It’s rare for employees to want to be treated the same; instead, they strive for equality based on their performance. 

If you have a meritocracy culture, where talented, hardworking employees are rewarded based on their achievement, you can reward your employees fairly and financially with career advancement and other opportunities, removing seniority as a factor for underperformers.

At Conference Event Management (CEM), we provide our employees with flex performance benefits and bonuses. To design additional bonus levels, it’s imperative to start with your culture and prioritize desired behaviors. We offer every employee the opportunity to create and earn quarterly bonuses based on how she contributes to the bottom line. This allows the company to be the best it can be, while providing employees with the satisfaction of attaining self-written goals.

Currently all of our employees are receiving our company’s highest category of performance ranking, which allows them to choose an extra flex benefit – from an activity spending allowance, additional holiday time or shorter summertime Fridays. This past year, the staff voted to extend this early-out Friday benefit for an extra month. 

How can you create your own high-achieving team? Start with the 24-hour rule. In our company, we address issues within 24 hours. This allows us to immediately guide, correct and mentor. This prevents potential problems from festering and eliminates delayed performance review issues. We eliminate all surprises from the performance reviews – except for good ones such as compliments and feel-good moments. 

We have “Sharing & Caring” as a part of our Values and Mission statement, allowing us to give back throughout the year. The CEM Community Outreach Team’s favorite annual outing is ringing bells for the Salvation Army. The employees decide our activities and we have fun volunteering as a team, usually including a nice cold beverage or a sweet treat. 

CEM benefits from these group activities through bonding and improved teamwork. Employees are also invited to partake in training opportunities, the company’s Mentor Tank program and the Iowa Hospitality Donation Network we created to rescue food and personal care items for Central Iowa’s hungry and homeless.

A personal management style strategy where I believe you can excel is with an open-door policy. Unless I’m on the phone helping a client with a reward strategy, my door is open and staff stop in throughout the day. I want staff to love walking through the front door in the morning. If I don’t want to come through those doors with passionate energy, then I need to re-examine my team’s dynamics. This all starts with the biggest CEM factor in hiring – we recommend using a group approach and establishing a “No drama” workplace. With a female workforce, perhaps you doubt it can be done – we can demonstrate otherwise! 

I like to encourage all of our employees to go on a destination trip annually to develop their skills and industry networks, and learn how a destination can help solve a client’s specific challenge. We ask all traveling employees to take time off after they return from a client’s event; they worked hard to create an off-site rewarding experience and need to energize, reducing burnout. 

We take great satisfaction in knowing we take care of our employees and promote growth through a rewarding work environment that they help create. If we’re not taking care of our employees in a rewarding manner, then it’s not easy to put on some of the world’s most rewarding experience for our clients. What steps can you take to keep your top performers satisfied?