Creative Ideas for Employee Recognition

What really makes a company tick? Most of the answers you would get to that question are: ‘it’s mission and vision’, ‘the idea it was built around’, “the CEO”, “the funding it manages to source” and so on and so forth.

While all of these factors are vital to a business’ success, something that we always tend to overlook is an organization’s workforce. Your people are who make your business run, whether you want to remain in denial or not. Most Human Resource teams start freaking out when they find those resignation emails flooding their inboxes and are left wondering what really went wrong. Well, more often than not employees tend to hand in those resignations purely due to the lack of recognition and appreciation that they receive. After putting in those arduous hours of work, the least your employees expect is a kind ‘thank you’ at the end of the day. If you’ve ever felt like nobody would even notice if you just didn’t show up to work, you know what I mean.

Reasons for employee recognition

Who doesn’t love being noticed and appreciated? Everyone does, but only a few express it. A simple round of applause at a team meeting or an occasional “Good job!” can sometimes make all the difference.

When it comes to your constant performers who are putting in that work day-in, day-out though, you know you need to up your game! If you’re wondering about some reasons to give employees awards, here is an entire paragraph for you:

Not only does appreciating your employees serve as a morale and motivation booster but it also helps set your performance standards for your team. You can use recognition as a brilliant platform to highlight your corporate company values (making a great impression, especially on your new hires), while in turn also ensuring that your company goals are achieved. Honestly, your employees (at least the ones you want) will only stay if they feel that they are appreciated by their team leaders and top management. Now awards don’t always have to offer monetary compensation, something like just celebrating a loyal employee’s milestone (read, work anniversary) with a company branded souvenir can generate real sentimental value.

Occasions to award your employees

There’s really no need to brainstorm about this, you can find occasions anywhere you look. Whether you decide to start right off the bat by recognising new joinees on their first day of work or wait to celebrate those annual work anniversaries of your most loyal team members, the possible instances to turn your employees awards ideas into reality are endless.

Then come your top performers, every company has them and needs them to stay on top of their respective games consistently, thus rewarding every substantial achievement of theirs is vital.

For your employees, recognition for the little things, like the initiative they took to lead their respective teams or maybe that time they pitched an outside-the-box idea, every gesture matters. Be sure to remember to include you multi-taskers, every company has them and won’t be able to smoothly function without their jack-of-all-trade capabilities. Awards for demonstrating proficiency and versatility are some examples you can choose from.

Themes, types of awards

Let’s get down to really zeroing in on those themes, for your employee awards and recognition ideas. Now there are generally three main categories you can base your types of employee awards around:

• Performance based awards

These kinds of awards are the most quantifiable and will generate the least mutterings against the winners. Titles like ‘Employee of the Month’, ‘Our Top Achiever’, ‘MVP of the Year’ are just a few you can consider. Don’t be afraid to get creative and make up some titles that are more relevant to your company though!

• Behavioural and value awards

Now, performance is not of course the only parameter you should hold most valuable. Work ethic, punctuality and honesty are virtues that may not bring you immediate monetary value, but having model employees around, lifts up those professional standards for sure. A few titles that come to mind are; ‘The Trendsetter’, ‘Best Attendance Award’, ‘Our Game Changer’ to name a few. Just being labelled with one of these titles at the office will make your winning employee walk into the office everyday with their heads held high.

• Service and loyalty awards

Pretty self-explanatory awards category that includes titles like ‘Our Marathon Man’, ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, ‘Most Determined of the Lot’. The employees to be rewarded here are quite literally the cornerstones of your organization. They have most probably stuck with the company through thick and thin, despite other available prospects. Recognizing these individuals, really amplifies the fact that you as a company, value loyalty and unwavering dedication, setting an example for future hires. 

Creating the criteria for employees awards

To begin with, it is of utmost importance to define the benchmarks or standards you will adhere to, while picking your nominees. Make sure to decide on a criteria for employees awards, to make it crystal clear as to what it is actually being handed out for. Setting a scale to gauge an individual with respect to factors like leadership qualities, consistency in top performance, excellence in working as a team, length of service, extraordinary milestones achieved, is vital for determining what to base your awards on and how to select eligible nominees.

Make sure that your selection process across all those recognition awards ideas for employees you may have, stays fair and offers each nominee an equal chance of winning. When it comes to picking your nominees, you could consider using a company-wide voting contest or set up an award’s committee which would include senior management to cast their deciding votes.

Ideas for the best creative awards for employees

Now, just in case you have some really creative minds in your awards committee, don’t shy away from going down a non-conventional path. Even if you have a real joker in your team, who wants to come up with ideas for funny awards for employees, why not give them a chance. The more uniquely creative your awards for employees’ ideas and award titles are, the more attention each category will draw, making even more employees believe that they deserved the award that they specifically worked towards and won.

We have compiled a few creative examples and ideas for awards for employees. Go right on ahead and read through:

• Some for your new joinees

‘The new rookie rockstar’, ‘Welcome to our world’, ‘You are now initiated’

• Some for your sales team

‘Our shooting star’, ‘Chief closing officer’, ‘Target sharpshooter’

• Some for your customer service team

‘Customer comforter’, ‘Chief resolution officer’, ‘Make your day award’

• Some for your health and safety team

‘Captain cautious’, ‘Always got your back award’, ‘Eternal guardian award’.

• Some for your soon-to-be retirees

‘Going out in style award’, ‘Legends are never forgotten’, ‘A legacy to last the ages’

Some other ideas for employee recognition

This will be hard to digest, but not everyone seeks monetary rewards. You can laugh if you want to, but there is definitely a deeper sense of satisfaction through pure, genuine appreciation. To paint you a picture, something as simple as putting up a ‘Wall of Fame’ featuring your top performers not only offers recognition, but also motivates everyone else to want to get up on that wall (two birds with one stone, if you ask me). Social media shout-outs, casual fridays, free lunch vouchers, certificates of achievement, a VIP parking spot (if you have it), written notes of appreciation from colleagues and even maybe from the top boss can all go a long way in lifting those spirits.

Companies today are also offering educational scholarships to their employees who want to pursue higher education, which works both as an investment from the organization’s perspective and also instills a higher sense of loyalty towards the company in the same employees.

Tips for you

We’ve put together a few simple tips, we believe could definitely help you down the ‘Employer of the Year’ path:

• Set your recognition standards objectively

That’s not just a mouthful of words, it means that all the rules for all kinds of employee recognition must be impartial. Don’t pick Joe from Marketing as your winner just because he wishes you a ‘Good Morning’ everyday. There are many more unsung heroes all around you who are working tirelessly for their company and have some real, quantifiable achievements.

• Define your recognition criteria clearly

Your employees need to specifically understand what you are exactly rewarding them for. Keep the award criteria too vague and neither will you get the performance boost you are looking for, nor will they end up winning anything.

• Make all your recognitions fair

If you have to, set up an unbiased awards / recognition committee to do all the judging, but make sure that each and everyone stands an equal chance of winning. Also, remember to offer recognition considering the scale of achievement, nobody expects a Ferrari for their 100% work attendance record.

• Offer recognition quickly

Real recognition is only felt when an employee is immediately rewarded after their achievement, so don’t always wait for that quarterly and half-yearly awards show to come along.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, employee recognition not only ensures a positive work environment, but it also improves that (sometimes rocky) employer-employee relationship. Happy employees of course translates to more productivity and eventually even more company profitability. Set the right office tone with employee recognition and you might never have to worry about recruiting again!