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Designing Your Company's Best Employee Recognition Program

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Great managers are masters in the art of employee recognition. They know when to give encouragement, when to compliment their teams, and when to reward standout performance.

Rather than stop at giving ad hoc recognition, however, a stellar company will weave employee recognition right into its DNA. This is because employees drive the big initiatives that will eventually make your company successful in every way.

To come up with the best employee recognition program for your company, here are some ideas to consider.

Ideas for Recognizing Outstanding Individuals

An employee recognition program for outstanding individuals needs to take into account fundamental human psychology. There are many ideas you can consider but the key is to satisfy the individual human need for recognition.

This means, fundamentally, there has to be an element of public recognition. Some ideas that do this include:

Medals/awards - These are handed out in many companies as part of a public ceremony. Award ceremonies carry a high degree of prestige because people like to stand out in front of their peers.
Sponsored retreats - You can award individuals with all expenses paid trips to their dream destinations. This can offer top performers a chance to savor the rewards of their hard work while giving them rest so they come in ready to face bigger challenges on their return.

Ideas for Rewarding Entire Teams

While an employee recognition program focused on individuals can go a long way, you should also make the effort to recognize outstanding teams. Rewarding teams should be paired with individual recognition to promote outstanding performance across the board.

Team recognition ideas include team retreats, promotions, as well as special cash bonuses for all individuals on outstanding teams. In addition, you can hold big events where your top performing teams can be recognized in front of their peers. Employee recognition speeches and festivities are an occasion for your company's leadership to instill your shared values in your entire staff.

Employee Recognition for Big Corporations

Big corporations can learn from how some of the largest Fortune 500 corporations reward their outstanding employees.

For example, Coca-Cola rewards outstanding performers with equity incentives. Doling out stock or stock options to top performers is particularly powerful because it gives the employee a major incentive to work for the good of the company. Employees who earn stock become stockholders whose own fortunes now become more closely tied to that of the company.

Meanwhile, Google offers employees massage credits which can be awarded to those who are doing a great job. These everyday perks recognize top performers and provide motivation to continue doing great work.

Small Company Employee Recognition

Small companies will lack the resources of a larger corporation, however, there are many ideas you can implement. Employee recognition does not have to break the bank. You have to be creative. The problem for many early-stage startups, however, is that they cannot splurge cash on paid vacations and other programs.

One good form of employee recognition is handing out gift cards and vouchers with a personal touch. Many startups also issue stock options as part of their employee recognition programs. For startups that have not yet achieved good cash flow, this is a sound option to reward top performers without getting into cash flow troubles.

The Need for Meritocracy

As in all other areas of employment, favoritism is an ill to be carefully avoided when implementing employee recognition programs. It can not only create a toxic office environment, but undermine the effectiveness of the entire employee recognition effort.

For example, if managers or owners show a preference for their favorite employees when handing out employee recognition awards, it demoralizes other hard workers.

By constantly passing up on deserving people, you create conditions in which there is little incentive left to give their best. However hard they work, they know, they will never get the recognition or reward they deserve. If they are minded to perform at a top level, they might, in fact, begin to look for jobs elsewhere. Long-term, therefore, your short-sightedness could leave you with just the lowest-performance employees on your team.