Non-Financial Recognition

The Most Effective of Rewards?

For today's organisations, the problem of how to motivate staff effectively is becoming an increasingly important issue. However, despite over 50 years of organisational research that demonstrates that employees are motivated by more than money alone, many organisations continue to rely solely on financial rewards.

It is perhaps understandable for organisations to make simplistic assumptions about the ability of financial rewards to influence employee motivation. Financial rewards are important as a mechanism to aid recruit and retain talent, and as a means of providing tangible recognition of effort or contribution. And after all, people generally want more money, don't they?

Yet, the consequence of such an assumption has been to over-emphasise the importance of financial reward. As this paper illustrates, there are a whole host of alternative motivators that can act to influence employee behaviour and enhance employee motivation.