Bekkie Wetz
We all know the importance of a salary, discounts, perks, a great office environment and a strong and visionary leadership team, But there's one other piece of our engagement bridge that deserves a shout: Recognition. Yes, it's time to recognize recognition. What about taking the time out of your day to recognize (and reward!) your employees and fellow coworkers for the hard work being put in every day?
At Reward Gateway, recognizing peers and leadership is fundamental to our culture. And as I work with clients every day, I'm excited by the passion they share with us on the importance of a good, solid fist bump to their valued employees.
So, the bigger issue is not whether recognition is important but how to do it. And this is where HR professionals tend to overcomplicate it.
But it doesn't have to be that way! To help give you some inspiration, I didn’t have to look much farther than the desk next to mine. Here’s what we do at Reward Gateway to say thanks.
Don’t underestimate the little things.
Saying thank you isn’t all about large amounts of money and marching bands. Often it is the little gestures and nods of recognition that really make someone’s day. We use Thank You eCards on our internal SmartHub™ platform Boom as a quick way to go above and beyond saying thank you in recognizing a co-worker. We have different thank you cards for our company values encouraging good behavior in line with our overall company core culture. We even have employees who print out all of their eCards and display them around their desks. We align these eCards with our purpose and values by “assigning” each card to a particular value, with our own brand palette as well. Here's what some of ours look like:
Spread the word (and the good feelings!)
Recognizing someone doesn’t need to be limited to the thanker and the thankee. We spread the joy of recognition at our all company quarterly meetings. Looking round at my coworkers faces everyone has a smile from ear to ear. I challenge you to watch the video and not smile at least once too!
Share successes, several times a day.
Recognition isn’t only about thanking people for the work that they do. It is also about celebrating what people achieve. Make it public when something great happens, like if your sales team won a new client. Or if they renewed a client. Or launched a new product. You get the idea. Shout about it! We have a gong in our office that we hit whenever a new client starts their Reward Gateway journey - what a great (and easy!) way to recognize the great work of our Engagement Specialists.
And don't forget, while Thank You cards and virtual first bumps go a long way, you can take rewards and recognition to the next level by attaching discounts and vouchers to your card. We’ll cover that in another post, or you can get in touch with a Reward Gateway specialist to find out more.