Tag Archives: Purpose

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Top 10 Ways to Select the Right Incentive or Recognition Award

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Choosing the right awards for your various incentive and recognition programs is never an easy task. You want to show employees that their contributions are valued and appreciated. Awards should match your program’s goals and celebrate employee achievements. Today’s employees want more than the traditional award items. Check out the Top 10 Ways to Select the Right Incentive or Recognition Award to help you decide.

1. Clearly spell out your program’s purpose. Is this award for a sales campaign? Are you wanting to get people enlisted in your health and wellness platform? Or is this a prestigious award for the president’s excellence program? Awards must always fit the program purpose and desired performance level.

2. Have employees involved and ask them. Use an employee survey to get the big picture view and employee input. Ask them to prioritize on criteria such as the meaningfulness and perception of various award options. Draw upon focus groups, too, so you can dig deeper. Solicit the why behind each employee idea.

3. Focus on the meaningfulness factor. Employees are very clear on whether an award item is meaningful or not. Always add on to the award presentation. For example, who’s presenting the award? How have you orchestrated the total award celebration experience? What elements can you make even better?

4. Inspire and excite award recipients. Does the incentive or recognition award inspire the recipient to do, and be, better? As you explore award items – whether tangible gifts or symbolic awards – find out how excited employees are to receive them. Evaluate the emotional appeal of the awards you’re thinking about.

5. Provide choice wherever you can. Giving people exciting options to decide from is a great way to create motivation. Whether the awards are a lifestyle item, health and fitness, electronics, outdoor, or experiential items, charitable donations, or gift cards. Think choice! This factor can be especially critical with incentives.

6. Always use quality, name brand products. It can be a real let down when an award gift breaks or stops functioning shortly after receiving it. Stick with brand name items that are top quality. Ensure your award vendor is reputable and has a great exchange and replacement policy. Your award speaks for you.

7. Put symbolic awards on a pedestal. Trophies and medals must be totally representative of your organization. Look at Olympic medals and the Oscars® for what they mean to recipients. Whatever symbolic award the design must be an extension of the company and your brand. They will become a treasured prize.

8. Think outside of the box for novel ideas. No need to stay with the tried and true award selections. Dabble in creativity such as a customized portrait painting from a family photo of a recipient. Provide an opportunity to learn something new from an expert that the employee has mentioned such as painting or in music.

9. Move from tangible to experiential. Corporate volunteer trips to destinations around the world appeal to younger generation employees. They can build schools or set up wells with water access. This is a fully immersive cultural and teambuilding experience that leaves a legacy associated with your company.

10. Choose your own adventure. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman made famous the idea of doing things before you “kick the bucket”. Have employees choose experiences that bring joy. It could be skydiving, an amazing destination experience like whale watching in Patagonia, or cooking with a chef in Paris.

A version of this post first appeared in Incentive Magazine.

Roy is no longer writing new content for this site (he has retired!), but you can subscribe to Engage2Excel’s blog as Engage2Excel will be taking Roy’s place writing about similar topics on employee recognition and retention, leadership and strategy.

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Why Recognition Messaging Is So Important

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Do your employees know the difference between recognition and rewards? Are managers and supervisors consistently praising and recognizing their direct reports for doing good work on a regular basis? Is peer-to-peer recognition happening through your social recognition newsfeed and face-to-face?

If you had a “no” to any one of those questions, you likely need to send out recognition messaging more often.

It might well be time to communicate what recognition is and why it is so important. You may need to tell everyone how easily they can recognize one another. Show them how to give meaningful and effective recognition.

I have written before about the importance of creating a Recognition Communications Calendar to support your recognition programs and practices. However, I was not as clear as I should have been, about what to include in your advanced communication planning.

You have to be strategic about the recognition messaging you want to convey throughout the company. Here are some quick thoughts to guide you. (more…)

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Why a Recognition Mission Statement Is So Important

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What happens when your organization doesn’t even have a purpose for recognition? Why should you have a written mission statement for recognition?

That’s the dilemma one of your fellow subscribers submitted. For them, their biggest struggle is not having a formal company mission regarding recognition.

Too often, the focus for many organizations with recognition is limited to recognition programs. Recognition programs should be viewed as simply a tool to help people practice the more important, day-to-day practice of recognition giving.

That’s why your purpose for recognition should always include recognition practices as well as your recognition programs.

How can you create a recognition mission statement? (more…)

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How To Improve Your Employees’ Recognition Experience

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Many of you have a variety of online recognition programs available to your employees and managers to use.

Employees can usually acknowledge their colleagues or even express appreciation and thanks to a supervisor or manager. Most of the online recognition, award, and reward programs are peer-to-peer, manager to employee, and with formal award programs, the organization to the employee.

Sometimes, we make our recognition programs but they end up being too transactional in nature. When this happens, it can lead to a less than ideal recognition experience for your employees.

What needs to happen is more humanizing of our technological recognition programs.

I am going to give you seven P’s to consider when creating any meaningful and memorable recognition experience with your programs. (more…)

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Why Recognizing Employees For Going Above and Beyond Is a Good Thing

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When employees go above and beyond in the workplace it stands out.

It’s noticeable. Exceptional. And it should be celebrated.

That is why managers need to understand the importance of recognizing employees for going above and beyond.

Why should you establish an above and beyond category to your existing recognition award programs? What are the benefits of doing so? (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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The Importance of Being Nominated For An Award

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Having read and watched the media reports from the 90th Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Oscars Awards, it reminded me that being nominated for an award is a pretty big deal.

You may know the Academy is an invitation-only membership of directors and actors. These two groups of 7,258 voting members are the ones who vote and decide upon the winners from their respective branches.

Being nominated by one’s peers means a lot to those who are nominated.

What can we learn from this annual Oscars award event about the importance of being nominated for an award? (more…)

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Never Let Organizational Culture Eat Up Your Strategy

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Many years ago the late business management guru, Peter Drucker, purportedly said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

While there is still debate as to whether Drucker actually said the line or not, it was attributed to him by Mark Fields in 2006, and he later became the chief executive of the Ford Motor Company.

At the time Drucker probably made this statement there was a lot of talk about business strategy in the Ivy League business schools.

His point was well taken that you should never neglect culture.

However, as the authors Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price and J. Yo-Jud Cheng, of the recent Harvard Business Review article on The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture, point out, a strong organizational culture can be detrimental when misaligned with strategy. (more…)

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Is Your Culture Getting In The Way of Your Recognition?

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Many factors affect the success of implementing the practice of giving effective and meaningful employee recognition where you work.

Your organizational culture is just one of those factors but it’s often ignored.

Organizational culture is the shared values and beliefs that inform and govern how people behave in an organization. It influences how people act at work and do their jobs.

The successful use of your recognition and reward programs is directly impacted by the strength and positive perception of your company’s culture.

That’s why you must ask yourself: Is our organizational culture contributing towards making recognition giving a way of life?

Or, perhaps your culture is getting in the way of recognition. (more…)

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Which Recognition Program Do You Start With First?

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You have either personally asked or thought about this question, or the leader you report to might have asked you.

“Which recognition program do you start with first?”

Lewis Carroll, in his unforgettable tale of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, gives us a clue to the answer to this question.

The main character, Alice, sees the Cheshire Cat sitting on the bough of a tree and decides to ask it a question.

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.

“Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—“ said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat

Likewise, you need to take the recognition program road you would like to take. Lead by your company’s purpose, recognition needs and budget realities as well as your own experienced opinion.

And if you don’t have a destination, objective or purpose then I will help you choose one. (more…)