Tag Archives: Management Responsibility

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How to More Effectively Approach Milestone Recognition

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Career milestone award or service award recognition programs have been around for many years.

Over those years there have been the customary plaques, symbolic crystal awards, and gold watches—and these used to start when a person reached 25-years of service.

But as tenure reduced significantly with economy and business changes, and retention of employees was harder to maintain, career milestones now begin at 5 years and 5-year increments thereafter. Today, you will find many companies now start career milestones at an employee’s first year of service.

The reality is, whether you give an employee something tangible or not, they always have a workplace anniversary every single year.

How do you plan to make the next round of your milestone recognition celebrations more meaningful and effective?

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Taking a Quick Look at Career Milestone Awards

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How are your career milestone or service award programs doing these days?

It seems the majority of organizations have tenure or long service award programs. According to WorldatWork’s 2017 Trends in Employee Recognition, length of service recognition remains the top ranked recognition program with 85 percent of organizations. 

Historically, and especially within the public sector, career milestone years were only acknowledged when an employee reached 25 years or longer. Today, most progressive organizations commence with at least 5 years and then celebrate every 5-year increment thereafter.

But when you look at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics the average tenure for salaried employees is 4.2 years. That average drops to 2.8 years for the mobile 25 to 34 year old employees.

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How Good Is Your Recognition Program Anyway?

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Lots of companies think their recognition programs are the very best. Many that I have seen are truly pretty amazing and exemplary. A few think of themselves a little better than they really are. But at least they’re trying.

Since judging the best practices nominations submitted to Recognition Professionals International for the past 11-years, I have seen the overview of nearly a hundred or so recognition programs. Based on the criteria that I had a hand in developing, the other judges and I score each nomination, and also provide helpful, written feedback on their programs.

Often, those who submit their nomination the first time receive a best in class award covering a few of the seven best practice standards. They usually act on the judges’ feedback and resubmit the following year. If companies carry out the recommendations that judges suggested they typically raise the bar and can merit earning the best practices overall award.

How good do you think your recognition programs are? If you submitted a best practices award nomination for your company, would you measure up?

Take a look at RPI’s seven best practice standards below and assess where you think you would stack up on a seven or 10 point scale. (more…)

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Simple Ways To Find Time to Recognize People

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Finding time to recognize others can be challenging, that’s for sure.

But when we take on an attitude of respecting and valuing people and their contributions then recognition becomes so much easier to do.

Yes, recognition giving requires personal commitment and self-discipline.

By putting a few of the following time management principles into place you will see how you will have more time for recognition giving. (more…)

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What It Takes To Be A Best Practice Award Winner

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RBC Financial Group – Best Practice Award Winner

Do you think your company’s recognition programs could merit winning Recognition Professionals International’s (RPI) Overall Best Practice Award?

I’m going to let you in on a secret of what it takes to win this award.

I have been on the judges’ committee for RPI’s Best Practice Awards for the past 11 years. We’ve seen over 70 organizations submit written nominations to vie for the Overall Best Practice Award. Those companies that submit nominations benefit from receiving the judges’ written feedback on strengths and areas needing improvement, along with quantified scores for each of the standard criteria they’ve been judged on.

Last year I had the opportunity to assist one of our clients, RBC Financial Group, with writing up their nomination form for consideration of the Best Practice Award. I am very pleased to say they actually won the Overall Best Practice Award. Naturally, I had to recuse myself from judging their nomination.

That’s why I know what it takes to be a Best Practice Award winner. (more…)

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Use Your Recognition Programs the Right Way, Right Now!

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Being unable to get their company’s managers to consistently and correctly use their online recognition programs often frustrates most owners and managers of employee recognition programs.

Yet, there’s an interesting irony to this problem when you ask yourself, how often have we involved managers in the design of our recognition programs? We can eliminate many of our problems if make our programs more manager and employee-centric and give them a positive user experience. (more…)

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What Makes Your Recognition Program A Success?

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As a judge for Recognition Professionals International (RPI) Best Practices Award I have had the opportunity to evaluate with my colleagues 72 individual company nominations.

Each nomination requires companies to prove to the judges how they have effectively demonstrated each of RPI’s seven best practice standards, i.e.

  1. Recognition Strategy
  2. Management Responsibility
  3. Program Measurement
  4. Communication Plan
  5. Recognition Training
  6. Recognition Events and Celebrations
  7. Program Change and Flexibility

We score each submission on these standards and provide collective feedback for the owners of the programs to consider and incorporate into their programs and possibly future nominations.

With this perspective in mind let me address what makes a recognition program a success. (more…)