Offering Unofficial Rewards
Explore practical ways to offer unofficial rewards that motivate engineering teams. Learn to plan team events, provide personalized swag, enable new technology learning, and offer flexible work adjustments, all tailored to your team’s unique needs and preferences.
“Unofficial” rewards are those that generally don’t require the HR team’s approval or even participation, although again this will vary from company to company. As such, these are generally easier to hand out, but will also often have a smaller impact on the individual.
Party!
Probably the most common of the unofficial rewards is the team party: take a few hours, combined with some food and beverage, and socialize. Before announcing the party, however, take a few moments to make a few decisions ahead of time:
- Where? Onsite, offsite, or remote? If the party is held within the building, the company will most probably have some kind of limitations on food and beverage (most notably alcohol) that can be brought inside. Space limitations may also apply. Plus, you just can’t really get all that obnoxious when there’s people trying to get work done just one cubicle wall away. Additionally, if members of your team are remote, it can feel very exclusionary to hold something in-person when they can’t attend. In that case, do something over your videoconference software of choice, and consider shipping something (food or beverage) out to everybody ahead of time.
- When? Remember that your team has lives after the workday is over, so don’t just assume that everybody can get together on a Thursday night in a bar, particularly if they have spouses and/or families. On the flip side, however, many people can feel awkward walking into a bar or bowling alley at 1 in the afternoon.
- Food. Sure, everybody loves cake, but a non-trivial number of people also have religious and/or medical concerns that mean that there’s no one dish that appeals equally to everybody. (I’m a carnivore of the highest-order, and one of my best friends is a strict vegetarian.) Keep that in mind—combined with the knowledge of your team your 1:1s have given you—when planning any food options.
- Beverages. The elephant in the room here is alcohol: while many companies (particularly startups) like to proclaim their “work hard, play hard” culture,