Not too long ago, the extent of a business’s rewards scheme might have extended to an employee-of-the-month photo and maybe a voucher at Christmas.

But with workplace issues such as burnout, wellbeing and talent retention at crisis levels, properly recognising and rewarding employees for their contribution to the workplace is becoming increasingly vital.

But some firms are still lagging behind, despite the obvious importance of appropriately rewarding staff. In fact, according to a 2022 Gallup & Workhuman whitepaper, only 36% of employees said their workplace had a recognition system in place. But it’s more than worth HR’s time to change this–the same study found that those working for firms with a strong rewards and recognition scheme are four times more likely to be actively engaged in their work, and five times more likely to feel connected to their firm’s cultural values.

One company making great strides in this area is Toyota GB, whose General Manager of People and Workplace Experience, Rachel Shepherd, and HR Business Partner Jessica Portman, sat down with myGrapevine magazine to provide an insight on how the UK arm of the automotive firm approaches employee rewards and recognition. Rachel and Jess discuss how important communication is, and how great dialogue between managers and their teams helps Toyota figure out the best way to recognise each employee individually.

myGrapevine:

How are company benefits considered as part of this progression?

Jessica:

We have a flexible benefits offer that's very much about avoiding a one–size–fits–all approach, and actually tailors the benefits to the most important things to you in your life. So, for example, holiday trading, where somebody can choose to trade or sell up to five days of holiday.

What’s also really important in terms of recognition, is that people also understand the way that they're being rewarded, as opposed purely in terms of their salary, and they know that we have a very comprehensive and marketable benefits offer.

myGrapevine:

The cost–of–living crisis is at the forefront of every HR team’s mind at the moment. How is Toyota factoring this situation into its reward and recognition plans?

Rachel:

This year we've introduced a cost–of–living payment, separately to someone's salary. Something that is quite unique for Toyota is that it depends on your grade within the organisation. So, the lower grade you are, the higher percentage you get. We’re recognising that for those, the people, who are maybe on the lower end of the salary scale, this is going to be more significant, and therefore we adjust the payment.

We also have a hybrid working model, which we introduced following consultations with our employees about how to remain connected while they're working remotely.

We talked about what the value was of people coming together, and what the value was for the individuals working remotely, and we did it as a conversation. I think that's also been important, and that was the way that we did everything through Covid. It was about respecting individual flexibility and the circumstances in which someone was working.

You can see there's a bit of a theme to how we do things – making sure that our people are fully informed, engaged, and buying in to what we're doing. That way we're getting the best from them, because we're communicating with them in an in an adult way.