干我这一行的，我的职业兴趣导致了我的客户要么是面向学生的机构，要么是需要我

协助他们处理员工方面的事务。那么你知道关于后者这一类的项目最困难的事情是什么吗？除非你完全没用心想，不然你一定知道，没错，你或许应该已经猜到了，最关键的在于：要让员工们保持乐观，并且有动力持续为你的机构工作。

等等，意思就是说要烧很多钱才能赢得他们的心吗?

如果你们的公司预算微薄，或者你是在一个上市公司内担任C&B(薪酬与福利)总监，并且你最大任务之一是要降低员工奖励制度的成本，那么恭喜你，你来对地方了！首先要提到的是，我一直很讨厌旧同事和表现不佳的下属追着上司要更多的薪酬。因为他们根本不值那个价——为什么要给这些效率极低的员工们更多的报酬呢? 哎，我见过我很多客户因为自己的下属进行了对自己不利的劳动合同的谈判，变成了最终受害者，还得眼睁睁地看着这些糟糕的员工将优厚的薪水存进账户——扣这些员工的工资他们都应该感恩了，谁会在意他们辞职呢？只想说“赶紧滚吧，不送了”。不过对于那些表现足够优秀、值得表扬的员工们，我的原则就是：一定要好好地、适当地，去支付他们所应得的薪水。

当然，只通过金钱奖励员工是远远不足的(关于这点，我将在其他文章进行解释)。尤其在那些缺少员工的企业内，如果只把金钱作为最终奖励制度，那么你们肯定连现在已有的员工都保留不住，更别说招聘新人了！不过不用慌乱，让AndyZ老师教各位一些可能已经听说过的技巧，以及更重要的是——如何实施这些技巧，因为他们是除了金钱奖励之外格外关键的后端因素。

在实施更恰当的奖励制度时，“工作环境游戏化”是一定行得通的。就像有些人常在不同文章里提到的这个主题，我认为这是激励员工最好的方法，没有之一。同时，“工作环境游戏化”也能够维持员工对于工作的兴趣。不过在深入这一话题这之前，我们要先联想到“正强化”这个概念。

当我们开始思考如何执行一个补充金钱奖励的低预算甚至零预算制度时，我需要所有拥有权限管理自己公司福利和薪酬架构的读者们，一定要确保员工在他们的工作环境里感到Empowered(也就是有关键发挥的空间)。对于这个英语单词Empowerment, 更详细的解释就是：在员工完成每一项任务中，哪怕多么无聊、多么乏味，他都能意识到背后的意义和目的都至关重要。而对于那些想在目前公司提升自己的工作动力的读者，也一定要确保这种工作环境存在——不然你永远不会感受到一份有意义的工作带来的快乐，待在雇主面前的每一秒都在浪费你宝贵的生命！

如果一个激励制度没有明确地指出员工在哪些方面需要“正强化”，那么这个制度还有什么用呢? 它的意义就是在良好的工作行为上进行正强化，但如果你连这种行为的本身应该是什么都不清楚，那么它便毫无意义。如果想在员工激励制度上节省成本，这一点一定要尽快让相关部门列入工作事项。

锁定企业所期望员工的良好表现之后，那么应该注重于跟员工的日常沟通了！第一条便是要保持沟通畅通——即使这种建议已经在各种文章内一万次被提及，但我从不厌倦提出这个建议，因为可笑之处在于大多数的公司仍旧不能执行这种在本科管理课程学到的最基本的概念。表扬是“开放”沟通的最佳方法之一，你不必每一次都私下表扬，也可以在同事们面前表扬他，甚至可以在公司邮件、会议上等等。这些微小的举动都能深入员工的内心，让他觉得自己能对企业做出有意义的贡献。对于开放的沟通很重要的另一方面是与员工保持正常的对话。这尽管不是传统意义上的奖励，但也是为了激励员工必不可少的手段。最令人惋惜的就是——很多优秀的经理人被公司的内部政治、自身和铺天盖地的工作量掩埋而忽略这种对话。因此，那就让AndyZ老师来分享一下一个很简单的技巧能来提高企业内部沟通：当每日结束之前，跟员工分享5条关于企业发展和他职业发展的信息——其中最后一条应该是每日的表扬(如果员工确实应得)。这就是实际执行之前提到的“Empowerment”的方案了，而且一个小小的表扬绝不会导致他的自我膨胀。

请记住，即使金钱是生存必不可少的东西，但雇主对金钱的过度重视却是让员工产生消极情绪。因为他们一旦感觉雇主在用金钱来“购买”他们的劳动力，他们会觉得这仅仅是一场交易，他们完全没有必要超越工作的范围；当你把他们当作企业的“佣兵”，雇员们便会自动建立这种的思维态度，也自然无法表现出作为“组织员公民”（organizational citizenship)应有的工作表现。

在本文的下一部分中，我将分享另外一种低成本的方法奖励你的员工们 - 提供他们能在职场上促进个人发展的机会，无论是在学习方面或是提供更多曝光的机会。除此之外，我也会分享一些在关于利用低成本激励制度的常见问题以及我的答案和建议，所以敬请期待，而且不要忘记关注我(AndyZ老师)！

——————————以下为Andy老师英文原稿——————————

- Prior to you starting to gamify, you need to think about the rewards

- Meaningful Work environment

- Identify what needs to be reinforced

- Communicate: Praise (not just 1 on1, but can be in front of everybody) and dialogue!

