At Lyyti, our cultural code influences everything we do - from how we collaborate to decision-making and to our rewarding models. You can read about our cultural code from The Green Book of Lyyti.
Rewarding was one of the first things we wanted to make sure aligns with our desired culture. Because it is totally artificial to talk about a culture that emphasises, for example, low hierarchy, transparency and the importance of a strong community and then rewards people on an individual level with secret bonus systems. It seems that this is still often done, but we don’t do that. Rewarding should always be aligned with company values.
People don’t often need carrots to get motivated. Or it depends on the type of work one does. If your job is to build five pens per day, and the process is always the same, giving you a fancy carrot at the end of each day for making six, it does work. But in a software company, where roles generally require more complex thinking, carrots can limit innovation and lead to worse results. So instead of finding the nicest ways to hang the carrots, we focus on building an environment where employees can maximise intrinsic motivation.
We’ve implemented a few different rewarding models. Quick and easy peer-to-peer rewarding, company-to-employees model and an all-staff partner program for those Lyytians who wish to invest in the company.
Image: Lyyti rewards its employees with three different models
Praised be
The easiest way for anyone at Lyyti to reward peers is to use our positive feedback channel in Slack. Any positive feedback towards a co-worker is encouraged. The positive feedback channel works like magic.
Writing a positive comment about a colleague costs nothing and is guaranteed to spread joy like a confetti cannon. In December 2022, we had 38 posts on this channel with approximately 800 reactions. That is quite a lot with a company of 75 employees.
My token of appreciation
The second peer-to-peer rewarding tool available for everyone is the Lyyti token. Every Lyytian has five tokens per year that they can use to reward colleagues. Zero hierarchy, zero control, complete autonomy. We have our Lyyti-token emoji in Slack that we use frequently. Tokens are awarded in the positive feedback channel in Slack.
Praise begets praise when done publicly and with reasoning. Tokens are meant to be given for behaviour that is an excellent example of our company values. The actual reward is something quite insignificant, like a small gift card or woolen socks. This model is not about the size or type of carrot. The token, too, works like magic and costs only a few thousand euros per year.
Rewarding beyond peer-to-peer
Lyyti also rewards employees in a few different ways beyond the peer-to-peer model. We have an annual bonus model, a team rewarding system, and employee of the year rewards. What is common with all of them, is that they have been built to support our culture.
For that reason, the annual bonus model payment is the same for everyone from an intern to the CEO, the team rewarding is done by the teams themselves, and the employee of the year is voted by the employees and the reward is a fun activity together with the winners.
Investing in growth
We added the latest long-term rewarding model in 2022. The all-staff partner program makes it possible for every Lyytian to become the owner of the company. Owning shares is a practical way to benefit from the company’s value increase and invest in the potential of Lyyti and the work we collectively do.
Rewarding affects the organisational culture greatly. It is fine to have big secret bonus models based on the hierarchical status if your culture is about hierarchy and secrecy. But don’t preach about autonomy and a flat organisation if your rewarding model is only top-down with no peer-to-peer systems. At Lyyti, we have made a big effort to make our rewarding models good for our culture and meaningful for our people.
Hero photo: Kristina Litvjak on Unsplash
***
If you want to see how Lyyti can help you create great event experiences, we suggest you watch our demo!
