Here’s how you increase employee satisfaction for $20 a week

Looking for a way to improve your team’s satisfaction and performance… without breaking the bank or spending more time on employee management?

Try this.

Give one of your team members $20 to spend on one of their colleagues. They choose the colleague, they choose how they’ll spend the money, and you just hand over the bill. Next week, give another $20 to another team member, and tell them to spend it on different coworker. Keep this up every week for a month and see what happens.

I know $20 doesn’t sound like it could make much of an impact, but there’s some real science backing it up. Researchers Michael Norton and Elizabeth Dunn studied two sales teams. Members of one team got money to spend on themselves, members of the other team got money to spend on each other. Guess which team came out on top?

Believe it or not, the salespeople who spent money on others increased their sales, while the salespeople who spent on themselves had no change in their performance. Google took findings like these to heart and lets its employees nominate each other for $150 bonuses. But you don’t need to spend so much–Dunn and Norton found $5 was enough to make a real impact. It isn’t about the dollars themselves. It’s about the feelings engendered by the act of gifting. You don’t need to be a cash-driven salesperson to feel better about giving or receiving an unexpected token.

So the next time you eye an expensive, time-consuming retreat to improve your team’s performance and morale, consider trying this quick, cheap weekly reward first.