The average worker today stays at each of his or her jobs for just 4.4 years. Long gone are the days when people worked for one company for 30+ years and retired when they got their gold watch. Let’s help more employees make it to their 5th anniversary with these 5 tips!

1. Peer to Peer Awards

Peer to peer awards are important for employee retention as they give workers a way to communicate and recognize each other. Peer awards don’t always have to be tied to a monetary value, it is more important that employees have an outlet for recognizing each other when someone goes above and beyond. Workers who hear from their peers that they are doing well and appreciated are much more likely to be retained.

2. Quarterly Check-ins

If you aren’t letting employees know how they are doing on a fairly regular basis, you are likely to have lower employee retention rates. People crave recognition and feedback. If someone is doing something incorrectly or performing poorly, it is best to have these uncomfortable conversations as they happen instead of waiting to divulge the truth during an annual review. Employees should be given the chance to improve their behavior once it is identified. Many of our clients hold quarterly check ins with employees, and for top performers, they may even receive a good size recognition award in the process.

3. Mentoring/Training Programs

One of the main reasons for employee turnover is being limited in a position instead of being encouraged to grow. Mentoring and training award programs will help you increase employee retention as they allow experienced workers to transmit their knowledge and help them to feel like a valuable resource. It will also help to increase the employee engagement of less experienced employees who receive the special training. No matter the level of experience, if your organization can offer continuing education opportunities, this will also help with employee retention. Many of our clients give incentives to employees who become CPR certified or earn a certification in their field of expertise.

4. Recognize & Celebrate Success

As employees reach milestones along with the organization itself, it is important to make a big deal about it. Clients of ours celebrate individual milestones like years of service, safe driving records and finishing major projects. Organizational wide celebrations usually occur when a company reaches so many hours worked with no accidents, or they reach a major milestone (50 years in business) or receive an industry award. These events are so important and everyone in the company should know about it! These situations remind people why they are working for the company and why they would want to stay.

5. Have Fun

One of the best ways to increase employee retention and engagement is to simply have fun in the office. At Awards Network, we dress up on Halloween and have fun activities all day, for example. Aside from celebrating the holidays, we have a close knit team and know when someone’s birthday is coming up or when we need to share a funny joke to lighten the mood. Especially during stressful seasons, such as the upcoming holidays, managers’ attitudes can go a long way to inspiring positivity in the workplace.

Increasing employee retention doesn’t happen overnight. But if you follow these 5 tips, you can go a long way in retaining your best employees while helping to improve your under performers. Join the movement and let’s help make more employees make it to their 5th anniversary!

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Want to plan an employee recognition program but you aren’t sure where to start? This is a common complaint for HR professionals in charge of setting up a rewards program for their organization. This infographic makes that process streamlined and easy. You’ll want to start by asking yourself if you are awarding each employee for more than one reason. We start with this questions as there is a large difference between onetime gift programs such as years of service awards and ongoing programs such as peer to peer recognition awards. Let’s take a closer look at the questions on this infographic so you can have a better understanding of why they are important.

Do you want employees to select multiple gifts?

There are two different ways an employee recognition program can be set up: one way is where employees will select one gift out of a predetermined price point. These programs are easy to budget since you know how much will be spent on each awardee. The other way is to allow employees to select multiple gifts and spend up to a certain dollar amount on their award(s). With this option, employees have more flexibility in their award options but you won’t know how much is spent until every employee places an order.

Would you like people to earn points that can be saved or spent?

Some companies like the idea of awarding points to employees, so that people can save their points and decide on their own when to spend them. Points based programs are also great because you don’t have a minimum award amount per se. For instance, some employee recognition program providers may allow you to recognize an employee without an award, and if you do want to give them an award, you have to spend at least $25. Especially if you are awarding for smaller accomplishments regularly, this minimum award amount can increase your program budget dramatically. Points based programs allow you to scale the amount of the award to the measure of the accomplishment.

Would you like employees to receive a print catalog?

Depending on your employee demographics, and your employees’ comfort level with computers, you may decide to give them a physical catalog to order from. If you aren’t concerned about having a print catalog, then online only redemption options may be more suitable.

Would you like to give employees a printed recognition award?

If you are giving out an award for years of service, retirement or other more formal reasons, sometimes a keepsake packet is best. Employees can be personally presented the recognition award at an employee recognition ceremony and order their award item later on.

Do your employees have work email addresses?

The reason we ask this question is to find out if sending the employee recognition program information via email is even an option for your organization. If employees don’t have work email addresses, then having an online only program wouldn’t make sense.

