Three meaningful ways to show your appreciation for employees
Everyone who is a little bit in touch with the business world, or watches the news, knows about The Great Resignation.
If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to the 2021 unprecedented mass exit from the workforce, when around 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs.
And, while many would have you believe that the COVID-19 pandemic had something to do with this, the reality is different. Many of the people who decided to quit were working low-paid menial jobs without any work satisfaction. And the pandemic relief check(s) gave them a wonderful chance to quit and look for better opportunities.
A similar thing happens in the corporate world where valuable people leave because they don’t feel their efforts are appreciated or recognized. However, in this case, employers can’t solve the problem with more money. To keep their most valued talent, businesses must find ways to show their appreciation in a meaningful way.
If you understand just how incredible your employees are and want to show your appreciation, here are a few ideas to use as inspiration.
1) Recognition awards
Awards have value because they carry the powerful emotional load of work recognition. Plus, they are physical representations of a person or a team’s job well done so you can show them to friends, family, and even peers.
Most corporate recognition awards are linked to metrics (such as hitting the sales goal), but team leaders can change the game a bit and offer awards for the type of behavior they want to see within their offices. For instance, there are awards offered for working overtime or for being a good sport and helping out a coworker when things get tough.
2) Use gamification
When you turn work into play, things start to get interesting. That’s because you have a clear end goal in mind (one that brings you joy and satisfaction) so you work harder and with a lot more passion to make it a reality.
One such great way of showing appreciation to your staff is to put a few prizes on the table at the start of a project and have them decide which ones they want via gamification. For this, you’ll have to divide the project into tasks and assign each task with point values. Now, each employee will be able to choose the task they want to do (based on their skills and experience) and so they’ll gather points.
At the end of the project, you’ll gather everyone’s results and deliver the prizes. However, for this to work, you need exciting prizes such as extra vacation days, a full-paid spa day, extra work-from-home days, or a fully paid class on an interesting topic.
3) Employee ownership
Businesses can help improve productivity and profit by bringing the employees to the table. With employee ownership, you show your most-trusted people that their opinions and input are extremely valuable to the company. So valuable that you give them a financial stake in the business through shares.
This makes employees realize that they also have skin in the game and, if they want to get better results, they have to work together and bring fresh ideas into the mix. Plus, once they are shareholders, it will be a bit more difficult for them to leave and look for greener pastures. Sure, you can’t force anyone to stay, but they’ll think twice before abandoning the ship.
How can you recognise your employees?
Work recognition is the force that drives us forward when nothing seems to be effective anymore. And this force becomes even stronger when our work is recognized by a peer or a superior we respect.
This is why businesses need to focus more on delivering praise where it’s due and forging strong interpersonal relations between employees and employees and managers.
