One of the best ways to recognize employees is through having an employee awards program that celebrates the behavior you want to promote in the workplace. Not only does it give you a chance to reward employees, it also shows the rest of your company what you’re hoping to get out of all employees.
That’s what we recently set out to do when launching the Corporate Humor Awards. We sought to celebrate individuals and organizations using humor to improve their work while at the same time promoting humor in the workplace.
Whether as part of an existing rewards & recognition event, or as a standalone event, hosting your own employee awards has a three key benefits:
3 Reasons to Create an Employee Awards Program
Here’s why you should host your own employee awards:
Reason #1: To Recognize Employees Who Go Above and Beyond
An awards program creates the perfect opportunity to provide recognition for employees who are delivering exceptional value to their organization. This helps the employee feel respected and appreciated which further encourages their positive behavior to continue.
With the Corporate Humor Awards, we wanted to shine a light on individuals and groups who use humor to make the workplace more enjoyable because of the tremendous benefits of humor at work.
Reason #2: To Encourage Others to Act Similarly
Employees have a knack for doing what work gets recognized, it’s a correlation of “what gets measured is what gets done.” They see what type of work that gets applauded and think “If I want to be recognized next time, I better do that type of work.”
For the humor awards, rewarding humor not only let employees know that humor is OK, but also that it is encouraged and celebrated as a way to make an organization more effective, more productive, and more awesome.
Reason #3: To Showcase Examples that Can Be Shared and Reapplied
Awarding specific types of behavior gives employees a roadmap of the exact type of work they can do. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel with new ways to deliver exceptional value to the company–they can just mirror what they say award-winning corporate citizens doing.
One of the reasons people don’t use more humor at work is that they don’t know how. The Corporate Humor Awards showed people what type of humor is appropriate for the workplace which can help kickstart ideas for their own humor use. And even if they don’t come up with their own idea, they at least have a few ways they can blatantly steal share and reapply with their own group.
Employee Awards Program Kit
Ready to create your own employee awards program? Download the completely free Employee Awards Program Kit and start recognizing your employees today.
I like that you talked about how you can encourage other employees to act the same way with the top performers through recognition. I agree that employees who see what kind of job is being applauded can motivate them to do the same job. My brother is looking to own a business, and it’s important for him to be aware of how he can motivate his employees to do a great job. For me, proper recognition like posting the names of the top performers can be a great idea to also make your employees feel appreciated. I will make sure to share your blog with my brother.