Dos and Don’ts of Employee Award Programs

While recognizing and rewarding employees has always been a beneficial activity to engage in, it’s even more vital these days. Across America and internationally, many businesses face a critical level of staff shortages and have trouble finding suitable and willing workers and retaining staff members.

If you haven’t been proactive about creating an awards program in your business and handing out plaques, trophies, or other awards to deserving team members, now may be the perfect time to start one. Read on for some dos and don’ts to help you.

Do: Know What You’re Trying to Achieve

Before designing your program, you must know what you’re trying to achieve from creating it. When you know your goals for the project you set up, you can make the best possible decisions at every step. You’ll be looking at building your award program to help boost the morale and productivity of your employees, but you may have other ideas in mind, too. For example, if you have long-term team members who seem a bit flat, handing out awards can help reinvigorate them.

Or, you may want to create healthy competition between different teams or office or store locations, get sales lifting by announcing incentive programs that have awards tied in, or use the award program as a more effective team-building opportunity than some other ineffective activities. There’s no right or wrong here; it simply comes down to what you’re trying to achieve and thinking about this as you design your programs.

Do: Spend Time Planning and Putting Guidelines in Place

To ensure what you come up with is as effective as possible, give yourself plenty of planning time. There are numerous aspects to designing awards, so don’t rush the process and regret doing so later. Take your time deciding on award categories, how often you’ll hand them out, if you’ll have different types of awards at different times of the year or for various departments in your organization, and so on.

Also, put some guidelines in place around your award programs. Devise structure around how the program will run, the rules of the awards, and any other relevant parameters. You can then convey this information to other managers, department leaders, and your employees, so everyone knows what’s what. Such guidelines need to be open and transparent, so workers don’t have any reason to think that favoritism is going on or any other inconsistencies.

As you develop guidelines, keep in mind that peer-voted awards have pros and cons. It’s nice to get all a team involved in choosing recipients, for example, but you do need to be careful that the same people don’t always win or that it doesn’t just become a popularity contest. There should be specific criteria involved, and you should also ensure that everyone has a fair chance of being recognized at some stage. Make it possible for remote staff and new employees, for example, to be awarded as well as long-term and on-site staff members and people who work casual, part-time, and full-time.

Don’t: Hand Out Cheap and Nasty Awards

A key “don’t” regarding employee award programs is not buying or making cheap and nasty physical awards to hand out to people. Sometimes it can be fun to create joke-type statues if you’re doing a round of silly, fun-based awards on top of normal ones (such as the employee who brings the best lunches to work), but in general, keep things classy and value-driven.

People won’t feel respected or truly rewarded if you don’t give them a quality award to hold onto, which they can feel proud to have received. Check out Workhuman’s website or content from other HR specialists on award ideas for best results, no matter the industry.

Another tip is to personalize award offerings where possible. You might invest in a range of trophies or plaques, etc., to hand out to award winners, but you should get these engraved with the names of those you acknowledge. Plus, if you’re giving out a reward, it pays to personalize gifts or perks to the recipient. You could give a case of top-notch wine to a wine lover or a weekend getaway voucher to someone you know loves traveling and seeing new places. This shows staff members you listen to what they say, know who they are and what’s important to them, and don’t just see them as another cog in the machine.

Other employee award tips include focusing on efforts, not just results when deciding who will get awards and making ceremonies public in front of all the team so people can get cheered on. Also, don’t forget to ask your employees for feedback on reward programs over time so you can make adjustments as needed to make the awards more impactful.

Follow all these steps, and you’ll soon be on your way to boosting engagement significantly in your team and seeing other great business results in turn.