What do you think of when you hear the words “employee awards?” Chances are, every person who hears these words thinks of something different and creates their own picture of the perfect employee award. But choosing an award is easy!
Ask yourself these questions:
Without customers, business doesn’t exist. Without your customers, your business doesn’t exist.
Finding, maintaining, and cultivating a customer relationship is a lot like planting a tree. You plant a seed, and it starts out small. Slowly over time, it will grow into a lovely tree that provides shade.
Nourishing the seed so that it can grow takes work. It takes dedication, attention, and lots of time. Just like cultivating a quality customer relationship. These folks are not run-of-the-mill. They are your A+, platinum-level, gold-plated customers.
When was the last time you reminded your top customers that you exist? When was the last time you said: “thank you”?
As a business leader, you’re busy. You have a million things to do, but you also need to recognize your employees for their hard work. So what occasions can you recognize in an instant?
Keep in mind that staff appreciation doesn’t have to be complicated or formal. Have fun with it! Here are nine occasions that you can recognize:
In my previous posts, I’ve shared a treasure trove of secrets that the experts won’t tell you, and I have one last one for you. You’re building this recognition culture at your company because you want your employees to be engaged, right? An engaged employee is a happy employee, and a happy employee makes your business run smoothly.
Engagement experts and researchers know that having engagement and recognition opportunities at work will help companies provide better service and make more money. They know this because it is common sense. But sometimes business owners need more than common sense alone to believe it. So the experts have linked statistics to engagement in order to give it a return on investment.
Lots of time. Great managers. No popularity contests. These are secrets I’ve already busted open for you. But as you’re finding out, those aren’t the only secrets the experts don’t talk about. There’s more.
I found out the hard way that a lack of prestige can ruin your recognition program. If your employees don’t see and feel the benefits of becoming an award winner, your program is a big waste.
At Crystal D, our most prestigious recognition program is our Value Champions. This is a multi-faceted peer-to-peer program where our employees nominate each other for exemplifying a company value. One winner for each value is honored on WOW Day and given an award. They hold the title of Value Champion for the next twelve months until the next WOW Day.
I believed it was a program that employees would want to strive to be a part of. But I learned that not everyone saw the prestige of being an award winner as a motivator for being part of the program. One of our most committed employees refused to participate.
The dark side of recognition continues with this next secret, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Time and managers make or break your culture-building, but they aren’t the only thing that makes your culture-building process stop. The experts don’t talk about popularity contests. Your employees are nominating their coworkers, but are they nominating for the right reasons? You need to vet your nominations and take away any personal bias so all employees have a fair shot at winning an award.
The reality of leading an organization into becoming a “being” of its own is damn hard work. It takes a lot of money, time, effort, and even more commitment. The test of time is the biggest test that your program faces. It sounds like no big deal, but time can make your program a success or a failure.
This is one of the things experts like Dr. Bob Nelson, Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton, Gallup, Recognition Professionals International, and so on won’t tell you. It’s taken time and hard work for Crystal D to get where we are today with our recognition programs. I follow these experts and have learned a lot from them. What they have to say is important, and you need to listen to them.
But they don’t like to talk about the dark side because it’s not pretty and can be very discouraging. And time is part of that dark side.
Have you ever eaten a chocolate trifle?
It is perhaps the most tantalizing dessert on the face of the Earth. A tall, wide bowl holds layer upon layer of deliciousness. My wife makes a chocolate trifle that is layered from bottom to top like this:
After my first meeting with my company where I introduced all of that new company information, eyeballs rolled and people loudly sighed. This was a very discouraging start. I felt as though the negative reactions had a personal undertone directed at me, so it stung quite a bit.
I asked Smartie-Pants about it, and he said, “You should expect some skepticism and some doubt and beware that some people won’t want to embrace the ideas you have for the future. Some of the skeptics are people who don’t belong on the bus, but they will eventually realize that this culture stuff is here to stay. Those people will leave. The ones who stay but resist are testing you to see how you will handle their doubt. This is your chance to show them you are serious and committed. As a result, these folks will eventually come around.”
Our first WOW Day was a success, considering we were newbies when it came to practicing recognition. I wanted to give recognition to our employees, and I wanted the day to be uplifting. We honored a number of employees who all deserved their moment in the spotlight. I shared how our company is doing. All of this combined, I believe that I accomplished everything I set out to do with our first employee recognition event.