Organizational leaders often design recognition programs to award employees their years of service to keep them associated with the company and inspire others to follow in their footsteps. Here we will discuss how company leaders can distribute employee service awards most effectively.
Defining goals and objectives, setting clear expectations to ensure participation, offering memorable and personal milestone rewards, and distributing appropriate gifts are the primary concerns to design a good employee service award program.
Celebrating the winning moment, building connections between employee service awards and company core values, and recognizing individual contributions can add better value to the program. Let’s discuss them in detail.
Defining Goals and Objectives
Before designing any program, organizations need to chalk out the objectives and goals of their employee service program. With a clear understanding of the goals and objectives, organization leaders can build strategies to design an effective program to award employees for their service years. Defining the goals is the core of employee service award best practices.
The primary objectives of employee service awards are to recognize employees for their years of contributions, create a positive work environment, and inspire other employees to follow in their footsteps. The organization can build a recognition culture where employees feel valued and appreciated with these goals in mind.
Without clear objectives, the program will be disorganized and can fail to fulfill its purpose. Therefore, leaders must specify what they want to accomplish from their employee service award and build a program around those goals.
Setting Clear Expectations to Ensure Participation
Clarifying what employees can expect from the service award program will ensure company-wide participation. If the employees don’t understand the service award program’s offer, they will not give it enough importance, and the program can fail.
Managers will need to keep records of the starting dates of each employee, their contribution, and achievements working under their supervision. When organizations recognize employees for their service, these metrics will come in handy.
Offering Memorable and Personal Milestone Reward
It is best to personalize the service reward according to the expectations and desires of the employees. Otherwise, the whole reward program will miserably fail.
Employees getting rewards for their services have spent considerable time with the organization. So, organizations should be well aware of the taste and expectations of their employees. When organizations fail to meet the expectations, the employees will feel detached from the organization. Therefore, organizations may find a high employee turnover rate.
On the other hand, when organizations can design the reward according to the expectation of the employees, they will feel valued and will become attached to the organization. Thus, they will put in better efforts and inspire other employees to stay affiliated with the organization.
Distributing Appropriate Gifts
Most organizations fail in distributing gifts to their employees. Simply adding a bonus with their salary or a generic gift card is not enough to appreciate the employees’ services to the organization. Therefore, organization leaders should be creative while distributing awards to their employees.
It is wise to find out what employees like to do in their leisure time and design the gift according to that activity. For example, organizations can offer employees gift cards for their favorite DIY supply brand or a day of relaxing activities. Giving food as a gift is another great idea. Not everyone will use a gift card or have time to relax, especially if they have multiple jobs, but everyone loves free food! Make it a surprise by choosing food gifts that are unique and full of flavors. Subscription boxes easily come to mind if you’re looking for something original and appetizing. Authentic Japanese snack boxes, for example, offer some of the best crate food packages that are perfect for sharing with the family or afternoon snacks in the office. It may not cost organizations much but will keep the employees satisfied with the organization and its perks.
Celebrating the Winning Moment
This activity can influence employee satisfaction significantly while creating engagement between employees. The organization can publicly announce the service award winner’s names so all employees can celebrate their accomplishments.
Announcing the winners during morning briefing or break time can be most effective. During these times, almost all employees are present in one space and can discuss and celebrate the achievements of their fellow employees. Thus, the whole organization can learn about the winners’ achievements and can replicate the results.
Building Connection between Employee Service Award and Company Core Values
A company’s core values are the set of regulations that ties all employees together. When the service award is tied with the core values, it will enrich the company culture and help employees build meaningful connections with one another.
Recognizing the service award winners and the gifts distributed to the employees are two important components of connecting service awards and company core values. When these components are meaningful to the winners, they will uphold the company’s core values and represent what the company can offer its employees.
Bottom Line
As employees affiliate themselves with a company for longer, they will bring more value to the organization. So, companies need to give their best efforts to design the employee service award programs and personalize them for employees.
There are several online recognition platforms that can help organization leaders build an effective and meaningful employee service award program. These platforms can collect necessary data and give leaders insights to initiate the program. Additionally, these platforms allow leaders to adjust the program whenever needed.
Leaders will need to design their employee service awards properly for the sake of their organizational success.
