How To Say “Thank You” To Your Employees
Life is difficult, and the daily grind will wear a person down. Ideally it smoothes off the rough edges in a personality, leaving a stone beautiful as a jewel. But if you’re not careful, you can see it totally break the mental granite of your employees, and that’s bad for everybody. People get worn out. They hit limits. This is especially true in the modern working atmosphere.
A corporation need not, and really shouldn’t, treat its employees like statistics; but the way the world works today, many businesses do exactly that. Sometimes an HR director is hired just for their ability to fire a person—there’s a whole King Of The Hill episode lampooning this corporate reality. Dale Gribble is hired to fire people, and loves it.
You shouldn’t try to squeeze your investment out of them then forget you’ve employed them. Even those employees who aren’t your best have original thoughts, and are a very real asset to your company. You want to position them so they’re in the most useful spot. When they can better themselves, they better your business. Employee recognition can facilitate that.
For employees to be the most useful, you’ve got to find what they’re good at and encourage them in that area. You need to encourage them to flourish much how a gardner husbands flora. Appreciation can help them feel seen, and as though what they do is important. At the very least, you’ve got to show your employees that to you, they are more than a statistic. Following will be a few strategies for employee appreciation you might consider.
- Recognize Good Work In Front Of Everyone
When an employee goes above and beyond, handles a difficult client, makes a wise decision, helps increase productivity through some clever tactic, or anything that bears recognition, be sure and recognize that employee. Do it publicly, in front of the whole staff. Maybe even call a special meeting; or at the very least, if there are company-wide get-togethers, take time to recognize this achiever.
An award would be appropriate here, and lend the event tangibility extending its impact through increased conscious remembrance down the line. A fine gold trophy for the top-tier achievers makes sense. So does awarding employees something like a challenge coin from Embleholics. Figure out what works for you, and how best to recognize your staff.
- Incentivize Through Reward—Like Schedule Choice; Do So Visibly
If employees do well and awarding them in front of everyone isn’t appropriate for one reason or another, take them into your office and give them a choice of reward. Maybe you let them pick their schedule.
Maybe you give them a slight raise, if that’s appropriate. Generally it’s better to let such reward be publicly recognized by your staff, but this isn’t always the right thing—sometimes a savvy action of an employee saves management from a political gaffe that would do no good to draw attention to. Use discretion.
- Promotion
Promoting employees is one of the clearest and most effective forms of recognition. It’s best to couple promotion with a raise, but not always necessary. You could increase benefits packages, give employees schedule choice, or shift around responsibilities so that they’re able to work less but take the same pay. It depends on the employee and your resources.
Recognition Yields Productivity
When you recognize employees they feel more secure in the positions they occupy. This leads them to naturally give more energy to the job at have, repetitive though it may be. Find ways of recognizing your employees wherever it makes sense to. Telling them “thank you” is good, but people like to be shown, rather than told. So show them.
