How to Show Employee Appreciation
Your employees will always value recognition and praise. Positive feedback builds morale, a team-first attitude, overall employee engagement, and improved productivity. All of these factors also can directly lead to increased profitability as well. On the flip side, employees who don’t feel seen or appreciated are more likely to leave the company, perform below standard, or perpetuate a negative work environment. So it is important to take time to show your employees some form of appreciation. Below is a guide with some helpful tips about how to show employee appreciation to your team.
Benefits of Employee Appreciation
In addition to the benefits mentioned above, employee appreciation can help your company with the following:
- Retain Top Talent: If you keep your employees happy and engaged, this will make them want to continue to work for you. If you neglect your employees and their happiness, you risk losing them. Pretty simple, right?
- Build a Positive Culture: When you cultivate happy employees, this will lead to more happy employees. Attitude around the office can spread and when you look to hire new employees, when they see how happy and engaged other employees are certain it will certainly make an impression.
- Create Collaboration: You can cultivate and create a collaborative environment when you have employees that really care about the job that they do. When you show your employees appreciation they will tend to be more engaged with the work.
- Increase Motivation: Employees that are appreciated are reminded of how they are important to the team, and are singled out for their contributions are more likely to show increased motivation in their work.
Employee Appreciation Examples
Create a system or program for employee appreciation that is repeatable. Put a specific member of your team in charge of all employee appreciation activities. There are a lot of different ways to implement employee appreciation, and you can even come up with your own plan by obtaining feedback from employees. Here are some examples of successful employee appreciation strategies.
- Implement Recognition Programs: A recognition program is a simple way for you as the employer to express some form of gratitude and thanks for certain employees. This can be completely structured or unstructured, but the awards should be distributed at a set cadence, and they should be publicly announced to the company. This can be as simple as an employee of the month award, or as complex as multiple awards given for very specific reasons.
- Celebrate Milestones and Events: It is important to celebrate the birthdays and work anniversaries of your employees. This will make them feel special and noticed, and are also the perfect opportunity to show appreciation for everything they do. Implement a corporate gift program to celebrate your team on each of their milestones. While you may choose to send out a huge announcement to the whole company, you should also remember to do something personal for each employee on these days. Another simple idea to consider is sending a virtual birthday card.
- Make time for fun. Plan spirit events or team-building activities where every team member is encouraged to join to socialize with colleagues and make some great memories.
- Offer Leadership Opportunities: Everyone wants to improve and move forward in their job, so it is important to offer ways for your employees to feel that they are valued. If you can turn good employees into great leaders this can help you retain these top-performing employees. You should make goals for your employees transparent so it is clear how to obtain these leadership opportunities. You can promote monthly or quarterly meetings to go over goals and career development.
- Provide Professional Training and Development: To help your employees feel like they can advance in their career, provide professional training. Provide this as a work benefit where the company hosts a training or provides compensation for training. Show employees that you are prepared to invest in them and their growth.
- Allow Remote Work: Employees appreciate flexibility when it comes to work hours. The flexibility that remote work grants your employees can help keep them happy and in good spirits. Remote work for employees has many benefits for your employees. Most notably, it cuts down on travel time, which in turn means more family time. Remote work can also improve productivity as employees are more likely to continue working to finish out a project if they are already home and don’t have to drive home in traffic after work is done.
Tips to Improve Employee Appreciation at Work
Ready to implement an employee appreciation program (or two)? Here are a few of the logistics you may need to consider before you launch:
- Do a practice run of anything you plan to execute.
- Plan ahead, put a member of the team in charge, or set reminders to make sure you don’t forget about your appreciation program. Consistency is key.
- Consider how you’ll announce the new employee appreciation program and how you’ll communicate about it moving forward.
- Put a plan in place to solicit feedback about the new program and make adjustments as needed.
Employee appreciation is such a simple concept, but has a significant impact on company culture. One final tip: Think about what kind of praise, recognition, or benefits you would appreciate yourself, and use that as your guidepost as you begin to implement.
Love this article?Find vendors
