I find myself dipping into my own pocket or saving a portion of MY bonus to do things to recognize my team in the short term and I don't mind doing it, since there is not currently an alternative and we all know making your team feel good is paramount to success in retail. However, we tout all these increases in profits and stores are still not given a budget for recognizing their teammates? I'll admit, when I was a Sales Associate, my motivation to perform well was to get the most hours and move up with this company, which I did, but not every teammate has the dream of leading a store or working for Under Armour forever even if they are super brand passionate and committed to the stores success right now. It would be beneficial to budget stores like $200 per quarter if they make plan to do something nice for the team. I bought my team pizza for making one quarter and I swear they talked about it for a month after-they loved it! We could also tier the recognition budgets with the bonus structure (i.e +5% gets $300, +10% gets $400, etc.)
