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motivate your team

Turnkey Recognition Programs: Let Your Employees Choose

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Our last blog, 6 Essential Elements of a Service Award Program, provided essential components that create motivation and show heartfelt appreciation to your employees.  We believe that these elements about service awards are also applicable to Sales and Safety awards.

Times change and so have award program.  They have evolved to make achieving these recommended elements easy for companies to offer.  As a reminder, awards should:

  • Be functional
  • Potentially suitable for use at home
  • Have recurring value
  • A high perceived value
  • And focus on specific recognition levels – meaning the award should match what the person is being awarded for!

Let Your Employee Choose

This is a tall order to fill.  How can we create a type of award that would meet all of these criteria for varying individuals with different tastes?  Today recognition programs have been designed to do just that…meet the individual’s taste by letting them choose.

Now you can create a program for your company that provides useful, useable, and desired gifts for your employees that:

  • Keep your company top of mind with logos added to the items chosen
  • Provide varying levels of merchandise values for varying levels of service or performance.
  • Are created especially for your company with materials created for you employees to choose from.
  • And service to handle all of the gift packaging and delivery.

HR Manager Benefits

Human resource managers have a huge role in every company.  They are tasked with helping operating managers recruit, onboard, pay, train, and manage benefits for all of the company’s employees.  It is logical that they would support the operating managers in employee recognition also.

The HR manager is faced with logistics challenges with the varying needs of different departments and the desire to truly please the employees with the award.  It may feel daunting.

It may also be intimidating to imagine setting up a whole turnkey program.  However, the impact to your department team will be much less in the long run and with services such as ours, we can make the program set-up as painless as possible.

Take a Peak

Just to spark your imagination, see a few pictures of the items one of our customers chose for their organization:

Jewelry is a very popular choice among employees. There are a large number of selections at different prices allowing employers to have a jewelry selection at every level of their program.

 

Turnkey Recognition Programs

An example of the items one customer chose for their 10 year service awards.  Versatile and fun for an outdoor person.

Turnkey Recognition Programs

 

Beautiful timepieces for a 40 year award.  Yes, people still stay at one company for 40 years! Or maybe they have a 40 years of safe practices and no safety incidents on their record.

Turnkey Recognition Programs

 

And charming home décor that the whole family can enjoy make for a wonderful 20 year recognition or a Top Salesperson of the Year Award.

These are just a few ideas of rich catalogues that could be created for your company and provide an organized, simple, but unique program to recognize all levels of performance and service.

There are many programs to choose from.  For more information about our Choice Program, click here or call us at (866) 924-2778.

6 Essential Elements of a Service Award Program

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Everyone desires to be recognized for their hard work. A good pat on the back for a job well done can show employees that they are truly appreciated. People thrive on recognition, and it actually can have a positive impact on a person’s self-esteem.

That’s where a Service Award Program comes into play. When structured correctly, this system will not only make employees happier, but it will actually increase their motivation to work harder. This reaction, in turn, benefits both the employee and the business by improving productivity.

 

Is A Service Award Program Right for My Business?

Personnel Journal published a survey that found that larger businesses have more budgeted for recognition and awards programs than smaller companies.  However, recognition programs are an important way for businesses, no matter the size, to show that employees are valued. Even for small businesses, awards are crucial in hiring future employees and increasing productivity in the workplace.

But how do you know what type of award will provide a return on your investment, yet satisfy the employee at the same time? And, how should this award system be structured? Let’s look at the 6 essential elements of a Service Award Program:

 

1) The Award Should Be Functional

It should serve a purpose, even if it isn’t a practical use.  And, preferably,  the award should not be something that the employee would normally buy for themselves. If the award is something that has no functionality, the value decreases. If it is something that the employee could purchase whenever they want, this also decreases the value.

 

2) The Award Should Be Suitable for Use in the Home

When the award can be used in the home, it naturally includes the employee’s family. For the average person, most of the time that they are away from their families, they are at work. Thus, the majority of the time spent away from the job is at home with the family. The goal should be to unite the employee, employer, the home, and the family through the award. Everyone is happy and it brings a personal aspect to the award that is invaluable.

 

3) The Award Should Have Recurring Value

The award should be memorable. Whenever the award is used, or noticed by a friend or family member of the employee, the original moment of receiving the recognition is remembered and valued. It needs to be something that brings pride to the employee, provoking thankfulness to the company.

 

4) The Award Should Have a High Perceived Value

The award should be something that is not easily found in a local retail store.  No matter how expensive, no award will ever equal the value an employee perceives they are to the company.  However, if it is thoughtful and matched with recognition, the perception of the awards value is much higher to the employee.

