3 Ways Leaders Can Better Recognize Their Employees’ Efforts

Business leader recognizing employee and celebrating with team

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Everyone likes to feel appreciated. If your fifth grade coach praised you for your performance during practice, you worked still harder at the next one. If your high school teacher told the class that your essay was one of the best they’d ever read, you basked in the glory.

But recognition and rewards aren’t just for kids. We never outgrow the satisfaction gained by getting noticed for all the right reasons. It makes us feel seen, appreciated and valued. At work, those intangibles are often better rewards than a paycheck, even if they don’t pay the bills.

There’s a whole new breed of workers out there, so not just any recognition will do. That prime parking spot for the employee of the month is OK. Performance-based pay raises are certainly appreciated, but they don’t move the needle. No matter what you’re doing now, you’re probably going to have to do better to keep team members engaged.

There’s never been a more crucial time to keep your people happy. Here are three ways you can excel at recognizing the best among them.

1. Spread the Wealth

Take inventory of what you’re recognizing employees for. Is it still just for milestones like workaversaries and lifetime sales? If so, consider broadening the scope of your efforts for formal and informal recognition. While you don’t want to make recognitions so ubiquitous they become mere participation trophies, there are great reasons for spreading the wealth to more employees.

According to AwardCo, the statistics behind employee recognition validate investing in a multifaceted program. A 400% increase in engagement and a 300% boost in loyalty among employees are compelling reasons for any company to put recognition to work for it. Motivation, productivity, engagement and job satisfaction all improve when your people feel valued.

The more employees you recognize, the more the numbers will work to your advantage. Plus, expanding recognition to reward qualities like mentoring, creative problem-solving, teamwork, dependability and customer service offers a lot more latitude. Even the positive attitude some employees bring to their jobs every day is worthy of recognition. When you do so, you might find it’s contagious.

2. Leverage the Digital Space

There will always be a place for traditional employee recognition, like posting the name and photo of the person with the highest quarterly sales in the lobby. Back when customers and employees used to actually enter the lobby, it was the perfect place for a shout-out. But if your customers are buying online and your people are working remotely, it doesn’t deliver the same punch. After all, what’s recognition if no one knows about it?

Think about all the ways your company has digitalized processes. There’s your project and chat software, website, virtual meeting platforms and social media accounts, to name a few. You use these tools all the time to communicate internally and externally. It makes sense to employ them as integral parts of your employee recognition efforts.

Instantly recognize employees the minute they deliver a project on time and on budget in internal messaging and on your social media platforms. Thank someone for a job well done where their colleagues and clients can see it. And if you think leveraging all the digital tools at your disposal sounds complicated and time-consuming, use employee recognition software to do the work for you. Digitization brings employee recognition into the here and now.

3. Make It Personal

The workplace has diversified in multiple ways, from where employees do their work to the kinds of people who are working. Your employee recognition program needs to recognize those differences as well. Although you might think recognizing an employee is inherently personal, there are ways you should be making it still more so.

Start with who’s doing the recognition. It shouldn’t just be coming from the C-suite or an employee’s direct support. Empowering peer recognition can create a company culture of excellence based on collegial respect and acknowledgment. Having the boss recognize you is great. Having those in the trenches with you do it is often far more satisfying.

Provide rewards for recognized employees that reflect the individual rather than the award category. Take into consideration individual interests, goals, family and culture, and provide rewards that reflect them. Extra PTO, museum memberships, tuition for online programs, tickets to events and gift cards to favorite restaurants will be significantly more appreciated than a one-size-fits-all reward.

You can even personalize paid holidays, as Apple has done. Rather than offer everyone extra time off at Christmas, say, allow Muslim employees to take their holiday leave around Eid-al-Fitr. It’s up to you to make the effort to get personal.

Recognize Better

In the age of quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays and productivity theater, employee recognition has never been more vital to a company’s success. If you’re still working your recognition efforts in the same old ways, you need to step up your program. Make it your goal to create acknowledgments that every employee will want to earn.