When attempting to gain a long-term competitive edge over peers, businesses need to leverage strategies that improve how their workplace operates daily.

In an age where people want more out of their roles than a paycheck, some business leaders struggle to engage their employees effectively.

We see large tech companies dole out perks like fancy gym memberships and free daily meals to boost employee engagement. What about the companies that can’t afford to offer those things?

Here are four strategies for improving employee performance.

Communicate Expectations from the Onset

Healthy relationships share a common foundation of honesty. It’s no different in the working world. From the moment a company advertises a job description, the relationship with prospective employees starts.

Efficient hiring and onboarding processes develop a rapport with new hires and position them for success from the start. They also reflect well on a company workplace and boost employee retainment.

Once an employee completes their onboarding, a manager should discuss performance expectations and set KPIs with them. It’s important for KPIs to be developed with input from both the manager and employee. The collaborative aspect gives individuals some ownership early in their career with business, keeping them from feeling like a cog in the wheel without autonomy.

Practice Ongoing Feedback

Performance reviews have traditionally been the mode of feedback in many workplaces. These performance reviews are problematic for many reasons. Among them, too much time passes between reviews for a productive discussion about performance. The typical workday 40 years ago isn’t comparable to our attention-span-proliferating workforce. A lot goes on day in and day out.

For employees to feel engaged and motivated to achieve more in their jobs, they need to be told how they’re doing with regularity. This doesn’t have to be formal “weekly talks” either. Recognize employees when they’ve made a positive contribution, tell them when they go astray, and always encourage them to innovate without the fear of failing.

Give Access to Resources/Remove Roadblocks

Employees are the fuel that powers an organization, but their impact isn’t felt when a business can’t facilitate its abundance of resources effectively. In smaller companies, it’s common not to have enough resources and bandwidth to do a task appropriately. In larger companies, employees often feel stifled because they have to jump through several hoops to get something done. Believe it or not, the number one ask from Millennial employees is better access to data for informed decision making.

Regardless of how an organization struggles, designing infrastructure to share information fluidly might be all they need to heighten the performance of roles across the workplace. For instance, implementing search-driven analytics tools solves issues like insufficient resources and roadblocks. It will also do wonders to improve the morale of the data team. Freed from building tedious reports all day, they can instead focus on higher-level organizational needs.

Aid Employee Self-Improvement

Ongoing feedback and access to user-friendly analytics tools help employees’ level up their skills. Additionally, giving them the liberty to pursue other career paths in the company will only fuel their tenacity to learn. Opportunities should extend beyond organizational walls, however.

A small company could offer a self-improvement fund for a series of cooking classes. A large company might provide a stipend for education related to training, a certificate or a degree.

In an ever-changing economy, businesses live and die by the stability and talent of their workforce. Cool perks may yield a lot of job applications, but nothing will keep employees performing well and striving for more like these four straightforward strategies.