10 Creative Ideas for Compensation of Long-Term Employees

Rewarding employees is usually a pretty straightforward process, but you have to get creative with long-term, highly productive staff that may have hit the ceiling of the salary scale. Let's face it—bonuses and special recognition only go so far.

We have a few tips to help motivate your employees, so let's explore how to compensate those long-term, highly valued staff members.

1. Review your compensation philosophy. Ensure that it is clearly defined and communicated. It's important for morale for your employees to know why they are getting paid—and if their salary is competitive in the marketplace. If applicable, try to benchmark the job and the employee.

2. Consider extra paid time off. You can give extra days upon your discretion for projects—or tack the time on to their annual benefits for years of service. For those with kids, you can give "hours off" for their use to go help their kids at school or volunteer with the children.

3. Invest in more professional development. This is an individual reward that lets the employee know you care about his/her professional growth and gives you better performance.

4. Don't forget the simple things. Sometimes just saying "thank you" can be a big enough reward for a job well done.

5. Recognition. Be sure you recognize the employee among his/her co-workers. Take the employee out for lunch, provide them a gift card for use with his/her family or have a happy hour or dessert hour in honor of the employee.

6. More Responsibility or new projects. Do you have an exciting new project coming up? Involve your key employee in pieces of the project to allow them to grow and expand their experience and knowledge. It gives them exposure to new learnings.

7. Add points to his/her company match for retirement or 401K plan. Many of our members will increase the company match a certain percentage for each year of employment.

8. Purchase office technology for their personal use. I've heard from many employees who appreciated receiving a brand new laptop or cell phone from the company. Take it a step further and provide the item for both the employee and his/her spouse. For example, buy two iPhones for them instead of just one for the employee. The spouse or significant other can play a big role in helping the employee make major employment decisions.

9. Deferred compensation. Consider an annuity for top performing employees, allowing them to accumulate earnings over a period of time; generally, tax-deferred until a point when it begins to payout over a period of years. It can help with large purchases or retirement. There are firms to help owners decide if and how to institute these types of arrangements.

10. Work time. Can you offer more flex time? More hours for working from home? Or, offer the employee the opportunity to create his/her own office hours. Anything to help the employee better enjoy his/her personal life is a step in the right direction.

Final word...we've found the best results in organizations that pay for performance. Tie your salaries, bonuses, commissions and other incentive plans to performance. What's good for the company—should be good for the employee!