The video for this blog post can be found on YouTube, and audio can be found on Spotify and Apple podcasts! Subscribe and join me wherever you get your podcasts (:
Welcome to episode 11 of Claire Shares. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m going to be sharing with you high energy, bite size videos, about all things talent attraction, talent acquisition and talent retention. Make sure you’re subscribed to Claire Shares wherever you get your podcasts! Today’s talent retention topic is employee recognition. There are so many options for recognition that you can make work with your size company and budget, that can significantly improve employee engagement and retention.
Before we get started with today’s talent topic, I want to share with you my recommendation of the week!
Recommendation of the week
My recommendation of the week is to check out 43North Compass, the go-to hub for all things startup jobs. 43North is an accelerator program that invests $5M annually into high-growth companies in Buffalo, NY. 43North Compass, is a new game-changing resource to help you uncover the latest opportunities and successfully navigate Buffalo’s vibrant startup and tech scene! Explore the latest openings on their comprehensive job board, gain insights, and find networking opportunities in the 716. Join the 43North Compass Talent Network today at 43north.org/compass.
I love to curate resources and share recommendations, so please reach out to me if there’s something you’re looking for! Let’s get into our talent topic of the day, employee recognition.
The WHY for employee recognition
I want to share with you a few lines from a 2023 report by Gallup and Workhuman. It’s no secret that employee wellbeing, in a post-pandemic landscape, is suffering: Employees are struggling with stress, burnout, and loneliness like never before. In fact, four in 10 U.S. employees say their job is negatively impacting their mental health. To make matters worse, fewer than one in four employees say their organization cares about their wellbeing – nearly half the number who said the same before COVID-19 rocked the workplace. This data suggests the workforce is headed toward a tragic wellness crisis if things don’t change. The good news? There is – and has always been – an effective, research-backed wellbeing solution at leaders’ fingertips: employee recognition.
In previous research, Gallup and Workhuman established an extensive connection between employee recognition and wellbeing, finding employees who receive the right amount of recognition for their work experience lower burnout, improved daily emotions, and stronger relationships with their co-workers. Think about that – recognition is also good for your employees’ health. It’s a basic human need to want to feel acknowledged and recognized for your efforts. AND organizations with a true culture of recognition enjoy higher employee engagement, satisfaction and retention, saving tons on turnover costs.
A simple framework for employee recognition
I want to give you a simple framework to remember when it comes to recognition. Recognition Professionals International (RPI) has their recognition strategy model, which resembles a pyramid with 3 levels.
At the bottom widest level of the pyramid, is day to day appreciation. These are small but mighty gestures such as saying thank you, giving someone kudos during a team meeting, giving someone a handwritten card, or sending praise through the “praise” feature in Microsoft Teams.
Informal recognition is our middle tier of the pyramid. Informal recognition is decentralized, meaning there are some organizational guidelines for it, but it can be managed at different levels of the organization. An example is spot bonuses. Managers could be given a budget for on-the-spot awards and bonuses. If you’re going to go this route, ensure there’s great communication when rolling out the spot award program that empowers and educates managers on when and how to use a spot bonus. Helping them understand how to identify when someone is going above and beyond, or when someone is exemplifying the company values, will be really helpful.
Another example of informal recognition is taking a teammate out for lunch, for example to recognize someone who’s been consistently delivering good work. Ensure your managers have a budget for that as well or know how to expense the lunch. 1:1 or small team lunches is a nice way to surprise and delight your team to recognize them for good work.
I sent Amazon gift cards to 2 team members who were covering the work load when other team mates were off, just to say I see you, we appreciate you, and thank you for working hard so your team mates can enjoy time off. I felt empowered to send that. I’m acting in line with our core values so I know my CEO would have approved of me doing that. Depending on the industry you operate in, or the types of core values your company upholds, may determine what types of gifts or monetary recognition you want to do for your employees, and that’s good! It should be unique to you and following any financial compliance guidelines.
Some other examples are providing a team breakfast in the office after a new client is signed, a new goal is hit, a new system or process has been implemented. Another fun example are paper plate awards. In a previous organization, a manager bought a stack of paper plates, and everyone got to write one for someone else on the team. This was such a fun way to start a team meeting, for folks to engage their plates and read the specific things on the plates that their coworkers wrote about them. This was obviously a very low cost, but warm and fuzzy exercise for the team. I’ve gotten a paper plate award in the past for being “the historian” because I love to take pictures of everything and document everything, which my team really appreciated when they were looking for pictures to use for social media or to show their involvement in an event to friends and family.
The third and top piece of the recognition pyramid is formal recognition. This is centralized employee recognition, generally managed by the HR team, such as anniversary or service awards. You may have a gift that goes along with an anniversary or service award, such as having employees pick something from a gift catalog to recognize their service anniversary, or they’re given a nice plaque.
Another example of formal recognition is running a values awards program. Values awards programs are typically nomination based, and a committee of leadership team members votes on the winner or winners. These could be announced and shared on a quarterly, semiannually, or annual basis, in line with a company picnic or holiday party. When done well, employees look forward to that part of the company event each year, because it feels good to see people be recognized for their work performance and character.