Do you want the package to include a formal certificate?

Formal certificates can be a great addition to an employee recognition program. But in some cases, you may not need or want that level of formality. With any of our programs, you can leave the certificate out of the award packet.

Do you have more than 200 employees?

If you have fewer than a couple hundred employees, you may not have the need for a full online point bank program. These types of programs often require dedicated time and budget in order to be successful.

There you have all the questions you need to answer to find out what kind of employee recognition program is best suited for your organization. Now that you know what kind of program you need, get in touch with our team of experts to get your employee recognition program in place quickly!

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In any given work day, many situations arise when you say “thank you” to an employee or co-worker. However, sometimes a more than just a thank you is needed to match the impact of the person’s efforts. In this case, accompanying a thank you with recognition awards will provide the impression you are looking for. I’ve compiled a list of unexpected reasons you should be giving recognition awards. These are non-traditional compared to length of service and sales incentive programs, but awarding for these reasons can go a long way to improve employee engagement.

Top 10 Unexpected Reasons to Give Recognition Awards

1. Co-worker takes on your workload while you are on vacation

As I prepare for vacation this year, I am working on a list of things that my co-worker needs to look out for. It has become almost a full page and yet, I will only be out of the office for a few days! Having someone in the office that is willing to cover for me and keep up with my emails makes my vacation much more enjoyable. I will have something special planned for her when I get back and noticed that many of my clients give recognition awards to employees who cover workloads while others are on vacation. Covering your job and someone else’s is not an easy task and can result in twice as much correspondence and responsibilities. When someone does it well for you, why not show them your appreciation and reward them with recognition awards?

2. Employee accepts an extra shift, or comes in on a day off

This is a common reason for my clients with incentive programs to give employees recognition awards. I helped contribute to an article several months ago for SmartMoney.com about extreme multitasking and surviving the super job. Due to the economy, more and more employees are being asked to fill in. However, many organizations are reducing burn out with simple recognition awards and thanks.

3. Employees help decorate the workplace

I have several clients working in healthcare and specifically in nursing facilities where employees pitch in to help decorate for upcoming holidays. Often times, employees are even bringing in their own decorations or buying new ones to help spice things up. This is a fun way to make the place a little more like home for residents. To thank workers for their contributions and assistance, the human resources department hands out wallet-sized recognition awards cards entitling people to a small gift of their choice.

4. Someone assisted you in a project

How often do you start a project only to realize there is no way to meet a deadline without help? For many clients, this does not happen too often but when it does, recognition awards representing gratitude is in order. Whether a coworker helps you to do research or finalize your project to meet a deadline, thanking him or her will make it much more likely for you to count on their teamwork skills again in the future.

5. One of your employees implements their idea that improves the workplace or reduces costs

A lot of my clients give recognition awards out to employees with ideas that help to reduce costs or make the work place greener. Depending on the situation, my clients have used different levels of recognition awards. One of my clients has given out a recognition award worth over three thousand dollars for a cost savings idea that resulted in savings of over fifteen thousand dollars. Typically, clients will give employees a reward proportionate to the savings or impact.

6. Employee takes the lead on a new initiative

Sometimes in a meeting, an employee will grab onto a proposal and take complete ownership of seeing it through, even if it means the project is worked on outside of business hours. One of the attributes that many of my clients love to recognize and reward is proactive behavior. Go-getters should receive special recognition awards when they volunteer to work on a project from start to finish despite the extra work load it means they take on. Rewarding this passion and behavior will ensure that the effort was worthwhile and meaningful.

7. Worker helps to eliminate an unsafe work situation

Safety in the workplace is a major concern for employees and when workers can help to make things safer, often recognition awards are involved. The clients I have that are focused on safety will recognize and reward employees for pointing out unsafe conditions, reporting near misses, proposing corrective action and more. Safety recognition awards are often presented in front of other workers and even reported in company newsletters. Employees can prevent injuries and even fatalities by reporting and eliminating unsafe situations. These employees often receive safety recognition awards valued at over $50.

8. One of your employees steps in and goes above and beyond his/her job description

I see a lot of clients rewarding employees for assisting others and helping to create a friendly, teamwork-focused environment. You can reinforce this positive behavior by providing recognition awards to those who demonstrate your core values and help to shape the overall attitude in the workplace. By giving recognition awards, you will encourage individuals to keep helping in the future.

