New Year, New Motivation: Ring in 2012 with Successories’ Six Steps to Starting an Employee Recognition Program

Posted by Avi Jonas on Dec 29, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- Recent Gallup research shows that engaged employees, employees who feel rewarded and recognized by their employers, are more productive employees, more customer-focused, and more likely to withstand the temptations to leave. Yet, many businesses believe than an effective employee recognition program is too hard to plan or out of financial reach. To increase your chance of implementing an effective and budget-friendly employee motivation program , Successories has identified these steps as being the key to starting and sticking to an employee recognition program:

Step 1: Vision-Establish the purpose for the employee recognition program.

For the recognition program to be effective, it must be tied into the goals and objectives of the company or department, but think of more than just “increase sales.” Recognizing behavior (e.g., teamwork, innovation, integrity, excellence) has proven to be a much better motivational goal and allows the company to further stated company goals and corporate values.

Step 2: Criteria-Talk to employees about how they want to be graded and recognized.

Soliciting ideas from employees is a great way to ensure buy-in to get them motivated. It’s also a great way to generate ideas for identifying the best types of awards, frequency of awards, nomination procedures, and award presentation.

Step 3: Form a Recognition Committee.

This step is crucial in getting all employees involved and committed to the recognition program. The committee should then schedule the year’s process of nominations, voting procedures and presentations. The committee can even be given the autonomy to survey nominees to see which rewards motivate them the most.

Step 4: Develop eligibility and frequency of recognition awards.

Now that the vision, criteria and committee for the recognition program have been formed, it’s time to decide who is eligible for a given program (Full-time/part-time employees? Non-managers only?); how nominations are made (Allow self-nominations? Managers/co-workers must nominate?); and how often the awards will be given (Monthly? Bi-Monthly? Quarterly?).

Step 5: Determine budget and awards.

The great news is that recognition programs don’t have to be expensive to motivate employees. Successful program awards can range from gift cards to local stores to professional training courses to recognition pieces or certificates - whatever fits in your budget and is sustainable for the company to continue.

Step 6: Public recognition is the ultimate motivator.

It is vital that the awards presentation be public and permanent. The higher the position of the person presenting the award (CEO, President, Vice-President, etc.) and the more people in attendance, the more meaningful and more motivational the recognition becomes. Plus, having a perpetual recognition piece, such as a plaque or trophy that is posted in a public area to highlight the winners, boosts morale and keeps the focus on core values high.

Formal employee recognition programs don’t replace daily praise or the casual “great job” from a supervisor or manager, but they do promote employee motivation and will keep your workers feeling engaged from the very beginning of the year.

# # #

About Successories

Successories offers exclusive, high-quality products and programs for your motivational, recognition and promotional needs. Having motivated more than 1 million customers, Successories is the authority on motivation and presents in-depth information on how to motivate yourself and your employees on a daily basis. Successories allows you to personalize any motivational or recognition product – or even design one yourself – with its innovative, unique “Create Your Own” online tool. Successories also features iQuote, the largest curated collection of motivational quotes, diligently maintained by in-house Quoteologists. For more, please visit www.Successories.com.