Ideas for Employee Recognition, Awards and Gifts

Organizations understand the value of giving recognition for excellent work. Employee recognition has significant benefits for organizational culture and productivity. Leaders know this, and 67% provide recognition to team members at least once a week. It can change the work experience for your team, but 40% of employees report receiving recognition only a few times a year.

Employee recognition programs can close the gap, boosting retention and engagement and promoting diversity. Understanding how to approach strategic recognition is the first step to creating a positive employee experience aligned with your organization’s values.

Types of Employee Recognition

When crafting an employee recognition strategy, you can choose from many types of recognition and finalize a strategy that fits your goals and values. Recognition falls under two categories:

Formal Recognition

You can structure employee recognition with a formal program for your organization. This approach has significant benefits, including managing bias and timing, and ensuring you reward all team members for accomplishing the same goals. In a formal recognition structure, you can organize employee rewards into several categories:

• Awards and certificates: Once you determine which behaviors and achievements you want to reward, such as employee recognition gifts for years of service, you can choose the awards themselves. Consider plaques, trophies and unique gifts to mark your predetermined milestones.
• Performance bonuses: Performance-based bonuses are another excellent way to motivate your team to accomplish specific goals, like completing a certain level of training or making a specific number of sales calls. Opt for cash bonuses or gifts depending on your company structure and values.
• Promotion opportunities: Outlining the steps employees must take to receive a promotion — and rewarding them — is a fantastic method of keeping your team motivated and focused on learning new skills. Promoting an employee has tangible and intangible benefits, from increased pay to boosted confidence and motivation.

Informal Recognition

Informal recognition is spontaneous and discretionary, based around emphasizing good behaviors in the moment. This type of recognition comes in several forms, from a day off to training opportunities to impromptu team lunches. Some informal recognition options include:

• Verbal praise and appreciation: Thanking someone in person or drawing attention to their hard work may seem simple, but it’s a compelling motivator.
• Thank you notes and emails: A handwritten note can mean a lot to employees, showing you’ve taken the time to acknowledge them personally. It’s also encouraging to open an email and see a note of thanks.
• Team celebrations: Celebrating gives your team something to look forward to, or can surprise them after a particularly challenging project. You can organize team celebrations with promotional gifts or bring coffee and muffins to a meeting.

The Benefits of Employee Recognition

Employee recognition is a powerful practice that can even outrank pay benefits for employees — 79% would rather stay in a job where they feel valued, even if it means making less money. Employee recognition can:

Improve Morale

People are 82% happier when they’re recognized for great work. They’re more likely to seek that recognition again, finding ways to work smarter and faster. A simple act of acknowledgment can drive your team to new levels of excellence, encouraging them to give their best, even on bad days.

Elevate Engagement

Engagement at work is essential for optimal employee performance. Recognizing the value your team brings makes them feel they’re contributing to the bigger picture. Your team must feel their work matters to avoid disengaging and becoming apathetic.

Recognizing your team makes them more engaged in their work. They continue to give their best because they can identify where their efforts make a difference. You’ll see the results of their enthusiasm in your business, and the overall work environment changes as your team strives for excellence.

Increase Retention

Organizations prioritizing recognition have a team that’s 56% less likely to look for new jobs. Retaining employees is better for team morale than hiring new ones. It can cost up to $10,000 to replace an employee, which is why so many businesses work hard to keep their existing workforce.

Lack of appreciation is among the top reasons employees leave a job. Taking a small amount of time and effort to recognize your team can boost employee retention in the long term.

Boost Productivity

When people know their work matters, they make extra an effort. They’re also more likely to repeat a behavior when it results in a positive outcome. Showing your appreciation is beneficial for your team and the entire company. As many as 80% of employees say they work harder when their boss recognizes the work.

Well-planned recognition also gives employees the confidence to grow their skills and elevate their careers, adding more value to your organization.

Enhance Company Culture

A strong workplace culture drives engagement and attracts talented new hires. Recognizing one person has a ripple effect on the team and your whole organization. Whether it’s a straightforward “thank you” or a gift, showing your team their work is important can transform your culture into one that celebrates success.

Strategies for Effective Employee Recognition

Strategic employee recognition goes beyond celebrating achievements. Recognition also affects the people who see it, improving employees’ perceived organizational justice and creating a sense of workplace well-being. Celebrating someone’s achievements engages others in their work, facilitating growth and development.

A solid recognition strategy can help you create a culture of recognition, leading to happy and engaged team members who clearly understand their roles. Consider these steps to formulate an effective employee recognition strategy in your organization.

1. Establish Clear Recognition Criteria

Recognition is meaningful when linked to a specific accomplishment. When people know what you recognize them for and can connect the reward to a specific behavior, they’re more likely to repeat the action.

