06 Mar 3 Best Awards for Your Best Employees

As your corporate awards night approaches, it’s time to review how to best reward your employees for their superlative achievements. If you are really serious about giving your employees what they so richly deserve, it’s important to take some time and consider exactly what will appeal to your employee’s sense of achievement.

By making a careful and considered decision about how to appeal to each employee’s individual needs, the awards night will only be a special event for them as individuals, but it will set the tone for future events and will also let your staff know that you think of them as individuals and not simply numbers. This is the most personal and effective way to reward your employees.

Here are some tips that will help you decide the best way to present an award to your staff.

• Look at the actual work that was required to achieve the standards you are going to reward. It’s easy to overlook the most difficult and specific skills that an employee has demonstrated in order to achieve something special, but when you can highlight the personal contributions made, the award takes on a special personal significance that will generate a feeling of loyalty as well as an achievement in the mind of the successful candidate.
• Look at the symbols you want to use in rewarding your employees. Sure, a trophy in the form of a winner’s cup might be something of value on the sporting field, but will apply in this situation? There is no doubt that traditional trophies still appeal to a broad section of the population, but when it comes to your corporate awards night it’s time to think about something more personal so that individual winners can receive individually tailored rewards. Maybe a book is better than a medal, or a personal organiser may be better than a cup. Whatever you decide, make sure it’s personal and to the point.
• Make Their Day. Try to focus on something that will really appeal to your employees as individuals not as normal staff members. In other words, do something out of the ordinary and make the award really special. Think about the things that are important to each recipient by finding out about their hobbies, interests and leisure time pursuits. The money you were prepared to spend on an expensive trophy might be better appreciated when it comes in the form of a contribution to their next holiday, or to the purchase of a new golf club.

When it’s all boiled down you don’t need to be a genius to come up with some ideas that will make your corporate awards night more special than it has been in the past. At the end of the night aim to have your staff leave with a smile on their face and an understanding that they are valuable, not just to your business but as individuals in their own right.