Employees need to feel valued and appreciated. When employees give their lives to an organization, they feel part of a team and family. They spend more time with their work team than perhaps many other relationships in their lives.
Recognizing the contributions employees make to an organization helps solidify these relationships and fosters employee loyalty to the organization.
Not every social style needs public recognition but even the most introverted person appreciates recognition for a job well done. It always amazes me when I acknowledge someone’s good performance or recognize something they have done at how they get noticeably excited about the feedback. We are all creatures that have a basic need to feel valued and loved. This is why incorporating employee recognition into an organization’s business process is so important.
There are two types of recognition
Informal Recognition
Spontaneous recognition is also important. The closer recognition comes to a task, the more the employee will associate that recognition to the desired behavior. These kinds of recognition can be as simple as walking by an employee, observing a desired behavior and commenting on how much you appreciate it. These informal moments are invaluable and provide a lot of important fuel for an employee’s desire to do a good job.
Formal Recognition
Part of the challenge of recognizing employees is making it a priority, stopping to think about it and doing it on a regular basis. Creating a structure for formal employee recognition is important and can help ensure employees get recognized despite the inevitable challenges of day-to-day responsibilities. This can be as simple as making a certain month of the year a month that employee contributions are recognized or as formal as an employee of the month program or employee of the year celebrations.
So what are some things that can be done to recognize employees?
Identify what is important to the employee
When doing employee recognition, it is important to find out what is important to the employee. It’s amazing how we think we know what would be really cool for someone else and then come to find out it is not as important as we thought. Some employees may value a day off with family or a preferred parking space. Others may value a dinner gift certificate, a home improvement store gift or a mall gift certificate. The ideas are endless but the key is to find out what is important to that employee and targeting a recognition gift that would be important to them.
Ways to recognize employees
Use public forums at staff meetings, annual dinners, organization newsletters, having a plaque on a wall, perhaps surprising them at lunch or at their car at the end of the day. Perhaps a poster in the lobby or a spot on the company website.
Get creative!
Be creative with ideas
The ideas are endless and so is the potential creativity. Use your creativity and draw on the ideas of those who know the employee best. There are organizations that “sell” employee recognition gifts. The gifts are all over the map but can be customized and are at varying price levels for budgeting purposes. The beauty of these programs is the employee can pick out the gift they want!
Despite the model you come up with, if you tell your employees what is expected of them, give them the resources to do it and recognize a job well done, you will be well on your way to providing a great working environment for your staff.
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