What behaviors and attitudes are essential to you? Which goals should your team prioritize? Once you know which behaviors are most important, move on to how often you want to reward them and what gifts to choose. Create clear, attainable criteria that relate to the desired performance so that management and employees understand why people receive recognition and ensure no one is excluded.

2. Consider Personalization and Timelines

Recognition is powerful if it’s personalized. For example, if you plan on giving gifts to employees as part of your recognition strategy, getting to know their personal preferences will make their gifts that much more meaningful, like choosing a travel-related gift for someone who loves to travel.

Timing is critical for recognition to be significant. Receiving recognition promptly is more meaningful than waiting weeks or months. The longer it takes to praise employees, the less likely they are to see the appreciation as authentic. Ensure your recognition strategy accounts for timing.

3. Prioritize Inclusivity and Diversity

Fostering a sense of belonging through recognition involves a diverse range of people, both giving and receiving. It’s important to create a level playing field by allowing everyone to participate and ensuring that all employees have the opportunity to give and receive praise. As part of an inclusive workplace culture, make sure that recognition criteria focus on rewarding people fairly for exceptional work.

4. Encourage Continuous Feedback and Communication

Feedback and communication are essential to keep improving and growing your employee recognition program. Consider scheduling frequent check-ins or one-on-one meetings with team members to discuss their goals and preferred ways to be recognized. Some individuals may respond best to words of affirmation, while others enjoy receiving gifts for a job well done. Tailoring your recognition efforts to each unique team member based on their feedback will show you truly care.

5. Leverage Technology

Managing all the goals and criteria in your recognition program is much less challenging when you use technology. You can automate many elements of the recognition process, from nominations to awards. Streamlining reminders encourages management to seek recognition opportunities, promote fun online competitions or create a centralized hub where your team can recognize one another.

Technology can also help you collect and analyze data about recognition patterns to identify improvement opportunities, eliminate bias and focus on the areas that work.

How to Implement an Employee Recognition Program

Once you have a strategy, you can start implementing your recognition program. While each program differs depending on your goals, values and budget, start with the following steps.

1. Design and Plan Your Recognition Program

Design your program to align with your overarching recognition strategy. In the early stages, try to keep your program design flexible so you can make changes as you learn what works and what doesn’t. To achieve maximum impact, recognition should be:

• Visible: Sharing achievements throughout your company magnifies your program’s impact and facilitates collaboration. It also provides concrete examples of accomplishments that resonate within your organization for others to repeat.
• Open to anyone: You can foster a sense of equity and belonging by allowing everyone to recognize their peers.
• Interactive: If a peer receives recognition, encourage everyone to congratulate them to magnify the effects and support a positive company culture.
• Specific: Your team should always know precisely why you’re recognizing them. Praise should be accompanied by detailed feedback to ensure you come across as appreciative and sincere.
• Values-based: When recognition ties back to your company’s core values, you boost them every time you celebrate an achievement.

Consider what you want your recognition program to achieve. Often, businesses want to boost engagement and productivity, or build a positive culture. Once you identify your end goals, determine what constitutes success and develop recognition methods that align with your company’s mission and values.

Your recognition program should engage employees and encourage them to grow your organization’s culture and uphold its values. Ensure you include an analytics component in the planning phase — managers need metrics to evaluate participation and engagement, and you need data to understand how the initiative is performing.

2. Allocate a Budget

List all of the requirements to bring your program design to life and allocate a budget. You may want to invest in recognition software, buy gifts for employees or give monetary rewards. Ensure your gifting program provides a positive return on investment by keeping your expenses manageable. You can always scale your program as your business expands.

3. Communicate

As you plan to announce your new program, prioritize communication and being transparent with team members about what they can expect. Remain genuine and upfront in your messaging, and invite employees to share ideas and feedback.

To ensure complete transparency, review all of the recognition options and give your team a say in the program’s operations and what forms of recognition you implement. Collaboration creates a sense of ownership and shows your team you value their input.

4. Launch Your New Program

Be clear on when and how you plan to launch your new program. Aim for seamless integration and eliminate as much friction as possible, even if that means changing the launch date. When you launch, you want everyone to focus on enjoying what you’ve created.

Get everyone excited in the weeks leading up to the launch. It’s important to take pride in your program, make it visible and create an official announcement for the big day.

5. Train Management and Employees

Your team will be much more receptive to your program if they know how to use it. Prepare to allocate time for training and creating resources.

Training solidifies recognition as an important part of your culture. Consider incorporating recognition training to give your team actionable information on how best to commend their peers, fostering a culture of recognition aligned with your organizational values.

