So far we’ve viewed everything through the lenses of an employer. Whom should we hire and with what skills? How do we motivate them?

Applicants want to know what the job is going to be like. How hard will I have to work? How much will I get paid? Some questions get answered in the interview. Others aren’t answered until the job starts. And this is where the problems can begin.

I’ve spent considerable time thinking about and researching the employment contract from the employee’s perspective. I’ve concluded through research that store managers and their assistants have 13 rewards they can use to attract, retain, and motivate workers.

Over the next two columns I’d like to share some observations about these rewards. First, over time the relative importance of these rewards changes. Knowing this can help you design your reward structure to fit employee needs. Consider these trends across all employees and industries.

Compensation: There is a long-term trend toward more variable (commissions and bonuses) pay for all levels of employees. Even lower-level employees find 4 percent of their total compensation in the bonus category. Why? Because in good times employers don’t mind sharing the wealth. In bad times no bonus is paid.

Benefits: Historically this expensive reward (averaging 30 percent of payroll) has been an employer sinkhole. Money goes in with no obvious benefit! Lately though, companies like McDonald’s have been allocating more to key benefits (health and pension) to build a stable, mature workforce that is less likely to turnover.

Social Interaction: A neglected reward that companies are just beginning to explore. If you select crewmembers who get along with one another, actually like each other, coming to work is fun. Fun translates into lower turnover.

Job Security: The ping-pong ball of rewards is important when unemployment is high and less so in good times. Guess how it ranks these days! That’s good news for quick-serves because they prosper in bad times. This is a good time to find great crewmembers to groom for future management jobs.

Status/Recognition: Yum! Brands proudly announces it has a recognition culture. Every manager is trained in ways to use recognition to motivate workers. It’s an inexpensive way to build a loyal workforce. Unfortunately many companies preach agreement but never follow through at the store level.

Work Variety: Important to some employees, frightening to others. Never a top-rated reward for employees but very important to store managers because increased skills mean increased flexibility for job assignments.

Work Load: Hugely important in the quick-serve industry. Store managers chronically understaff then go to the same crewmembers (yes, the best ones!) to bail them out. It doesn’t take long to make this a negative reward for the overburdened.

Work Importance: Historically, this was important to only one or two employees out of 100. Generation Y and Millennials have different priorities, though. They want to know their work makes a difference. Does fast food have an image that can satisfy this need? Probably not, and that’s something we need to worry about.

Authority/Control/Autonomy: Sometimes called empowerment, we know that team-based work environments value this reward very highly. In strong team environments, team members want to know that they have the authority to set priorities and manage the workflow without interference. This is a demand that only the best managers can agree to without a huge career-threatening gulp.

Advancement Opportunity: Always a highly ranked reward by employees. High performing crewmembers rank this first or second in reward importance. Do you want to keep your best employees satisfied? Find ways to develop and advance them.

Feedback: An inexpensive reward that usually rates in the top five for importance. Crewmembers value constructive feedback! That’s not the same thing as sarcastic feedback—by far the most common thing I endured during my 14 months as a crewmember. I know the big brands try to train store managers in constructive feedback techniques, but I think we need to monitor this more effectively.

Development: General Electric built its reputation on developing talent. Jack Welch put targeted managers into work experiences that built skills for future advancement opportunities. When is benchmarking Jack a bad idea?

Working Conditions: In many jobs this isn’t a particularly important reward. That’s not true in fast food. I was shocked at how hard crew jobs were. The general public seldom sees the oily floors, heavy lifting, and hours of repetitive motions. Applicants usually are unprepared for those first few days. This is a work environment begging for more realistic job previews. Tell it like it will be and avoid job shock.

Knowing how to best use these rewards will keep your crew happy, and, most importantly, that means customers will be happy, too.

Don’t believe me? In a high-quality marketing journal, a meta-analysis of 28 experiments in the retail industry (including fast food) showed a significant effect across studies: employee satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction. Almost as interesting, the effect is stronger for individual encounter situations than where the relationship is more long term.