Recognizing employees through awards is a powerful way to impact their workplace morale, engagement, and overall productivity. However, managing a successful employee awards program can be challenging, especially if your organization has multiple teams. The process isn’t just about rewarding employees but also about being thoughtful about the type of rewards you give them.
Hardworking, loyal, and ever-improving employees need to feel truly appreciated and that their efforts matter. You don’t have to spend a fortune choosing the best awards for each recipient. Thinking of creative ways to create unique recognition awards can save you costs and meet your employees’ expectations. Here are some of the most effective tips for creating unique awards your employees will forever cherish.
Personalize As Much As Possible
Employees will deeply appreciate a personalized award as opposed to receiving any other general non-definitive one. This is because impersonal awards are often seen as less thoughtful and are most likely to have the opposite impact on recipients. To avoid creating a negative impression with your recognition strategies, learn more about your employees and what motivates them.
Ask your employees directly via surveys or email what their preferences are some weeks before the recognition program. While asking, provide them with a list of reward options you already have in mind. This way, you can save a significant amount of money and time you would have used trying to figure it out yourself.
Another option is using the point-based reward system. This approach puts your employees in a rewards program where the management can award points as rewards to the best-performing employees. Employees can then redeem these points and purchase services or goods from brands available on the platform.
Publicly Recognize Award Recipients
While this is a common recognition tip, you can easily bypass this step. Besides helping the awardees feel appreciated and loved, public recognition also introduces them to colleagues who might not know them. This helps with efficient problem-solving within departments as employees struggling in that area can know who to approach for help.
Public recognition also doesn’t have to be limited to a one-day mention on the event’s day. You can get more creative by designing beautiful award certificates or glasses and placing them somewhere everyone can see them daily.
If you’re hosting a large companywide awards ceremony, you can invest in high-quality glass awards to give to well-performing employees. Employees can choose to retain and display these awards at their work desks or offices for continual remembrance.
Align the Program With Your Company’s Values and Goals
While the primary aim of an awards program is to reward employees for positively impacting the company, a successful program revolves around the business’s values and goals. Create a program highlighting how the awardees’ achievements contributed to realizing the company’s goals and values.
To successfully align the program with your company’s values and goals, you must clearly outline which core values and goals you’re targeting when rolling it out. The teams should understand the specific and measurable aspects of the program they must meet to be considered winners of the respective awards. This will help non-winners understand why award recipients received the awards and what their contribution to their teams and overall organization was.
Socialize the Employee Recognition Program
Socializing employee recognition programs can help market your business and improve your brand image. You can make each program social by asking employees to seek nominations through their personal social media accounts. Also, the program can be posted on the company’s social media accounts, and users can nominate their favorite employees.
Maintaining an active social engagement with users can attract more traffic and help improve traffic to your business website. You can share creative content, asking users to visit various pages on your site to learn a few things about your employees before nominating them. To compensate for their time and effort, consider including incentives like free delivery for their next purchase above a certain amount.
Recognize Efforts Alongside Wins
Everyone can’t be number one, but everyone can put some effort towards being one. When recognizing the best achievers in your company, it’s always fair and fulfilling to recognize those who show impressive efforts toward positive change. Recognizing the efforts of an employee who constantly drives themselves toward achieving a specific goal can boost their morale and help them do better next time.
If employees feel only success is rewarded, those who came close to achieving success but weren’t recognized might feel discouraged to put in the extra effort next time. Acknowledging and celebrating efforts is also a great way to show your employees you care about them beyond monetary gains.
Creating unique workplace recognition programs may sound simple, but actualizing them can prove challenging if you don’t plan efficiently. Careful planning streamlines the processes and improves the chances of your program’s success. Whether you’re struggling with personalizing the programs or have not recognized efforts as needed, these tips should guide you in improving. By following these tips, you can rest assured that your employees will create an excellent working culture, and your retention rates will rise.