“Recognition is an important psychological need. Employees who know that they will receive recognition for acting on the brand promise will have a strong incentive to do so. (Gallup, 2013 State of the American Workplace).”
Whether you’re a small business with 10 or 100 employees there are effective ways to practice employee recognition that can be scaled to fit your company.
Recognizing anniversaries and birthdays is a great and easy way to make employees happy. Get a birthday card for co-workers to sign, take 30 minutes to sing happy birthday and hand out cake, or give a social media shout out on your Facebook page.
Employees have good ideas, but sometimes they won’t share them unless you ask. Including them in the planning stage of a new project they will be a part of will make them feel respected and give them a boost of confidence. They will also be more inclined to put extra effort into the project because they have part-ownership of it.
We all appreciate a compliment, and it’s nice to be recognized in front of our peers. Verbal recognition can be motivating and create a sense of pride in employees. They in turn will be more respected among their co-workers and respect their managers more too.
If you’re a large company this is obviously impossible for you to do with each and every employee, but you can do it with the management or admin team on a weekly or monthly basis, and then create a trickle down affect so they will do it for their departments and employees they manage. If you’re a small business of 10 or fewer employees you could easily be intentional about doing this. In either case, it’s a way to get to know employees, ask them how things are going, and evaluate them. They will be thrilled that you care.
Small acts of recognition like gift cards, a new notebook, or a team lunch out after a major project completion are just other ways of showing your employees you acknowledge their hard work and are appreciative of their personal contribution.
Investing in professional development will help employees feel valued because you are showing faith in their ability to learn and grow, as well as belief in the productivity of your company. They will hopefully then be ready to implement their new skills.
People like to be recognized, but they might speak a different language of appreciation then you do. Some may like it more than others. Some may like it public, some may like it done privately. Check out the book “The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace” by Gary Chapman and Paul White to learn more.
The 7 ideas for employee recognition above can help increase productivity because they are causing people to look forward to coming to work at your small business, and help make your company culture an overall happy place to be.
Having a Job You Enjoy is Important, Even to an 83 Year Old Man