40 Easy To Use Employee Recognition Ideas
In How Great Supervisors Use Employee Recognition To Improve Performance, we looked at how supervisors who provide frequent and meaningful recognition and praise inspire employees to higher performance, engagement and loyalty.
Below are 40 ideas for recognizing those you supervise. Learning your employee’s recognition preferences will help you determine which will work for you and which will not. But, don’t hesitate to get out of your comfort zone and try fresh approaches, and engage your employees in brainstorming other creative ways to recognize, praise and celebrate individuals and teams.
- Use your personal stationery and mail recognition letters to homes of employees
- Give the employee a meaningful book and sign the inside cover with a personalized message
- Leave praise on a meeting room white board or flip chart
- Leave voice mails of praise
- Text a praise or recognition
- Place a note of appreciation on an employee’s windshield
- Leave a sticky note of praise on an employee’s desk chair
- Praise someone for keeping a commitment
- Praise someone when they meet a deadline
- Praise someone for their character
- Praise someone for taking a risk, and failing
- Recognize a good idea with an Innovation or Ingenuity Award
- Recognize over and above effort with a Hustle Award
- Bring in doughnuts after a big accomplishment or hard stretch of work
- Buy store bought wrapped cookies; type a recognition and adhere it to the cookies and give the cookies away to everyone on the team
- Give a way tickets to upcoming community special events
- Give personalized gift certificates as rewards: a meal, coffee, car wash, movie, groceries, spa, a round of golf, an amusement park
- Allow the recognized employee to select the gift card vendor they prefer
- Tell SAIL stories: Tell of a Situation, explain the Action they took, the Impact it had on the organization and the Link it has to organizational goals or values
- Invite an individual or team into a Senior Leadership meeting to recognize them
- Take pictures of those being awarded and put them on a highly visible bulletin board
- In the Break room put up a family focus board with family pictures and children’s accomplishments
- Recognize the birthdays of the children of direct reports
- Celebrate an employee’s new baby when they return to the office
- Purchase small action figures to give a way as “my hero” awards
- Go to a Dollar Store for cheap awards and recognitions (Examples: WD-40 you get things unstuck; duct tape for you hold us together)
- Recognize the sacrifice of families of employees whose job duties have taken them out of town
- Send an employee’s spouse flowers or a gift card after they have had to work long hours
- Pay for the spouse to join an employee on a job related trip
- Hire a yard crew or a maid service for a day as an anniversary gift
- When publically recognizing someone, ask for one or two peers to provide the recognition
- Invite the family of those being recognized to the recognition event
- Senior Leadership grills out, cook pancakes, wash cars for the team when a goal is reached
- Before a new hire arrives send them by courier/express mail an envelope with welcome cards from everyone on the team
- Call the ice cream truck to come by the church during a time of peak loading
- Bring in a masseuse to provide shoulder and neck massages after a stressful period at work
- Take a team out to lunch and bowling or a movie in recognition of a goal achievement
- Provide a catered picnic for the team
- Recognize the employee on the organization’s website
- Greet an employee in their office with a morning cup of coffee
What other ideas for employee recognition do you have?
Posted on April 11, 2017
