It is difficult to find employees that are dedicated to a company and able to perform at a high level. When you have found individuals that fit that bill, then you know how important it is to retain them. Employees that know their value in the company cannot be blamed for expecting to be thanked for their efforts. Even if an employee is happy working for you, they can be easily swayed if they feel that they are being taken for granted. Rewarding your top employees is an important thing that needs to take place in any business.

Who Are the Top Performers?

Before you can begin rewarding top performers in your company, you must identify who they are. Looking at an employee overall is the best way to know who is most valuable in your company. The amount of work that is being put out can be a good indicator, but should not be solely relied upon. There are other factors such as attitude, being a team player, and passion that should be taken into account. Once you have identified the top employees in your business, then you can begin rewarding them.

How to Reward Employees with a Pay Raise

Conducting regular performance reviews is one of the best ways to decide whether or not an employee should be rewarded with a pay raise. Raising an employee’s wages does many things:

• it tells the employee their value to your company
• it establishes a gap between high functioning employees and low functioning ones
• gives a standard for others in the company to follow suit

In order for pay raises to be as effective as they need to be, you must be consistent with employee evaluations.

How High Should the Raise Be?

While you might decide to give all employees some form of raise each year, the question is, how large of a differentiation should there be between top performers and low functioning employees? You will need to develop a pay raise scale in order to assign each employees raises based off of their functioning. Here is a good guideline of what other companies are doing to distinguish employees.

Top Performers                               4.8% pay raise

Above Average Performers               3.7% pay raise

Average Performers                         2.6% pay raise

Below Average Performers               0.9% pay raise

Lowest Performers                          0.1% pay raise

These are just a few ideas of what you can do to distinguish top performers from other employees. You will need to decide what best suits you, but the best thing to keep in mind is that there should be a large gap between the top and the bottom.

If you have any questions about how we can help you with

rewarding top performers contact us today!

Written for us by our associate Gary Sorrell, Sorrell Associates, LLC.

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