Employee Recognition Awards: Bragging Rights and Bling

Recognise your staff

If you read blogs and books about staff engagement, sooner or later they will tell you that:

• The most motivational thing you can do for your employees is thank them
• Money isn’t a motivator
• Recognition should be timely
• Recognition should be targeted

All good advice but boring.

How about adding:

Recognition should be so bling, so innovative and exciting that it  gives the employee something he can tell his friends and family about. (Brag about, let’s be honest)

Here are a handful of examples:

• At AT&T employees are invited to be actors in their commercials
• The bank, First Chicago, reprints letters complimenting employees on their customer service in its monthly magazine
• Hewlett Packard has a Golden Banana award for the most inventive employees
• President Clinton sent a pink rose and card signed by himself and Hilary to every member of staff in the White House after his first 100 days in office, just to say thank you
• Walt Disney grants an extra five minute break or “candy bar” to the employee who finds the customer who has travelled furthest to be in the amusement park
• Asda stores has a company Jaguar that is awarded to the member of store staff who generated the biggest uplift in sales
• McDonalds provide “golden arches” jewellery to employees who deliver outstanding service
• Delta airlines let their flight crew choose from 15 different uniforms
• Domino’s pizza hold company Olympics.  Events include: dough making, vegetable slicing and accounting.
• And finally, for those who say money doesn’t help, when J Pierpont Morgan (of JP Morgan fame) died he bequeathed a year’s salary to each of his employees.  Quantity has a quality all of its own.

I hand out thank you cards.  Maybe I should take some of my own medicine.

What could you do that would give your employees bragging rights?  Go on, bling it up.  I dare you.

Image by Foxtongue

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