- Development: Training, opportunities for more exposure

- Remember, money can be a huge demotivator, if they feel you are buying them out, they will only do work that is required of them and no need to go beyond: if you treat them as a mercenary, they will act as one and lack of organizational citizenship

My line of work and professional interests mean that I work with clients that deal with students and employees. Do you know one of the hardest things about working with the latter group of people? Unless you’re totally zoned out, yes you should have realized now it’s keep them happy and interested to continue working for you.

Wait, so does that mean burning a lot of cash to win them over?

So if you’re a company with little budget, or even if you’re a stock-listed company but your job as a compensation and benefits director is to help squeeze costs when it comes to rewarding people, then you’ve come to the right place! Okay, first things first. I’ve hated seeing colleagues or even under-performing staff trying to bargain for more money when they don’t deserve it - why reward ineffective people?! Heck, I’ve seen my clients over and over again become victims of poor contract negotiations and watch their awful employees pocket fat paychecks - even salary reductions are appropriate and who cares if they leave, good riddance! However, when it comes to rewarding people that have performed admirably, I do not condone on skipping this out! If you want your best people to feel pumped, pay them appropriately.

But just rewarding with money is not enough (I’ll explain in other articles), especially for most companies you wouldn’t be able to retain your top talent because just money does not inspire them. Fear not, let me teach you a few tricks that you may or may not already know, but how to actually put them into practice, as they are great ways to supplement monetary rewards.

All roads lead to gamification, and as someone who has consistently written about this topic, it’s one of the best ways to motivate and incentivizing employees, while at the same time keeping interest levels up there. Prior to this though, we need to think about reinforcement.

To begin thinking about how to actually institute a low to no budget method in addition to money incentives, I need all my readers who are overseeing their company’s compensation structures to make sure that employees feel empowered in their work environment. By empowerment, this refers to the fact that every single tasks that employees do, no matter how mundane they are, has a meaning and purpose behind it. And for those readers that are looking to increase their motivation within the context of their organization, make sure your company has this sort of work environment, or you’re simply wasting your time because you will never feel happy there.

What use is a motivational system if it doesn’t correctly identify what areas do employees need reinforcement? The whole idea of such system is that you are giving them positive reinforcement for good behavior, but if you aren’t even clear of what that good behavior is, then it’s pointless, especially if you are trying to be thrifty with your reinforcement, which is very reasonable in itself as the “good behavior” aspect definitely needs to be amplified.

After identifying the desired good behavior, now it’s time to communicate! Keeping open lines of communication - this piece of advice is age-old and I must’ve seen thousands of articles promoting such advice, but I never get tired of mentioning a lot of “duh” advice because companies still fail to implement this. Praising is one of the best forms of “open” communication, and you don’t always have to do it privately, but in front of others or even over a company meeting, email as well. This makes the employee feel good about the work that they’ve done and more important makes them realize that they can provide worthwhile contribution. Another very important aspect of this “open” communication is proper dialogue daily, and while this is not a reward per se because you really should be doing this anyway. Sadly, most managers often complain they get caught up with corporate politics in addition to their own hectic work schedule as well as nagging their subordinate to get things done. Here’s my simple trick to communication - make an effort at the end of the day to communicate five bullet points to the employee: each point is regarding corporate affairs (that can be shared with them) and career development within the organization, while having the last point become praise of the day, should they deserve it. This will make them feel empowered as mentioned earlier, and one mild compliment is not enough to bloat their ego!

Remember, while everyone needs money to survive, overemphasis on money can be actually be a huge demotivator, if they feel you are buying them out, they will only do work that is required of them to fulfill this transaction and no need to go beyond. Once you treat them as a mercenary, they will act as one and will lose any organizational citizenship behavior.

In the next part of this article, I’ll also share another way to reward your employees - providing them with development opportunities, whether it is through learning or through more exposure, as well as some common questions asked when using low budget reward systems and how to overcome, so please stay tuned and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel!

Andy老师简介：

- Multicultural and multilingual: Grew up and lived in a number of countries, American-born Chinese and Third Culture Kid (TCK)

多文化和多语言:在多个国家成长和居住；美籍华人， 典型第三文化人士(TCK)

- Leader in empowering corporate training and recruitment professionals with assessment methodologies and project-based learning andragogy

为企业培训和招聘人士提供领先评估体系和游戏化的项目式学习的职场教学法领袖

- Decade of experience in education and training, and expert in China

十年以上的学生教育和企业培训的经验:并被很多本土和国外人士称为“中国通”

- UC Berkeley Alumni Club Ex-Leader and Recruitment Ambassador

毕业于世界名校加州伯克利大学并担任校友俱乐部前任负责人和前任招生大使

- Third-party Interviewer for College Admissions

美国第三方面试官(很多大学现在需要学生在提交申请书与第三方机构进行面试)

- Helped build a number of college admissions counseling departments

负责搭建多个海外升学指导中心

- Unlike most “education experts”, personally attended more than a dozen schools growing up and personally went through the AP, IB, British, Singaporean and Hong Kong education systems

相比其他所谓的“教育专家”，从小上过十几所学校，亲自体验过AP、IB、英国、新加坡和香港的教育制度

欢迎大家关注其自媒体平台Andy Z老师。