How to Create an Overworked, Underpaid—But Fully Engaged—IT Workforce (Pt 3: Reward Your People When Money’s Tight)

Two weeks ago, we confronted an uncomfortable professional reality: as an IT leader, at least once in your career you will face lean times—stretches when IT’s resources are substantially reduced and everyone feels the pinch.

During these lean times, three major problems crop up:

1. A reactive desire to just accept the lean times and mechanically grind forward creeps into your team.
2. The exciting projects your team members love will get cut from the operating plan, and be replaced with boring but necessary work.
3. Big bonuses and raise opportunities are eliminated from your budget, removing the traditional incentives you can give to your people to make them feel valued.

Faced with these challenges, you have a choice—you can try to just survive the lean times, or you can do what it takes to thrive within the sub-optimal IT environment.

As an ambitious IT leader, your choice is clear. You will do whatever it takes to thrive—even when times get tough.

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Here’s your game-plan:

First, remember that lean times don’t have to be hard times. Instead of just grinding your people through these stretches, proactively embrace the restraints they offer, and look for unique opportunities to strengthen your fundamental leadership skills. (Read more about how to do this here.)

Second, don’t rely on sexy, forward-thinking projects to keep your people engaged. Instead, make your people’s “boring but necessary” work engaging by systematically framing all assignments as interesting and important. (Read more about how to do this here.)

Finally, find creative ways to recognize your people’s good work without relying on the traditional corporate rewards of large cash-based bonuses and raises. Doing so is easier than you think… as long as you understand the true fundamental needs these big bonuses and raises address within your people.

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The Fundamental Needs Cash-Based Incentives Really Feed

Let’s be clear about one thing: To a certain extent, money is money.

Your people have bills to pay, vacations to fund, and big-ticket purchases they want to funnel their bonuses and raises towards. You can spend all afternoon thinking up creative non-monetary ways to reward your people and you’ll never come up with a non-monetary reward that addresses these hard-nosed dollars-and-cents desires of your people.

This is reality. Accept it now.

That being said… big bonuses and raises also meet a whole suite of other needs that have nothing to do with funding your people’s lifestyles:

Bonuses are given to single out and validate a team member for their especially good work. Giving your team member a bonus is as much about telling them “Good job” as it is about giving them some extra spending money.

Raises are given when a team member has developed to the point where their day-to-day contribution to the organization is substantially greater than it used to be. Sometimes this corresponds to a promotion, sometimes it doesn’t, but in both cases a big raise tells your team member she has crossed a milestone in her career’s progression.

In both cases, cash-based incentives speak to needs that lie much deeper within your people than their external financial wants.

Big cash-based incentives tell your people that the work they do matters—that you notice their good work in the short term, and that all of their effort is adding up to a career that’s progressing over the long term.

Knowing this, you can brainstorm ways to reward and recognize your people—without spending a dime—by speaking directly to these deep needs.

A few suggestions:

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ACTION STEPS

1. Single out especially good work in the short term

Contact a higher-up within the organization who personally benefited from your team member’s good work, and have that higher-up contact your team member directly.

Have that higher-up thank your team member, ask for your team member’s opinion, or otherwise take a little time to make your team member feel vindicated, proud, and appreciated.

2. Contribute to your team members’ career progression:

Host a one-on-one meeting with each of your team members (or each of your direct reports if you manage a large team). In each meeting, ask your team member about their career ambitions…

-What role do they want to acquire next?

-What skills do they want to develop?

-Where do they ultimately want to land in their career?

Write down the answers to these questions, and proactively look for opportunities within their role—and within the larger organization—to help them develop the skills, experience and relationships required to meet their ambitions.

3. Feed your team member’s need for tangible rewards:

When resources are available, and when a team member has completed especially good work, award “spot bonuses” in small cash amounts.

By year’s end these spot bonuses will add up to a much smaller sum than a traditional large year-end bonus, but these smaller spot bonuses provide many of the same tangible benefits—all without stretching the IT budget too thin.