How to Choose and Distribute Employee Awards

How to Choose and Distribute Employee Awards

As all managers know, employee awards are an important part of workplace satisfaction.

Employees who feel as though they are rewarded for their efforts tend to work harder and better. However, choosing the right items and distributing them in the right manner is essential to making corporate gifts work. Here are some tips to use when dealing with employee recognition awards.

Choose Rewards Carefully

As you may have found, choosing employee rewards is not simple. There are simply too many choices! How can you choose the best one? The answer depends on many factors.

First, consider where you will be giving employees rewards. If you will be giving them out in an office, something they could display in their office space might work well. On the other hand, if your employees don't have offices, plaques or trophies might be useless.

Next, consider the tastes of your employees. While recognition is the important part of the equation, you want to make sure that your workers enjoy the gift they are receiving.

Engraved golf balls would mean nothing to someone who hates to golf! On the other hand, a paperweight would be quite helpful to your most disorganized employee.

Consider Useful Gifts

As you consider which items you will choose, keep in mind that useful gifts are a good choice. Just make sure they don't look like you are handing out a billboard for your business! No one wants to be rewarded with an advertisement, so choose something tasteful and useful.

For the most part, though, promotional items like pens and t-shirts can easily be turned into useful gifts for your employees.

This is because when you give your employees recognition along with a nice gift, they are more likely to remember the reward.

Also, when other employees see the rewarded employee using the gift, they may be motivated to strive to do better. Again, try to match the reward to the employee. The best employee recognition award is something that he or she will find genuinely useful or meaningful.

Make Awards Meaningful

The next consideration when choosing and distributing employee rewards is the way in which you distribute the awards. If you simply catch your clerk in the hallway and give her an award and a gift, it won't mean much.

On the other hand, if you reward her in a more personal way, such as by stopping by her desk, you will make a greater impression.

The point is that the presentation of the awards needs to be meaningful.

Some managers will call employees to their offices to present employee recognition plaques. This could work well, as the employee may not be expecting recognition and will be pleasantly surprised.

Distribute Awards Publicly

Of course, if you want to use these times to motivate your work force, you need to present them publicly. If you have regular business meetings with your employees, use them as times to present an employee award certificate to your outstanding achiever, for example.

Also, do not be afraid to call a special meeting to present a reward.

This is important because public recognition is more meaningful to the person being rewarded. Also, it makes a greater impact on the rest of your employees. The rewarded individual will not have to brag about his or her accomplishments, because everyone will know what skill you valued.

Keep It Fair

Finally, keep it fair whenever you are distributing employee awards. Make them something everyone can attain. Try to find ways to reward each of your employees who are working to their full potential.

If you begin playing favorites, then the employee awards become meaningless. To keep things meaningful, you need to be fair. Base awards on actual behavior, production, and attitudes in the workplace, and soon your employees will all be striving towards better performance.