Why It’s Important to Celebrate the Completion of a Project

Done! Complete!

You and your team have just finished an assigned project.

High fives all around—even if virtually

A lot of time went into the various elements of this project—from conception to implementation The outcomes and learning points were valuable and worthwhile. You are grateful for the wonderful collaboration across the team from all their various locations. Together, you overcame major obstacles to make a positive result.

So, should you celebrate?

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How Adding Time and Effort Actually Enhances Your Rewards

I have always been a big advocate of the fact that it’s the quality of your recognition that makes it a big deal.

Time and time again, I have witnessed how when you put more of a personal touch into the recognition and rewards you give, the more meaningful and effective the effect will be on the recipient and on their performance. 

I have summed this principle up before by saying, when you give people recognition you don’t have to give them a reward; when you give people a reward, you must always accompany it with recognition.

Now I have a social science experiment to share with you that validates this principle.

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How To Increase Meaningfulness Through Your Recognition Programs

Academic research has shown that managers are a contributing a factor to your employee’s perception of experiencing meaningfulness at work.

Researchers Francesco Montani and Jean-SébastienBoudrias reported that when managers take their role seriously, and serve and act as representatives of the organizations they work for, they provide them with salient social cues to their employees. These cues give employees a sense of meaningfulness in their own job. A manager’s act of genuinely recognizing their employees contributes to employee meaningfulness with their work.

So how can you use your recognition programs to create this greater job meaningfulness for employees? (more…)

Interesting Insights on The Cash versus Tangible Rewards Debate

In reading Khim Kelly’s, Associate Professor of Accounting, from the University of Florida, and her team’s research on The Effects of Tangible Rewards versus Cash Rewards in Consecutive Sales Tournaments: A Field Experiment, I learned some fascinating insights.

It piqued my interest because it was a field study and not one of those in the university lab experiments. The setting was selling rugs in retail stores and incentivizing sales people with either cash or tangible rewards (gift cards from a choice of vendors) for achieving high-performance results over two consecutive sales campaigns, each of three months in length. The study was conducted in a Canadian retail store chain. The Incentive Research Federation has shown that companies are relying more heavily on tangible rewards these days over cash, as a reward vehicle with their various incentive and reward campaigns.

Does one work better than another? That is the question I was curious about. (more…)

3 Ways To Select The Best Recognition Program For You

Your company has grown from the small business it once was to the medium size enterprise you have become.

You even conducted an employee engagement survey this year. That’s when you discovered employees are not feeling valued for the great work they do.

Maybe it is time to invest in recognition programs. This is not your expertise and you want to do what is best for the company and for your employees.

Where do you begin in identifying what the best recognition program is for your company? (more…)