Employee Recognition: Not Just One Day, Every Day

This March, many companies celebrated “Employee Appreciation Day” to show their employees that they’re valued. While the day is a great reminder to engage with your workforce, it also highlights that many organizations need to dedicate more time and resources to regularly show employee appreciation.

As documented by a recent Gallup poll, over 65% of employees don’t recognize their efforts. People leave their jobs for many reasons: bad boss, a workload that’s too heavy and lack of career advancement opportunities are high on the list. However, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the No. 1 reason employees leave their jobs is lack of recognition.

Even in the era of COVID, far too many employers downplay the power of rewarding and recognizing employees for the work they do. However, there are easy and cost-effective ways to ensure each associate feels part of your organization’s culture of acknowledgment as long as some best practices are followed:

Make it Frequent: Employees do great work throughout the year, so it doesn’t make sense to recognized them once. When managers consistently provide positive feedback, a culture of praise is created. There are also many peer-to-peer recognition tools available to support the efforts of the organization further.

Make it Specific: Simply put, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t demonstrate to employees that they are valued. Putting extra effort and resources to showcase worker accomplishments will pay the organization back tenfold. For example, if a salesperson finally closed a big sale, do more than say something nice in a meeting: commemorate it with an award that will live in that employee’s memory—and their bookshelf—for decades.

Make it Fun: While a nice gesture, few remember that they were named employee of the month two Octobers ago. Instead, inject an element of fun into your recognition! Why not give the employee with the best natural zoom background an award to recognize that attention to detail? The opportunities are truly limitless if there is thought put into the effort.

Recognition helps employees see that their company values them and their contributions to the company’s overall success. This is particularly key as organizations continue to have most of their workforce ply their trade away from the traditional office. More than anything, it helps employees build a sense of security in their value to the company, motivating them to continue outstanding work.

While Employee Appreciation Day comes around every year, the most successful organizations realize that every day is the right time to appreciate—and recognize—their employees.