Awarding Your Employees the Right Way
Any good business or non-profit organization knows how important it is to make your employees feel valued. The debate is really about the best way to do so. To help shed some light on this topic, we've consolidated some excellent field research on the effects of awards in the workplace. There is some surprising evidence about the effectiveness of award programs, and the reasons behind their success. Here at Unique Embroidery & Promotions and Twin City Trophies we understand the importance of employee recognition and want to pass our knowledge onto you so you can have motivated, satisfied, and happy employees.
Some Statistics
When it comes to incentive programs, they have some significant positive effects on employee performance:
- Can increase performance by 22-44%
- Can increase interest in work, causing a 15-27% increase in performance
- Attracts quality employees
- Longer-term programs produce an average of a 44% increase in performance, versus a 20-30% average increase in short term programs
- 98% of employees value award programs
- It is more effective to use recognition programs over tenure based programs by 14%
- Employee recognition programs lead to 31% lower employee turnover than companies that don't use them
What Doesn't Work
Contrary to popular belief, rewarding good behaviour with awards does not actually increase productivity. In fact, awarding good behaviour out of the blue actually demotivates employees by 6-8%. This is because you are simply rewarding them for doing exactly what is in their job description, and since they feel acknowledged for doing that, they are not motivated to push themselves further. Taking this into account, awards should only be given to those whose work goes above and beyond the call of duty, not just that which is required in the job description.
Avoid Bias
Employees will be watching carefully to ensure that all co-workers are treated fairly. It should go without saying that favouritism, cronyism and nepotism should be avoided at all costs. Whatever strategy you use to choose your award recipients it should be based on merit.
What You Should Do
- Create a recognition program that has a specific goal. This goal should be especially meaningful to your organization, this may mean that you want to encourage teamwork or innovation, or maybe you want to improve the safety of the workplace by encouraging employees through a recognition program. Setting goals for your employees to achieve will encourage them to go above and beyond the call of duty, thus increasing your work performance and productivity.
- It's also very reasonable to have awards that acknowledge those who have worked for you the longest. While this doesn't have as tangible of an effect on productivity, it will encourage employees to stick around if they see that the senior employees are being treated well.
- Make sure that your reward program uses an open-ended, quota-based, or piece-rate structure. This will ensure everybody has a chance at success and will therefore encourage more people to actively participate.
- Consider letting employees choose their own rewards, based on a previously constructed options list. This may end up saving you money in the long run, and will encourage employees to participate because they can work towards something they are guaranteed to want.
- Finally, ensure that you are creating a program that you can easily implement and run effectively. A major complaint in workplaces that do provide reward programs is that they are not implemented properly. A program's success and return on investment depends on how well it's operated so be sure that you're tackling something you can handle.
Types of Awards
Rewards should match the degree of accomplishment. A greater degree of excellence should be rewarded with a more significant award. Appropriate ideas for awards can include trophies, plaques, bowls, ribbons, cups, certificates, time pieces like watches or mantel clocks, pieces of art from glass, acrylic or other materials. Based on current research, it's often necessary to pair these awards with monetary gifts as well. If you're in the market for these types of awards, be sure to click the button below to get a quote right away.
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