9. Employees help to organize recognition for coworkers

Birthdays, anniversaries, retirements and new babies are all occasions in which your employees may organize an informal party or luncheon. Sometimes not so happy events occur and your employees may work to rally together and raise funds for a coworker in need. Although your company may have a formal recognition policy in place, these occasions may not all fit into your current program and when employees work to organize something special, you should take the time to recognize this and encourage them to keep doing so.

10. When you consistently work overtime

Especially under tumultuous times as these, employees are trying to survive the workplace and just keep their heads above water. When you have people you can turn to and receive assistance to mitigate overtime and burnout, these key individuals are more than likely going above and beyond their job descriptions. Thanking these people with recognition awards they can choose can really make a difference and show that you recognize their hard work and appreciate them. It can make the time they work outside of normal hours worthwhile.

These top ten reasons to say thank you with recognition awards are very different but can occur many times throughout the year. Sometimes a formal recognition policy may not cover all of these instances but often times a peer to peer recognition program can help you and others to formally recognize and reward people for their efforts. With a peer recognition program, a website is created where people visit and fill out a short form to nominate anyone else in the organization. Sometimes a company will give each individual a set amount of points that can be given as rewards. In other peer programs, people can submit as many nominations as they want but they go through an approval process where a committee decides on the amount of the award. When you fill out the recognition form, there are multiple reasons to select for the nomination and a place to explain the reason behind the nomination. Once the form is submitted and/or approved, the nominee is instantly notified. Notices are often colorful eCards that can be printed and displayed around the employee’s work space. Peer to peer recognition programs are a great way to keep people recognizing others and thanking them along with a recognition award.

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Did you know that worldwide, 63% of employees are not engaged at work? Employee engagement has been a major issue for businesses and been in the spotlight for years. Yet many businesses choose to do nothing and suffer the consequences. There are two choices for HR managers, to do something or do nothing about employee engagement. Let’s take a deeper look at both options.

Working to Foster Employee Engagement

There are many benefits of employee engagement including:

• High quality customer service
• Better employee retention
• Increased employee productivity
• Raised customer loyalty
• Better growth
• Increased profits

Recognition and reward programs are one of the best ways to increase employee engagement. Managers need a process in place for consistently recognizing and rewarding employees who demonstrate desired behaviors and go above and beyond. In fact, companies with recognition programs have 14% better employee engagement on average. Although there are many factors that go into having engaged employees, like opportunities for growth, employees who are recognized will feel more engaged at work.

Doing Nothing to Foster Employee Engagement

If you don’t specifically target employee engagement as an initiative, you may be just fine. Or you could end up with high turnover, low customer satisfaction and employee productivity could take a dive. It is amazing to think how much turnover alone costs US businesses each year: $11 Billion (yes, Billion with a capital B!). Turnover isn’t the only cost you could be incurring though. When employees are engaged, you may be able to increase discretionary effort. This term means how quickly people work, how often they take breaks or chat with co-workers. Business Journal earlier this year cited a study in which companies with engaged employees had 21% higher productivity. That’s like getting an extra day a week from each engaged employee!

There seems to be an attitude that low employee engagement is just the status quo in certain industries. That it is unavoidable and inherent in the industry. This just isn’t true! A recent study in the UK evaluated brands based on their actions, recommendations and engagement. Here were the results:

• #1-Cadbury (Manufacturing/Retail/Food Industries)
• #2- John Lewis (Retail Industry)
• #3- Amazon (Retail Industry)
• #4- Weetabix (Food Industry)
• #5- PayPal (Tech/Retail Industries)

In the US, there are many brands that stand out as having highly engaged employees. Costco, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks are all at the top of the list and all have happy, engaged employees working for them.

As we approach the end of the year, are you thinking about what you are going to do about employee engagement in your own workplace? What will happen next year if you decide to do nothing?

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I’ve identified 5 major trends this year for years of service awards programs. These trends reflect the emergence of technology and automation in the HR field. They also reflect the importance of timely recognition to a diverse workforce.

Top 5 Trends of 2014 for Years of Service Awards Programs

Trend #1: Recognition Right on Time

Did you know that 70% of employees are recognized once a year? Many companies are using automated years of service awards platforms to schedule recognition emails. This ensures each employee is recognized on their actual anniversary date, first thing in the morning. How great would it be for you to come into work, and see an email waiting for you already? Recognition right on time is an important trend this year, I don’t see it going away any time soon.

