Best 11 Employee Recognition Ideas that Engage Employees

As per a Careerbuilder study, “tangible recognition could make 50% of employees stick to the company “. This puts forward the importance of employee recognition and appreciation in the retention of the workforce.

What does Employee Recognition mean?

Let’s first try to understand what employee recognition means is:

Employee appreciation and recognition are about showing gratitude towards employees for their exemplary work and contribution to the company’s growth. It also entails the values that the organization carries through its policies and attitude towards employees.

Why it is important to have employee recognition when there is salary, other perks, and benefits given by the company?

Employee recognition helps employees feel secure in their worth to the organization, which motivates them to keep doing exceptional jobs. Let's describe why employee recognition is important.

1. Human Emotions: An employee being human has emotions and feelings which make him connect with the project on which he is working. The recognition of employees’ efforts will improve the bond with the team and increase productivity.
2. Like the challenges: Some employees like to perform challenging tasks and rewards at the end of achievement push them to work hard. The challenging tasks and rewards improve a person’s learning and skills.
3. Part of the community: Being a part of society, employees represent the community and culture. When an employee gets appreciated for his work, then the attitude of society towards the community also improves in a positive direction.

As per McKinsey research, “the companies having more than 30 percent women executives were in a strong position to outperform those companies where this percentage is in range of 10 to 30.

The employee appreciation” contribution towards the organization through rewards and small-small things brings freshness and belongingness to the work atmosphere. This employee recognition idea is given below:

1. Sky is the limit – a performance-based career path not only helps to recognize the employee’s hard work but also helps in career achievement and boosting self-esteem. The leadership training and other skill development courses will boost the confidence level of the employees and makes them ready for a bigger role in the organization.
2. Well-being of employees – IT majors Infosys, TCS and Accenture India covered vaccination costs for their employees and their family members. This step will help employees to connect with the organization as a large family.
3. Bigger the company higher the facilities – From free meals to laundry, saloon, gym, pool, and hospital in the office campus will help employees to get relaxed when they feel stressed. It’s natural that a relaxed body and mind improve productivity. As the organization grows, it needs to better take care of employees’ needs. Like allowing employees to bring kids and pet animals to the office campus, and separating office and home boundary walls.
4. Recognition in front of peers and peer-to-peer recognition – This is the best employee recognition idea that your employees will like. Giving employees trophies, certificates of excellence, and thank you speeches will motivate employees to keep continuing good work.  The companies and higher managers can take the initiatives to regularly recognize employees in front of peers. This will act as a motivating factor in increasing employee job satisfaction. Also, peer-to-peer recognition is where colleagues in the same team or department appreciate and praise the work of each other. As most part of their work, team members were close circle to employees, and praise by them acts as a confidence booster to an employee.
5. Lunch with the boss – It will help both boss and employee to understand areas of interest, hobbies, and opinions about life. This informal discussion helps the employee to open up with the boss and like the importance given to him. Similar results were achieved through Hawthorne studies.

6. Community work – Charity, donations, and providing various services to the community like food to the homeless and downtrodden, working in community kitchens, and organizing health camps. Community service makes us realize the inclusivity of the workplace that employees come from different backgrounds, gender, race, and religion. And doing community service is about giving back to the society where we come from.

7. Wall of Fame – The achievers of different projects like completing the project fastest, and bringing more sales and revenue can be recognized through having a gallery of achievers. This wall of fame not only helps employees to work hard when they are at their peak but also when their performance is going down. They can visit their achievements and bring back the energy to the work.

8. Boss for a day - To recognize outstanding achievers by giving them special facilities like a VIP parking spot, let them lead the meetings and separate cabin. This will help employees to think about what goes on through their minds when they seats in a higher position. It will help staff to understand the perspective of the boss when he acts strict and also makes ready staff for challenges when they move on the career ladder.

9. Reward at right time – When an employee completes the task within time and efficiently, then appreciate their work that time only because delay in employee reward and recognition, can decrease the value of rewards.

“If you don’t create a great, rewarding place for people to work, they won’t do great work”

            -Ari Weinzweig

10.Outing time – Having weekend or monthly party, buying movie tickets and organizing tours of employees will help colleagues to gel with each other. Spending time with teams outside the office improves the bond and helps team members to understand why particular colleague behave in particular way. This motivates employees to contribute to the success of the team and ultimately the organization.

11. Celebrate small things of life– Surprising the employee with cake and candles when he enters conference room, sounds cool right! So celebrating important days in employees life and their non-work achievements like volunteering in flood relief will definitely boost the morale of the team. 

In your organization, these employee appreciation and recognition ideas can be adopted which will help employees gets motivate to give their best effort to fulfil organizational goals as well as fulfilling their career goals and sense of accomplishment will be there. Leaving with the quote to think about employee recognition.

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first.

If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

strong>-Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group