Your team is your most valuable asset. They’re the ones behind your brilliant product innovation, your strong brand reputation, and your stellar customer service. Where would you be without your people?

Most business leaders and managers feel this way about their employees, but it’s often much more difficult to show their team the gratitude they’ve earned. There may not be room in the budget for raises and bonuses, but smart leaders will still need ways to motivate and retain their people.

We can help with that. Here are a few easy, low-cost, and virtual-friendly ways to share some gratitude:

1. Say ‘Thank You.’

It’s literally that easy. Say it publicly in a meeting or group email to your whole team or with a handwritten note to an individual, but take the time and make the effort to thank the people working to help your brand succeed. You’ve probably been thanked for your own hard work at some point in your career, and it felt good. Remember?

2. Give the Gift of Time.

If it’s feasible for how your business operates, give your employees the most precious resource of all: free time. A full day off for a long weekend is always well received but if that’s more than your workload can endure, consider allowing your employees to leave after lunch on a Friday.

3. The Free Lunch.

The time-worn adage “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” suggests that you can’t get something for nothing, and it’s a core principle of economics, but in this case, pizza or a lunch outing is an easy way to break up the workday and show some gratitude.

4. Share the Schwag.

If you have some branded apparel normally reserved for customers, you can turn your employees into brand advocates and show them some appreciation in one stroke by handing out some T-shirts, mugs, and other items. And if you don’t have anything like that lying around, we can help!

5. Virtual Happy Hour.

Combine a gesture of appreciation with some team-building by rounding up your team for a virtual cocktail hour. Establish a “No Work Talk Allowed” rule in advance to keep the vibe casual, and offer to reimburse employees for the drink of their choice (alcoholic or not) with prepaid gift cards. It’s not so much about the drinks as it is about gathering to connect with your team in a genuine manner.

6. Send a Custom Gift Card.

Go a step beyond merchant-specific cards from the grocery store with custom-branded Visa cards that your employees can use on anything they want. These can be physical or virtual cards at almost any value you want, and since they can be combined with any of the above ideas and don’t require a social setting for distribution, they make the perfect reward for remote workers.

At Best Payment Solutions, we specialize in creating and executing incentives, rewards, rebates, and gift programs that can help drive business, build customer and partner loyalty, and, in the case of a product recall, we can help you turn a bad experience into a better one. And we can make it easy, seamless, and affordable. Contact us today to learn more.

Ready to take the next step? At Best Payment Solutions, we understand the impact an improvement to your sales cycle can make on your company’s financials. Our experienced team can help your business evaluate its processes and implement a channel partner automation program to meet its unique needs. If you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level and get your sales process functioning at peak efficiency when you need it most, then a channel partner incentive program may be the right solution for you.  Click here to schedule a consultation, or give us a call at 800-371-6801.