Trend #2: Service Award Info is Sent Online

According to a WorldatWork.org survey from last year, 73% of award program information is sent via email.  It isn’t just the convenience of email that makes this popular. Papers tend to get shuffled around and lost, but emails with ordering instructions can be saved/printed/filed and overall kept so that more people redeem their years of service awards. However, managers are still taking the time to recognize their employees for their years of service awards in person. It is important to employees that they be recognized by a manager or company leader, depending on the employee’s position. If you have an annual award ceremony, or plan on celebrating years of service awards publicly, ask employees first. Not everyone wants their moment in front of a group.

Trend #3: Recognition is Impacting Job Performance

Recognition and employee engagement are closely tied together. In fact, 55% of employees agree that the quality of their company’s recognition efforts impacts their job performance. There are many other factors that can increase after an employee recognition program is put in place, as noted by SHRM in 2012. Recognition and feedback is especially important to Millennials, who constitute a large portion of the working population.

Trend #4: Early Service Awards

I think 2014 will be remembered as the year people started figuring out that each years of service award matters, not just the milestones. 88% of organizations have recognition programs in place, and almost all of these programs are for years of service awards. If you are only awarding employees for 5, 10, 15 years, etc, then employees are only getting recognized once every 5 years. This is not enough recognition to impact employee engagement and productivity in the long term.

Trend #5: Recipients Select Multiple Awards

When it comes to the perfect years of service awards, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. In fact, giving employees a wide range of price points and choices can help to make sure each person finds the service award that is perfect for himself/herself. This year more than ever, HR managers are giving employees a number of credits that can be spent on a wide variety of gifts. If an employee is given $200 in credits, they may get one $200 gift, or select 2 $50 gifts and a $100 gift-it is up to each person how to spend the credits.

There you have it: the top 5 trends of service awards programs in 2014. What trends are you seeing? How do you recognize years of service? Looking forward to hearing your feedback in the comments section below.

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1. Top sales people may hold off on closing a deal until the sales incentive program kicks off.

Problem: When the start of a new sales incentive program is approaching, sales people tend to hold off on closing a deal so that it can fall under the new incentive program and benefit them more. This happens especially if the sales person has already exceeded their sales quota for the current period.

Solution: If you set your goals and tier them, then you can avoid the problem. Let’s say for a given sales incentive program, you award sales people who improve by 10% or more currently. Once sales people get to 10%, they may hold back on new sales if a new period is starting soon. You could structure the program so that there is an additional award for employees who improve by 20%, 15% and 10%.

2. Incentives target the top 20% of sales people who bring in 80% of sales.

Problem: Incentives are often targeted at the top 20%, when they should be targeted at the 80% who could have more of an impact on overall sales. This is called the Pareto Principle and comes up in sales incentive programs and many other instances.

Solution: Develop goals that target your top sales people and challenge them to perform better. Then create separate goals for middle or under-performing sales people to help them improve performance. A sample of this may be to challenge sales people to improve on their previous year, same quarter sales figures by more than 15%, between 10-15% and between 5-10%. This helps sales people to compete against themselves instead of each other and can lead to an overall boost in sales.

3. Goals based off of results that aren’t always under a sales person’s control.

Problem: Sales people can’t always control how much budget a client has. They also can’t control the quality of the leads coming in. So why are incentive programs often structured around these metrics?

Solution: Reward people for their activities, the tasks they complete that lead to better sales. If sales people are making phone calls, holding web conferences and answering emails all in a timely manner, then sales are bound to follow. If you have a sales person who goes above and beyond for a potential client, you should have a way to recognize them on the spot through the sales incentive program.

4. The incentives people earn aren’t always desirable.

Problem: It is difficult to provide a one-size-fits-all sales incentive program that will engage all employees. As an appliance sales person in college, I was once awarded a frozen package of steaks. I appreciated the gesture, but since I am a vegetarian my family got to enjoy the reward instead of me enjoying it.

Solution: Include a wide mix of price points and types of gifts such as merchandise, travel, experiences and gift cards. If you partner with an experienced sales incentive program provider, you will have access to a lifestyle catalog that includes a wide variety of incentives. Rewards providers are experienced in what is trending and popular among different demographics to ensure you are offering the latest and greatest gifts to your sales people.

5. People receive recognition only once a year.

Problem: Sales people work throughout the year, and yet they only receive recognition and rewards at the end of the year. Employee engagement may rise just after the New Year, but slowly dissipates as the recognition becomes a distant memory.

Solution: Split up the annual bonus into goals throughout the year. If you provide multiple ways people can earn incentives and be recognized throughout the year, you will be more likely to engage them and retain your top sales people.

