Employee Award Ceremony Ideas That Will Delight Your Staff
As a business owner or manager, it's vital to make sure your employees feel properly recognized for all the hard work they do day in and day out. When workers see that there's more to getting the job done than simply receiving a pat on the back, they are often inspired to work harder, especially if there are incentives involved.
This kind of engagement is invaluable to meeting and exceeding individual and collective goals, and keeping the whole company's bottom line going strong. One idea that may help your business stay on a course for success is hosting an awards ceremony every so often - be it every month, once a quarter or annually. This typically ensures people are not only being recognized and rewarded for their hard work, but that everyone in attendance really gets a feel for the kind of high-quality work winners put in.
Getting it Right
When you're thinking of starting a regular awards ceremony for your employees, you must first put a corporate awards and employee appreciation program into place. This will take careful consideration, but will eventually inform both what you give out as prizes and the categories for which you award them.
As a general rule, thank you gifts will be appreciated, but there are certainly some emplopyee awards that will stick in their minds more than others. For instance, some employers like to give out gift cards to online outlets or shops in their area, but these might not be truly appreciated because they don't necessarily show that the supervisor put a lot of thought into the purchase. A tangible employee recognition gift, however, gives recipients something they can look at (such as an awards plaque) or use on a regular basis (like a branded or customized coffee mug) that will serve as a reminder of not only how hard they work, but also how much the company appreciated that effort.
On the other hand, a different type of intangible gift, such as a team lunch for an entire group that met its goals in a given period, or an extra day off for someone who went above and beyond the call of duty could go a long way as well.
5 Awards Categories to Consider
The following ideas for the kinds of award categories worth honoring at your awards ceremony are just a few examples of areas where you can start this process. While not every one may be right for your company, these awards categories are at least worth exploring:
1. Employee of the Month, Quarter or Year
While this is a fairly common type of award given out, it's nonetheless important to consider how valuable this kind of recognition can be. Perhaps the best advice here is to whittle it down from a company-wide top employee to going department by department to identify the all-around best and reward them justly. It is important to honor these employees on a regular basis.
2. Top Performers
There's a subtle but notable difference between top performers and "employee of the month" winners: The accomplishments of the former may be more quantifiable. Certainly, the latter would still hit a number of high-end benchmarks or goals, but they may have more intangibles than your best salesperson, most efficient warehouse picker or most trusted delivery driver.
With that in mind, you should strive to institute clear guidelines for this recognition program, and give all employees with quantifiable outputs the opportunity to strive for more with clearly defined incentives programs.
3. Peer recognition
While any type of employee recognition is a good one, this particular aspect of it can be especially valuable. Simply put, giving employees the chance to be recognized by the people who are in the trenches with them every single day will typically mean more than them being recognized by a manager or executive committee. The reason why is understandable enough: Peers understand more than anyone how difficult a winner's job can be, and see the impact those people have on the team on a daily basis.
All you'll need to get this award going is staff nominations or voting, and then a bit of time to tabulate the results.
4. Team Player
While not everyone can be a top performer, the employees who work hard and also help keep morale around the office high deserve recognition as well. Creating an award to celebrate the workers who contribute the most to your company culture will likely help everyone maintain a stronger connection with the people they work with every day.
5. Work Anniversaries
While this isn't necessarily an award per se, it's nonetheless important to recognize every time an employee hits a milestone with your company. Whether it's an award for serving one year, five years or even a decade, honoring the many months or more of hard work they've put in will help them feel as though their time has truly been well-spent.
5 Award Ceremony Ideas
Once you know what kinds of awards you'll be giving out, it's time to plan the presentation itself. There are plenty of ways to go with this, but the following tips should spice up most events:
1. Keep it Light - and Funny
There's little reason for this kind of work event to be a stuffy, formal affair, and if you aim to keep it light and sprinkle in some humor, you'll probably find employees have a better time. Of course, if you have it in the budget, you might even want to hire a professional emcee to really liven up the presentation but leaving things to a personable, charismatic supervisor will work as well.
2. Make it Fancy
Not that attendees will be looking to wear evening gowns and tuxedos to such an event, but giving them the chance to sit down to a nice meal or hors d'oeuvres in a fancy setting will help make the event feel a bit more special.
3. Build it into a Bigger Company Event
If you are already hosting company outings like holiday parties or summer barbecues, it might be wise to make the awards ceremony a part of those proceedings. That helps keep costs down for you, and also provides a potentially bigger and more engaged audience for the recognition that comes with the awards ceremony.
4. Put it Online
While not every employee may have the flexibility to attend an after-hours awards ceremony, many may want to check it out. If you can't guarantee full attendance - after all, some have kids' soccer games to attend, or a prior engagement they can't get out of - they can still tune in if you set up a stream of the event on your social media platforms.
Not only will employees who aren't there be able to watch the entire ceremony, but those who are in attendance may be able to later share the video of an award they received.
5. Go Off-Site
Another perfect way to make your ceremony feel a little more special is to hold it in an events space away from the office. Giving your employees the opportunity to go out together and spend some quality time in a new setting is a great way to build team chemistry as well.
As long as you're taking the opportunity to get a little creative with both the presentation ceremony itself and the actual awards you give you, your employees will likely be fully on board. Working with Successories will certainly help you achieve the latter goal, as we offer an array of customizable corporate gifts that make a great impression, and can fit just about any budget.
