I'll admit it, it took me years to realize how important employee recognition and servant leadership really was to the success of a company.
It's simply not good enough to just say "thank you" in passing or to not provide an environment for learning and growth. Gone are the days of thinking that a good paying job is enough to keep employees.
Employee retention is one of the largest struggles I hear from clients over the past two years. So, how do you create an environment that is attractive to prospective employees and retain those that you have? What if I told you the secret is to reduce employee turnover to start with?
A study by CareerBuilder found that 50% of employees would stay if they were tangibly recognized. Another study revealed that 40% of employees who “do not feel meaningfully recognized will not go above their formal responsibilities to get the job done.”
So how do you show employee appreciation? Here are 13 tips to consider for your operations:
1 - Level Up Your Feedback Game!
I follow several mentors in various walks of life from Fortune 500 companies to those whose careers never left Oregon. Regardless of how large someone's career was, they all agree on one thing...That we do a major disservice to ourselves and our employees when we don't tell the truth about gaps. We get stuck in a rut of "Employee X is great, but they really can't do X well at all".
What if you gave this behavior a complete 180 and spoke directly to your employees about improvement? Explaining to them how their abilities and actions can directly affect the overall business goals and provide tactical ways that they can work on improving their abilities or behavior to align with those needs. Then reward them!
Connected employees who feel mentored, part of the big picture and whom can tangibly measure their successes are more likely to stick around. Even if the pay is bad, the quarter was tough, or they get offered a job closer to home with better hours.
If you are looking for a book for you or your team with real life examples, Radical Candor but Kim Scott is an easy read that will really get you thinking.
2 - Recognize Your Staff.
You're going to gain some insightful ways to recognize your staff from this blog post, but like any other business activity you need to outline your goals and create a plan to achieve them. By creating a plan, you are going to have an ongoing powerful strategy with outlined benchmarks that your team can easily recognize and achieve. They will see that you really have put cognitive thought into recognizing them long term. One off incentives are great, but I'm sure you can see how powerful the alternative could be.
Start by reading through this blog, make notes on ideas that stand out to you or provide incentive to your employees. Then, fine tune the strategy behind your employee appreciation needs.
3 - Celebrate Birthdays.
Some businesses really do this well already by offering a day off or sending flowers, but is that what your employees really want? A birthday is like another major milestone such as a work anniversary. For many of your employees, your recognition of this day might be their one and only. Take a minute after that, you felt how powerful that was didn't you.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard employees talk amongst each other about their personal plans for the evening of their birthday, would their spouse be taking them out to dinner, did they have a big weekend away planned, etc. In my experience over 50% of people did not have anyone to do anything with, they lacked the budget to go out or away, with COVID protocols they just didn't feel safe going out or it just wasn't fun. So, literally someone saying happy birthday to them at work was the only recognition this major milestone received? There is something wrong with that. Now, I know it's not an employers job to fix the employees personal lives, however, what if you could leverage the simple recognition of a special day to make a big impact in how they feel about YOU!
Consider thinking out of the box on this. Could you lump monthly birthdays together and bring in a food truck or have a dessert party with cakes and drinks? Is a change in their daily job a possibility? Meaning, could you give them a choice to shadow someone else or if they are cross trained "choose" what they want to do that day. You could offer them a significant credit to a company store to purchase a nice quality item they might not be able to afford otherwise...like Apple AirPods, a North Face warm Winter jacket, etc. Are they interested in sports? How about tickets to a football or basketball game or tickets to a concert?
4 - Publicize Your Celebrations.
Some, maybe not all of your employees like to be publicly recognized. For those that don't mind, share your appreciation of your staff's birthday, achievement, leadership skills, volunteer efforts, etc with signage or social media. Take a quick photo and talk about what this person did. Not only will this show your employees you recognize them, but will help show prospective employees what type of workplace culture you provide.
5 - Team Competitions.
Most people are competitive in some shape or form. I recall my days as a Sales Director, my team had hefty goals and that meant a lot of time pounding the pavement, working leads, cold-calling, etc. As you can imagine, this also meant I spent a lot of time nurturing my team, providing positive feedback and rewarding. However, some days just needed something beyond the norm to motivate the team. So, I would create competitions with them that aligned with our goals, but made the work a bit more fun.
Here is an example of one game we would play:
My team had aggressive KPI's in place to meet our goals. Like I mentioned this meant pounding the pavement, working the leads and cold-calls. Any sales manager will tell you cold-calls are the worst, everyone hates them, and very few are actually good at them. But...they MUST be done. So I would start our 6am day with my staff rolling in barely alive and immediately call a stand-up meeting. Here I explained that today we were going to do something different. I told them that the first person to get me 10 "no's" got lunch on me from their choice of restaurant, dine-in or take-out. Of course, they all looked at me like, really Sarah, like this is actually a challenge and off they ran to go collect me their no's.
