Our Customer Service Program Manager, Gail Martinn, celebrates an extraordinary milestone of 30 years at Next Level Performance.

In a strong economy, it’s important to cultivate a strong workplace culture within your business. Professionals rank their work environment as the most important factor when determining their satisfaction with their job. Pay raises and promotions are ineffectual drivers of employee engagement when compared to culture.

As an incentive, recognition, and engagement solutions provider, it’s pretty important that we practice what we preach. After all, we need to be sure that every member of our team has reason to believe in what we do every day, and is willing to commit their best efforts. So when it comes to employee engagement, here’s how we do it at Next Level.

HR leaders often ask, “How can we be sure we have a world-class recognition program?” Here are some things to consider if you really want to make your recognition program as effective as it can be.

At Next Level Performance we recognize our employee’s contributions every quarter through the Teammate of the Quarter Award. With many nominations this quarter, the spotlight is on Jamie Santiago who had a very successful quarter working on graphic designs for incentive travel programs.

Letting employees micromanage their own schedules and work arrangements is the first step to optimizing results. The strongest efforts come from self-motivated employees with harmonious work and personal lives. Workplace flexibility is key to employee engagement.

Communication, non-cash rewards like meaningful gifts, and the celebration of accomplishments is key to harnessing the halo effect and establishing a better work environment.

Today’s top companies are valued by their intangible assets. Aspects like company culture and employee retention are essential to a company’s success. Research by the Incentive Research Foundation provides insight on how managers could best take advantage of incentive programs to increase the quality of their firms through the right combinations of rewards.

Companies that focus on being great employers and on inspiring the best work from their employees are more successful. Employee engagement boosts company valuation.

Organizations are finding out that it takes more than enticing perks to attract and retain top talent. From well-known companies to less recognizable organizations, they all have these things in common, making them the top companies people want to work for.

How do we recognize our outstanding teammates here at Next Level Performance? Kolleen Whitley describes how she contributes to the success of our company every day, for which she has been recognized.

With the solid foundation of reasonable pay, non-cash rewards are more memorable, have a higher perceived value, and the recognition experience is baked into the employer brand. This would have given United the flexibility to reassess and redirect their recognition program, adjusting goals and budgets as needed, without threatening the perceived compensation of every eligible employee.