant to an issue that came up at a recent event I attended.

Last week, a colleague and I attended some Sage events.  During the course of one of the events I got into a conversation with a lady from a small accountants practice.  We were discussing how hard it is for small businesses to manage their cash flow, particularly when they have a high volume of very low value invoices.  When is it cost effective to chase up and resend invoices when the amounts are less than £100 each?  If you are running a small business, you’ll be more than aware how valuable time, is so where do you spend it best when you’ve got to win new business and chase up invoices for business that you have already completed?

Clearly, if you could see where your invoices are and when they have reached their recipient, it would be extremely useful.  It would enable you to sort out any queries, chase those that haven’t been actioned and leave those that have already been approved.

The reason for attending the events was that we were launching our new product – secure-send for Sage 50.  Using our underlying virtual printer technology, our developers have managed to integrate the technology with the Sage API, to create an add-on that links directly into their Sage software.  In essence this means that when Sage 50 users install our software it links to their Sage 50 Accounts system.  Instead of printing an invoice you can now “virtually” print it – this creates a PDF which is then emailed to your customers. 

The immediate advantage is the saving in print and postal costs, the secondary advantage is that, if you are the sender, you can then see when the invoice was sent, received and opened.  We have also built in a recipient response mechanism which enables the receiver to click a button at the top of the invoice confirming the status: accepted, pending, queried.  They can then add a note if they want to e.g. I don’t think that was the price agreed for item 3 and send it back.

I think you get the point – this audit trail could help in more ways than one.  Secure-send for Sage 50 isn’t just for invoicing, it also covers statements, quotes, payslips, P60s etc.  In addition to sending the documents cheaply and securely, a copy of each is also back up in a secure online store – giving you extra peace of mind.  In addition, if you use the ePayslip service it also creates an account for each of your employees so that they can get past copies of their payslips at any time they want to.

If you are interested in finding out more, then you can email me and I’ll include you on our list for our next webinar dawn.baker@sslpost.com