Although incentive plans are often in place for full time workers, those who are short time employees deserve an opportunity to prove themselves, too. This can help increase performance and create a more promising work environment.

How to Use Incentives

Using short term employee incentives helps motivate individuals to perform the best they can even if they are with the company only for a short amount of time. This includes temporary workers, short-term seasonal workers and others. For these programs to be effective, they must be accomplishable in the short amount of time the individual is present. They should also be immediately achievable with top performance.

 Ideas for Short Term Employee Gifts and Benefits 

  • An employee gift program can be an ideal opportunity. Purchase a few gift cards to area stores and then set goals for the individuals to earn. In doing this, it can help motivate employees to reach sales goals. Use contests as a tool to get people interested.
  • Bonus plans can work well for these short term employees, too. Everyone is motivated with the incentive to earn more for doing a good job. Use a quarterly (or more frequently) program to determine when these bonuses should pay out. Those who stay and work the whole holiday season, for example, earn the bonus.
  • Paid time off is something any short term employee will appreciate because most do not see having time off as a possibility when working for an employer for a limited amount of time. Employees who earn this, through achieving specific goals, can feel more appreciated and will, in return, work harder for the employer.
  • Creating and using team awards can also help. Team awards can be a good way to encourage short term employees to work their best can work in one of two ways. This benefits the group by keeping employees accountable to each other while also helping employees to motivate each other to accomplish more. This can be an ideal way to get everyone involved in achieving the incentive offered.

Though short term employees may not always seem to be the ones you should be giving a bonus to, offering them something for their hard work can help them to perform at their best. Even if you have no ability to hire them on full-time, short term employees are likely willing to work harder if you offer them some type of incentive to do so. They may even be more willing to take on short term positions as a direct result.

Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor is the Founder and CEO of HR Knows

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