As an owner or manager, you probably intuitively know that rewarding your employees with recognition can help motivate them to continue to achieve at a high level of performance. Thereare many articles that talk about how to do this formally over the course of the year, but talking about mastering the art of providing meaningful recognition during the course of the workday is something that is a road less traveled at this point.
Below are seven ways that you can incorporate employee recognition into your daily routine:
- Morning Meetings: Depending on your title, meeting with employees each morning briefly can give you a very good feel for the pulse of your business. In most cases, employees provide updates and listen to the latest news from management. If you can add recognition of individual employees to this type of meeting, it can help to motivate them and make you look good for being on top of what it is that they set out to accomplish each day.
- Incentivise Them To Perform: Currently, one of the most popular employee recognition ideas is to use your expense account to buy songs or movie tickets digitally. You can then hand them out electronically to individuals as your project or campaign progresses. The nice thing about this strategy is that if you want to send a note privately, you can. You can also let everyone know at the same time.
- Group E-mail: Some managers communicate daily using e-mail to provide updates on meeting team goals (an important part of internal communication). Adding encouragement to individuals based on their performance from metrics and customer feedback is an efficient way of letting your entire group know who is doing solid work for the company.
- Bring Treats To A Business Meeting: Many companies have pizza or sandwiches at lunchtime meetings. If your team or individuals have done a good job recently, adding a cake and sharing it with everyone while ensuring that people know that it is because of someone’s performance should keep everyone happy and provide positive feedback.
- Use An Icon To Show That Someone Is Performing: At Atari Corporation, many decades ago, they used to pass around a large stuffed Chucky Cheese doll and put it into different offices for fun. If you extend that to your employees, taking a stuffed animal or some emblem that has meaning for your company and placing it near an employee who deserves recognition should let everyone know that they are doing a good job.
- Create A Reward System: If you want your employees to have a predictable reward that they can count on when they perform, making a reward system that has points and tangible rewards tied to those points typically leads to enhanced performance if the reward system is managed equitably. It’s important that your rewards system promotes healthy employee engagement and motivation since they directly impact each other. For instance, Carina Wytiaz, professional writer and Internet marketer explains, “You’ve hired the best people for the job, so how do you get them to buy in to your mission and produce great work? Engage them and then recognize them. Employees need to understand where they fit and why they’re important.” Reward systems, when done right, should give meaning to the work, which helps boost employee engagement.
- Impromptu Bonus: As employee recognition ideas go, this one serves to provide strong incentive to an individual employee, but may need to be kept somewhat quiet depending upon how competitive the group is. This is also often the province of upper management. Normally, when it comes to their attention that an employee is going above and beyond what they need to do to help the company and perhaps losing some of their personal life in the process, they may choose to reward them by providing extra vacation days or a cash bonus.
Overall, employee recognition ideas used in your daily routine can help your employees to continue to perform at a high level over an extended period of time. Finding ways to do so that show that you are aware of their contribution without committing too much of your own time most often prove to be a winning combination.
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