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5 Tips from Recognition School

Ask employees

Not sure where to start an employee recognition program? One the of the best places to start is by asking employees how they would like to be recognized. You can recognize employees for different reasons, in public or private, at different times of year with different recognition awards. Don’t let employees fool you by saying they would like cash for their recognition award though. Cash is often lumped into pay and can become an entitlement instead of a lasting reward. Sit at the front of the classroom in recognition school, and start asking questions. You may be surprised to find your employees raising their hand and lending you their opinions.

Develop your plan

Let’s review a little vocabulary lesson in this session of recognition school. There are two types of recognition you need to be aware of: on the spot recognition and measured recognition. On the spot recognition happens, you guessed it, on the spur of the moment. Managers should have a way they can recognize employees on the spot by giving them a slip of paper or sending an email with recognition details. Measured recognition can be anticipated though, like anniversary, retirement, safety and other awards.

Make a budget

In recognition school, you won’t have to hone your long division skills, but some calculations can help you make a budget. Your budget should be a happy medium between what your employees asked for, the different awards you want to award and the budget you can allot. We often recommend about $200 per employee per year. This can include service awards and on the spot awards. If you are awarding for safety or sales too, this budget should increase to closer to $500 per employee per year. If this isn’t in your recognition program budget for the year, find out why it should be. If it still isn’t possible to get additional funding, research shows that recognizing consistently is more important than recognizing just once a year. In other words, put your money towards on the spot recognition and it will go further than just rewarding for service awards.

Design your materials

Was anyone else’s favorite part of school art class? Here in recognition school, you may be able to use your creativity skills to design your recognition materials. (If you’re not feeling crafty, please download our free recognition letter and certificate templates!) Recognition programs can be completely online/electronic, completely in print or a mixture of both. If you partner with a recognition company like ours, you should be able to get custom recognition materials for free. Try to include the employee’s information on the recognition materials like their name, achievement and date of the award. It is always great to get the company president or head manager to sign or send the materials.

Recognize employees fairly and consistently

If you learn nothing else in recognition school, i.e. this article, please be sure you are recognizing employees fairly and consistently. If two employees do similar activities that deserve rewards, your recognition program should be designed to award them the same way. One person shouldn’t end up with a $50 dart board and the other end up with a $1500 couch. To be consistent, employees who are actively going above and beyond should be receiving recognition regularly throughout the year, not just on their service award anniversary or during their annual review. Recognition can range from receiving a thank you note or email to receiving a very substantial gift.

Recognition school is out for the day! That was easy, wasn’t it? Much better than college algebra, that is for sure. Yet often recognition programs seem like this unknown monster that lurks in the corner of the HR person’s office waiting to be dealt with. If you pace yourself by taking on one tip per week, you can still get your recognition program started in about one month!

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Top Employee Appreciation Ideas for Independence Day

Don your Red, White & Blue

A lot of a person’s mood can be determined by what one wears. When our office dresses up for different occasions, I’ve noticed everyone is in a lighter, happier mood. To entice people to participate, give an employee appreciation award to the person voted with the most patriotic outfit. You can also spruce up a common area such as a hallway or break room with patriotic decorations.

Put Together Patriotic Games

I have a few employee appreciation ideas for Independence Day games:

• American History Trivia
• Bingo
• Bean Bag Toss Games/Cornhole
• Frisbee
• Baseball

Huffington Post has 11 different games you can pay to help foster some employee appreciation during the day.

Think Healthy with Red, White & Blue Foods

A great employee appreciation idea for Independence Day is to bring in food with red, white and blue. There are a lot of healthy choices (think fruit) in these categories. Pasta salads, chips and salsa, green salads and jello can also feature red, white and blue colors. During college, I worked at a big box retailer and our store manager would man the grill during the 4^th of July to provide employees with burgers, hot dogs and even vegetarian options. I really liked this employee appreciation idea from eHow.com: if you have an open, flat roof, hold a building party so other people can join in. It might be a great networking opportunity and can help you get familiar with your business’ neighbors. If you have a potluck, be sure to bring in a few employee appreciation awards to hand out to people who brought in the favorite healthy food to share.

Award Employees with Patriotic Themed Gifts

In addition to traditional tchotchkes you may want to hand out on Independence Day, there are other employee appreciation ideas you can use to reward employees. Some of our clients give away items such as bicycles, gas grills and iPads in a raffle. Other clients will award winners of different games or contests with gift cards from nationwide retailers.

It is tough having to work on Independence Day while a lot of Americans will be at home or with friends and family celebrating. Employers can make the day a little easier by implementing some of these employee appreciation ideas. They are all a great way to interact with your employees and get people talking with each other-all of which can lead to better employee engagement.

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