As Taylor Swift wrapped up her worldwide hit Eras tour, the pop singer reportedly awarded her employees $197 million in bonuses, recognizing every member of the tour, from choreographers to truck drivers to the merch team. 

The move, according to employee experience strategist Sujay Saha, is something business leaders can learn from. 

While not every company can dole out millions of dollars in bonuses, finding ways to recognize workers can go a long way in employee appreciation, retention and culture building, Saha told HR Dive. 

“A lot of times, we always skew in the direction of somehow recognizing employees with a lot of monetary incentives and think that is the only way of having the employee feel a sense of gratification,” said Saha, who is founder and president of Cortico-X, a consulting firm. “What I’ve seen is this immediate acknowledgment of good work done goes a very, very long way.”

In his experience, that can look like praising someone’s work in front of their colleagues or potential clients in an authentic way. 

Swift, for her part, publicly thanked her crew after changing up the tour last year. 

In the end, while money can help in the short term, marrying those rewards with other incentives and recognition will have longer lasting benefits, Saha said. 

“It’s not about the gesture of taking out a big sum of money and distributing it; it’s really about that surprise factor that she must have created among people,” Saha said. “I think there’s a lot to be learned from the gesture.

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Source: https://www.hrdive.com/news/taylor-swift-eras-tour-employee-appreciation/738601/