Picture this: your remote team members work in different states, different time zones, and oftentimes different continents. You want to send them something fun to celebrate their birthdays, to say thank you, or congratulate them for hitting an important milestone. Regardless of the occasion, sending something to people all over the world is such a pain that the to-do item rolls over into the next week, week after week. If we just painted your picture, then rest assured you are not alone. Coming up with ideas for and sending employee rewards to a global team is a costly and difficult task for the majority of organizations.
Rewarding employees is a great way to express appreciation and recognize people for the work they are doing, and to show care for them (in big and small life moments). For example, lots of organizations choose to reward employees who achieve their annual goals and who consistently live their company values (whether nominated by managers or their colleagues). They also choose to reward employees for milestones that are important in their personal lives - a birthday, wedding, birth of a child, retirement, and number of years spent with the company. Rewarding your team is another way for them to feel seen, appreciated, and supported. It is not surprising that organizations around the world understand the importance of rewards and invest hundreds of dollars per employee per year in all sorts of rewards.
Logistics and associated costs are mainly why sending employee rewards to a global team is difficult. By logistics, we refer to the cost of shipping a physical good to a separate country, the additional customs requirements, and the time required for the gift to arrive. You might only want to send someone a company t-shirt, but the $20 gift easily turns into (at least) $40 when you add shipping. And not to mention the time required for the gift to arrive. By the time your team member receives their gift, their birthday has long passed and the moment to celebrate is gone.
To combat the delays and shipping costs, organizations opt for virtual rewards, like tried and true gift cards, only to run into additional obstacles. Turns out, lots of gift cards can’t be redeemed in other countries, your accounting team now might need to add payroll tax to each gift card sent, and the costs of tens or hundreds of gift cards easily add up. To make it easier to send money, some might decide to add the gift card amount to everyone’s payroll, but now what was supposed to be a (fun) reward becomes associated with performance and the employment terms an employee has with the company. The meaning of the reward is then lost.
To combat the logistical and financial issues with sending physical and monetary rewards around the globe, we recommend creating rewards that fall into two buckets: experiences and nonmonetary rewards. Those rewards are unique but can also be scaled for a larger team; they create moments people remember and can help reinforce the culture and values of your company.
What is different about experiential rewards is that they can’t be mass-produced, they are unique and can be tailored to an individual and/or a group of people. Experiential rewards can be experienced in any geography and remove the friction of thinking about how a certain reward can travel across thousands of miles. And what is most important - experiential rewards are remembered! People will forget what they used their $10 Amazing gift card for (do you remember what you used your last gift card for?! Exactly), but they will never forget a tour of a local bakery where they learned to make croissants. Experiences create moments, and one of the main purposes of employee rewards is to help create moments of appreciation.
Nonmonetary rewards are oftentimes experiences, but the main distinguishing factor is that they don’t cost the company any money directly. Some fun and unique nonmonetary rewards for a global team include:
For some additional employee reward ideas for your global team, check out our list of the most popular reward ideas as crowdsourced by our customers.
At HeyTaco, people send digital tacos to each other to express appreciation and recognize their teammate’s work. People accumulate tacos they can use for custom rewards in the Taco Shop, and rewards people work hard for feeling different. If you want to get your team started on a journey of gratitude and appreciation, download the app to your Slack or Microsoft Teams and watch the gratitude flow.