Another common example of formal recognition is an employee of the month program. Have peers or managers submit votes each month explaining why they are nominating someone and ensure they are being specific and tying back to company goals, values and behaviors. If someone hit a sales goal, but compromised their integrity to do it, you’d want to consider that before recognizing the person. That sets an example for the rest of the company to see what is okay and not okay.
An additional option is celebrating Employee Appreciation Day, which takes place on the first Friday in March every year. It’s totally up to you how you want to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day. This year at Lighthouse, we did breakfast yogurt parfaits, donuts and bagels from Public Espresso, and our CEO Randy Harris gave some thoughtful and heartfelt remarks in a team wide meeting. Another idea for Employee Appreciation Day is to provide employees with updated company merchandise such as shirts, jackets or hats that they can sport to work or at client meetings.
At past companies I’ve worked for, they did an annual Founders Noble Cause award that was presented at the company summer picnic. Everyone looked forward to that every summer, and really wanted that award! Along with it came an all-expenses paid 1 week trip. And to win, you had to clearly exemplify the company values and make significant contributions to advancing the organization and taking care of their teammates. At this same organization, they did a recruiter of the year award. There are so many options to recognize folks for their performance and behavior.
This multi-tiered approach creates complete coverage and ensures employees have multiple opportunities to be recognized for their contributions. This coverage is key to creating a sustainable culture of recognition that creates a great employee experience and drives engagement and retention.
The rewards aspect of recognition
Before sharing more about what we do here at Lighthouse Technology Services, I want to briefly touch on the rewards aspect of recognition.
As part of an annual holiday celebration, you may provide gifts or bonuses to employees. As a small business, you may not have this end of year bonus hard defined or documented, and that’s okay, but just be as transparent as possible and communicate. Especially if an end of year bonus grows to become expected over the years, it’s a good idea to share how the business is doing with hitting or missing it’s goals so employees are in the loop leading up to the end of the year. At Lighthouse, we are a small team of 15, and end of year bonuses are subject to our owner’s discretion. This is made clear to folks in their offer letters when they join us.
If you have an annual performance review program, it’s helpful to have documented what employees can expect in terms of raises and bonuses, by hitting a certain performance rating. Your organization may offer commission depending on the types of roles it has, and commission is awarded to folks to recognize a certain level of achievement, whether that’s clients signed, revenue hit, etc. Also, you may have a president’s club or something similar to recognize high performing sales professionals. The presidents club itself would have its own defined and documented processes of how to reach it and what type of rewards folks can expect.
What we do at Lighthouse Technology Services
I want to share with you some of the special things we do at Lighthouse to recognize our team. Each summer we do a team Bison’s game, usually a weekday 1 PM game, and the buffalo cycle boats. Our team looks forward to these days of fun and unplugging together each year and is grateful that the company pays for these opportunities to celebrate and recognize us. These types of events also help with team building and team culture, which I spoke about in Episode 8.
If you’ve been up to our Lighthouse office in Seneca One, you’ve probably noticed our entry hallway filled with colorful photos of our team. When one of our team members speaks at an event, attends a community event or wins an award, we get a photo and print it for our photo wall. It’s such a fun way to recognize our team and show our great work off to each other and our office visitors! We are so proud of our team and love to see those memories on the wall.
We also recognize birthdays and service anniversaries, which you’ll also see fun social media posts for on our social channels. An example of informal recognition, managers are empowered to recognize personal moments or personal achievements as they see fit. For example, I sent flowers to the home of one of our teammates who bought a house.
We love to start some of our meetings as well with sharing good news and giving each other shout outs for something we helped each other with. Giving these kudos helps keeps me inspired and motivated, before diving into the hard work of the meeting.
Finally, I must make mention of using social media for recognition! Spotlighting and recognizing employees on social media is huge for engagement and retention. I find most employees are proud to show that feature to friends, family and their professional networks. Ask first if they are comfortable being featured on the company social media channels. I’ve noticed in the past that people initially say no, but usually that no comes from a place of just not knowing what to expect, and no feels likes the easy answer. But when I ask them why it’s usually because they’re worried about what the final product or post will look like. I ask them to trust me and show them my final draft of what I’d like to post to recognize them and get their feedback before posting. Usually once they see the full concept and how we’ve demonstrated our appreciation and recognition for them, they have a comfort level with it and feel proud of it, and then their answer to being featured on social changes to a yes!
Wrap-up
This week, think about recognition in your organization. I know there are ways that you could diversify or improve your recognition efforts across those day to day, informal, and formal levels.
Thank you for being here with me and joining me for these bite size videos all about all things talent attraction, talent acquisition and talent retention. These areas of HR and People Ops are my favorite and specialty, and I’m so excited to dive in with you. This work is what I do, if you need help with the tools, technology and process around how you attract, acquire and retain talent, reach out to me and let’s talk!
Claire is Coaching 