Now here is the fun part about this particular game. When you are seeking a no, you typically get yes's because you have changed your mindset. So by creating a game, where my team would still perform the work that they would do regardless I have just pushed them to try to get me no's. So they relaxed in their approach, they had fun with their calls...and they got YES'S!!!!
In the end, they all lost and I bought them all lunch for their efforts. And, what I really loved was that if I were traveling and away from the office for a few weeks and they needed a pick me up. They would call me and ask if they could play this game and if I'd buy lunch.
The moral of this story is that competitions among teams in a variety of shapes and forms, be it calling for no's, customer reviews, how many customers can the front desk get to smile within an hour, how many weeks can we go without a safety infraction, etc. Competition in a safe environment can be healthy!
6 - Party all the time.
We already mentioned birthday parties as a way to show appreciation for individuals, but why not celebrate together, as a complete staff, on other special occasions? Holidays, meeting project or sales goals, Wednesdays, because it’s five o’clock somewhere— sometimes the celebration for a non-obvious reason is the most fun. And, in those cases, choose a day and a time when staff might be struggling to chug through the week or day.
7 - Don't Miss Anniversaries.
A huge study found that employees were likely to leave after a year of employment. Upcoming generations move around more in their careers. Because of this, don’t let the anniversary of an employee’s hire go unnoticed. Reward them for staying. Call attention to them, so other staff members can see you not only appreciate it, but back it up.
8 - Give rewards that are career-based.
I really have never had an employee that didn't want to expand their knowledge on a particular subject or grow their career. Career-based rewards are great for these employees, but also benefit the business as well. I've always said that I'm being a poor leader if I am one, afraid the employee could be better than me, or two, scared that if I train or further their career that they might leave me. Train and nurture every employee as if you are grooming them to leave you, because you are going to be very surprised how many don't!
You can send employees to leadership training or let them select an online class. LinkedIn provides access to several online career building courses that a company can purchase and share with their employees.
Create a tuition reimbursement program or work with a local community college to offer select courses online if you have a group of employees looking to learn in the same area. Allow the group to grow together.
9 - Host an Annual Office Site Day.
Reward your employees with an offsite business review day. Provide breakfast, snacks and lunch and then let them have the rest of the day off. Each employee gets a custom swag bag or a credit to the company store to pick out gear. Take the half day to review the company history, how did you get where you are now. If applicable, review high level goals and achievements, financial or otherwise depending on your type of business. Recognize individuals for outstanding efforts and recognize teams. Play a few games so staff across an organization can get to know each other on a deeper level.
10 - Recognize non-work achievements.
You have people on your staff who are doing incredible things. They are creating, volunteering, and doing all kinds of activities on their own time. Why not recognize them in front of the group? We all like to have people know more about us, but most of us don’t want to brag about ourselves. Do the bragging for your staff, and show your whole team how amazing everyone is.
11 - Make it easy to volunteer and help.
You want people who are civic minded, who care about others, on your staff. So, when you have staff so inclined, make it easy for them to help others. Whether you help them start a food drive at the office, bring kids to work to learn about the business, or take a week off to build houses, encourage them. Show them you appreciate their concern about the world around you.
Bonus? You can talk about what your business and your staff are doing and let your customers know that doing business with you has a positive impact on the community.
12. Keep taxes in mind.
Every employer knows that the tax law can get complicated when it comes to how you reward your staff, and what might be considered a taxable benefit. Talk to your accountant, and do some asking around to find a way to provide worthwhile benefits that don’t decimate employee paychecks. Regular catered meals and some other seemingly innocuous rewards can, indeed, be taxable.
13. Have great swag.
Whether it’s company apparel, water bottles, stickers, pocket notepads, or iPad covers, make cool company swag available for employees. The catch is that, if you’re going to do it, choose high quality items. Don’t go for the cheapest tent-like T-shirt brand you can find, but get a quality shirt with a quality fit. Choose a water bottle that fits the lifestyle of your staff. No one needs more cheap junk. Give swag that people would be proud to use for a long time.
Summary:
Employee appreciation shouldn’t be reserved for one day, but should be integral to your company culture and be an all-around attitude that management adopts. Your employees are your most precious asset, yet some businesses show more care and concern to maintaining equipment than letting their staff know that they are valued and appreciated!
Employee appreciation is yet another page in your turnover-reduction playbook, as well as a way to increase a positive culture and positive customer experience.