Hip hip hooray, you’ve assembled your dream team but where do you go from there?
Recruiting the perfect new addition to your organization isn’t easy, but when it comes to keeping them, it can be a whole other ball game! While salary and benefits can help attract and retain top talent, investing in a culture of appreciation can also do wonders for your business. Showing your employees you care can increase morale, motivation and productivity so it’s important you find ways to invest in your most important asset. If you don’t know where to start, here are three cheers (of varying sizes) to get you started.
Cheers to communication!
Communication isn’t just the basis of strong relationships, it’s also the basis for strong corporate cultures. To begin, make sure you take the time to give your team kudos and encourage others to do the same. Not only will people feel good, verbalizing your praise can help keep people on the right track. If you’ve mastered ‘the art of the kudo’, you can also use communication to better understand what sort of appreciation makes your employees feel most valued. Communication goes both ways and opening the space for employees to share their feedback and preferences can help you level-up your recognition efforts.
Cheers to celebrating!
Looking for an excuse to celebrate? Look no further! Wins, both big and small, deserve to be celebrated because they can inspire confidence, help track progress towards larger goals and motivate people to keep going through challenging times. Best of all, how you celebrate can be customized to you and your team’s needs. Do you and your team have daily huddles? If yes, try starting them by sharing everyone’s wins! Monthly in-person meetings to discuss progress? No problem—bring in some treats whenever a goal is reached! No matter how you go about it, or how big or small the celebration is, what’s most important is that you mark the occasion.
Cheers to programs!
It’s impossible to talk about employee recognition without mentioning employee recognition programs. While creating an employee recognition program requires more structure than the options mentioned above, it too can come in various shapes and sizes. Popular programs that you can incorporate in your workplace include employee of the month, awards for specific achievements (e.g., years of service, demonstrating company values, etc.) and quarterly events that celebrate staff’s achievements in and out of the office. Whatever direction you choose to go, remember that creating a plan that answers at the very least the five Ws and one H (who, what, where, when, why and how) will be the key to your program’s success.
At the end of the day, recognizing your team’s success can vary in scale but can’t vary in effort. Whether it’s a kudo or a program, showing you care about your employees isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ but vital part of your ability to retain quality employees. And much like finding the perfect candidate, creating a corporate culture of appreciation takes time and effort, but is so worth the investment.
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