An effective employee recognition program can improve job satisfaction, and personalizing the rewards goes even further when it comes to motivating employees.
Personalization Example
Last year, I worked with a customer to develop a rewards/recognition program, and we actually ended up using both formal and informal aspects to create the program.
The first program they put in place was to celebrate birthdays once a month. They served cake and fruit for those who didn’t want cake. By doing this, we were able to accommodate everyone. The company implemented this program at all its locations, and all of the employees were very excited about it because it got everybody together for a celebration, rather than just for a meeting.
The second phase included the presentation of service awards based on tenure—1 year of employment, 5 years and 10 years. Employees were recognized by their manager in front of their peers during a monthly meeting, and the employee was allowed to choose a gift from a catalog prepared by a performance-based awards company (there are lots of those out there!).
Another option for rewards is allowing employees to choose an item from your company store (or if you don’t have a company store, any items with your company logo will work).
The third leg of this plan included the spontaneous presentation of on-the-spot awards. These went to employees who went above-and-beyond in providing outstanding customer service to the company’s clients or helping a co-worker be successful in a challenging situation.
For example, one of the company’s clients had a WebEx project that had to be rolled out, and it actually ended up taking three employees to roll it out instead of one. Since the project ended up being more complicated than initially expected, the employee assigned to the task solicited their co-workers to help them. The two employees who jumped in to help had some knowledge that the first employee didn’t have, so it made the roll-out process a lot easier. For their assistance, these employees were given on-the-spot awards.
All of these programs, actually, have proven to be successful at this company based on a recent satisfaction survey they conducted.
So it’s important to remember that even small recognition programs have remarkable power when they’re done correctly. If awards and recognition are presented with the right message and style, an employee will feel appreciated and, at the same time, you’ll be reinforcing their value at your company.
If you’re interested in learning more about employee recognition programs, I highly suggest you pick up the book, 101 Recognition Secrets—Tools for motivating and recognizing today’s workforce,” by Rosalind Jeffries. It’s a short, pocket-size guidebook that has some excellent suggestions for a variety of rewards that can be used to recognize employees.