Timeyin,
You want interesting and not too expensive activities to do to motivate employees? Great question.
Each human being has the same five basic needs: to be heard, to be respected, and to have competence, autonomy, and relatedness. The last three are what motivates us according to the Self Determination Theory of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan.
In my experience as an executive and manager, the extent to which I met those needs dictated the level of performance of my people. As a command and control manager they did not perform really well. After I shifted to the opposite approach of listening to them and responding to their concerns to their satisfaction or better, their performance rose hugely eventually achieving the 500% performance gain Stephen Covey told us was possible.
So get all the managers to listen to their people and respond to what they hear to the satisfaction of the people or better. Employees will love it and begin to excel beyond your wildest dreams. There are many reasons why this method is so effective and others are not. Besides, any executive or manager can be coached to become highly proficient at these skills.
Best regards, Ben Simonton
Leadership is a science and so is engagement