 

5) The Award Focuses the Attention on a Specific Recognition Level

If an employee received a selection brochure of multiple rewards for different levels, they naturally desire the awards of greater value. This could lead to disappointment over something that is supposed to be a positive.  Therefore, a single sheet selection system that focuses on their specific level of service is better for the employee.   They can focus on what options they have to choose from rather than what they can’t have.

 

6) The Award Must Be Something the Employee Wants

If the award is personally meaningful and desired by the employee, then it increases motivation all the more. Finding useful items or adding a monogram to enhance its’ unique value, increases the employees desire for the item.  This could be a plaque that mentions the employees name and their accomplishment, or it may just be a watch with their initials engraved on the back.  Both add personalization, meaning, and therefore, desire for the item.

A properly designed award program should bring benefits to the company, the employer, the employee, and the employee’s family. Recognition reinforces to the employee that they are an invaluable asset to the company. Positive attitudes of those in the workplace are vital to increased productivity and success of businesses, both large and small. A Service Award Program does not have to involve high cost, but rather focus on showing the employee appreciation and public recognition through a reward that they will find special.

We would love to talk to you about our available options to recognize your team. Call us at 866-924-2778 to talk to one of our staff members today!

What Does Research Say About Motivating Your Sales Team?

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If you employ people, you manage and lead people.  I believe it’s a given that managers desire to lead well and maintain a motivated, engaged sales team.

Motivated and Engaged 

These are elusive and abstract descriptions used every day for what we should look for in our organizations.  When held up against the fire of getting our jobs done and achieving results, the intangibles tend to fade on our radar.

“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”  Lou Holtz

The quote from Lou Holtz does a good job applying motivation and engagement to a given role.  But in addition to work performance, there is the resultant happiness that accompanies motivation and engagement.  Motivated and engaged people tend to be more positive and pleasant to be with; or is it the other way around?  Who cares?

We want and need motivated and engaged people in our business; the more the better.

Traditional Motivation Methods 

The two most common tools we tend to look for in affecting human performance are Compensation/Incentives and Performance Management Systems.  Both comp plans and performance management are critical elements of effective management, but in themselves fall woefully short of hitting the root of what motivates most people.

Gallup research says, “Just one out of five employees strongly agree their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.”  Gallup Blog Jan 3, 2018

Even the best design of performance management systems can only touch around the edges of what motivates any given employee.  Important, yes; sufficient, no.

There is eye-opening research surrounding behavioral effect of “carrot-based” compensation plans.  The London School of Economics analyzed 51 large company compensation plans and produced the discovery that “financial incentives … can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”  LSE: When Performance-Related Pay Backfires” Financial, June 25, 2009

Compensation and financial incentive plans can frustrate employees when too much weight is placed upon them to drive motivation.  The underlying premise that you can always do more or better if I just pay you more can send a message which undermines personal trust.  This approach implies that employees are holding back unless they get more money.  Who feels good in this view?

So The Best Way To Motivate Your Team Is? 

Behavioral scientists agree that “intrinsic motivation…. Is the strongest and most persuasive driver.”  Intrinsic motivation is often referred to as self-motivation or ambition.  David Hoffeld, The Science of Motivating Sales People, The Carrot & the Stick Must Go.

In other words, the key to motivation is understanding what makes employees want to do a good job.

The same Gallup research saying only 1 in 5 are highly motivated by their performance management also reveals some positive and actionable information.

Gallup found motivation comes from how deeply we feel connected to what we’ve created [what we are doing] and the degree to which people appreciate us.  Further, “Employees who feel adequately recognized are half as likely as those who don’t to say they’ll quit in the next year.”

Building motivation and engagement generates organizational momentum that tends to create a buzz in the culture.  Everyone feels it and most respond to it.

Great Tools for Motivation:

  • Recognition – Public celebration and appreciation of a job well done create an awards system that is available to everyone. Encourage it’s use and let your team know they are appreciated.
  • Awards – Create short cycle contests with a menu of awards for accomplishment. Flexibility in the awards reflects the personal interests of the individuals. Be consistent and realistic in setting up goals for your team.
  • Milestones – Milestones can be public or more private which may be more personal. Examples are employment anniversary awards or gifts and project completion events

Human Resource and Sales Directors often look to pay plans and performance management cycles as their key tools for building motivation for performance in their teams.  Consider the less expensive and far less ominous tools in your toolbox of recognition and awards.

Focus your attention on how you can tangibly communicate that you appreciate your employees’ efforts and nurture their intrinsic motivation to want to perform well.