6. Track and Evaluate Your Success

Connecting your recognition program to your company’s bottom line is essential. Measure performance in key business areas like employee retention and customer satisfaction before and after launch in order to show progress toward your overall company goals. You can consider implementing a technology program to track specific metrics and generate reports to evaluate on a regular basis.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Employee Recognition

Like any new program, challenges in employee praise and recognition may come up. Knowing what to expect helps you adjust your strategy and stay prepared. Some common obstacles to anticipate include:

• Managing resistance to change: Some team members may be hesitant toward something new due to fear of the unknown. They may worry that new programs will disrupt their routines, or feel as though they have less control. For these reasons, it’s important to create an environment of trust, transparency and support while launching this new initiative.
• Navigating budget constraints: Providing significant cash incentives or overseas vacations to show appreciation may not always be possible. Genuine, customized gifts can have just as much meaning. Work with a supplier that understands your budget and requirements to develop a cost-effective recognition and reward solution.
• Ensuring fairness and avoiding bias: Unhealthy competition and a lack of psychological safety can undo everything you’ve aimed to achieve. Culture changes start at the top, so make sure leaders set an example and stay aware of any bias or unfairness. When leadership exhibits positive qualities, the rest of the team often follows suit, turning your recognition program into a positive tool.
• Sustaining recognition efforts over time: Employee recognition programs can lose effectiveness over time for several reasons, including changing employee needs, alterations to your business strategy and updated core values. You can tackle this challenge by continually measuring your program’s effectiveness and encouraging feedback.

Employee Recognition Legal and Ethical Considerations

Compliance is always a concern when you launch an organization-wide program. Ensure you learn more about the following legal and ethical considerations to prevent any unnecessary hassle:

• Labor laws: Depending on your industry, specific rules may govern employee recognition. It’s also essential to consider discrimination and data privacy laws when creating your employee recognition program. Research the relevant laws and industry regulations to ensure compliance before launching your program.
• Privacy and data protection: While collecting and analyzing employee data can improve your recognition program, it presents some ethical concerns. Ensure you collect and analyze data that respects your employees’ rights.
• Discrimination and favoritism: Avoiding bias can be more challenging than allowing everyone to recognize their peers. Take the necessary steps to define clear recognition criteria across all departments. For example, you could include client-facing recognition criteria for your sales teams and productivity criteria for your back-of-house employees. Celebrate diverse achievements and tailor your recognition to suit individual needs and preferences.

Measuring the Impact of Employee Recognition

An employee recognition program should have a measurable impact on your operations. Depending on what you want to achieve, you can use several metrics to measure your program’s effectiveness.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tracking the impact of employee recognition on performance starts with your performance management data. You can choose to use existing KPIs or create additional ones to measure the effectiveness of your recognition program. Some key areas to measure include:

• Number of employee goals or objectives and key results (OKRs) achieved
• Management and employee performance ratings
• Time spent on learning and development
• Participation rate in the recognition program
• Recipient rate
• Average number of gifts sent
• Average value of gifts sent
• Redemption rates

Leverage these KPIs for an overall view of your program’s effectiveness. You can gain insight into how many team members engage with the program and how they use it to boost company culture.

Employee Surveys and Feedback

Your employees are your most valuable asset, and getting honest feedback from them is one of the most effective ways to adjust your program. You can send out anonymous surveys or have in-person meetings, depending on what makes your team most comfortable. Ensure you include specific questions to gain maximum insight and allow your team to elaborate if they choose.

Return Calculation

You can calculate the return on your recognition using a straightforward formula:

Total return (savings) – total investment ÷ total investment x 100 = ROI

• Total savings: How much have you saved on training and onboarding, recruitment, absenteeism and internal promotions since you integrated your recognition program? That number is your total return.
• Total investment: This amount refers to how much you’ve invested in your recognition program.

Future Trends in Employee Recognition

Employee recognition is a rapidly growing area, and understanding the trends can help you create an inclusive program and plan for the future. Look for the following innovations as you construct your program:

• Remote work and virtual recognition: Emerging technology is a massive driver in team member recognition. As technology advances, instant recognition is becoming a reality, even for remote employees. This can also enhance the user experience for all employees, making recognition more personal and impactful.
• AI and predictive analytics: AI is changing multiple business processes, and employee praise is no exception. AI can identify patterns that elevate recognition programs, provide ideas for praise and identify employee accomplishments.
• Gamification and social recognition: Gamification can be a powerful tool to engage employees and inject some fun into the recognition process. Integrating game elements can boost collaboration and strengthen social bonds in a work setting. Gamification in a recognition program can include leaderboards and badges so everyone can see whose behaviors to emulate.

Elevate Your Employee Recognition Strategy With ePromos

A well-executed employee recognition strategy can transform engagement and culture in your organization. Incorporating promotional gifts is an excellent way to personalize your recognition and make it authentic and meaningful. The perfect high-quality gift at the right time shows your team you care about them as people and appreciate their efforts.

ePromos has a wide range of awards and recognition gifts, apparel, technology and many other options to suit your company goals and culture. Browse our employee recognition gifts today!

Updated: 02/23/24