Showing Employee Appreciation: What You Need To Know

It takes a lot of effort to run a business, and not all of this is done by you as the owner. Instead, the vast majority will come from your employees. They’ll be passionate about your company, but that passion can deteriorate over time. At some point, they’ll stop caring.

They could end up doing lower-quality work, and might even end up looking for a job elsewhere. Showing employee appreciation is an effective way of avoiding this. It shows employees you care about them and the work they do, making it vital for running your business.

It often isn’t the easiest thing to figure out, however. How do you show your employees you appreciate them? Thankfully, there are a few ways you can get this done.

Why Show Employee Appreciation

Before diving into how you can do it, it’s worth looking at why showing employee appreciation is important. It offers more than a few benefits, many of which can be felt business-wide. They’ll be more than worth the time and effort you put into showing you care about employees.

Some of the more notable of these include:

• Building trust between your employees and company
• Boosting productivity and making employees more engaged
• Preventing a lot of staff turnover
• Improving brand reputation and making it a more appealing place to work

Each of these can be felt company-wide, making them appealing. By showing employee appreciation, your company will see multiple benefits. It’s worth diving into how you can achieve this. Five strategies stand out with this, as they’ll be some of the more effective ways to show your employees you care about them.

While it takes time and effort, the benefits are more than worth it.

Showing Employee Appreciation: 5 Top Strategies

1. Celebrate Birthdays

Everybody wants to feel special on their birthday, and it’s normally their friends and family that make them feel that way. They’re not the only people who can, however, as you and your company can do it too. You can help your employees celebrate their birthdays in more than a few ways.

A surprise birthday cake can be one of the easiest, as well as one of the more obvious. It could be worth going a step or two further by having a small party and getting catering. While this could end up being a lot of work when you have multiple employees, it can be great for smaller teams.

2. Make A Day Of It

Making a day to celebrate employees and show you care about them is one of the more effective strategies you can use. Celebrating their birthday is one of the more obvious ways to do this, but it’s far from the only way. 

Holding award ceremonies and similar events can be great employee appreciation day ideas, but there are countless others you can choose from. By putting effort into this, you show your employees you really care about them.

While this takes time to plan, the benefits alone should be more than worth it.

3. Create A Recognition Program

Showing employee appreciation can seem relatively complicated, as you’ll need to figure out how and when to show this. One of the more practical strategies you can use is to have a recognition program. It’ll be a clear way for you to figure out what gets recognized and appreciated, while responding accordingly.

You can even have your employees involved in the creation of this program to make sure it’s as fair as possible. Verbal recognition will be a decent part of this, but you’ll also need to consider tangible rewards while developing a clear path to earning these awards.

While you can always build surprises into the employee recognition program, you’ll need to have some framework in place from the beginning. Be sure to keep employees involved throughout this process.

4. Sponsor Volunteer Opportunities

Everyone likes to give back to the community and society, but few people have the time to do so. It could be worth looking into whether your employees would like to help their communities more and seeing if there’s something you can do about it.

Paid time off specifically dedicated to volunteering and helping communities can be a great way to show employees you care. It lets them give back when they want to without needing to take unpaid time off for it.

At the same time, it could be worth sponsoring charitable events your employees take part it. It’ll not only show employee appreciation, but could also be an effective way to improve your branding.

5. Have A Gamification System

A gamification system can come across as similar to an employee recognition program, but there are multiple differences between the two. The first can be worked into the second. A gamification system lets employees earn points based on certain tasks or duties.

Doing this with unassigned tasks - duties that aren’t specific to certain employees - can be easily done. These can be tasks that go above an employee’s core duties, with the gamification system serving as encouragement to get them done.

Assign points to each task, and let employees build up their points over time. They can then cash these out for specific rewards in time. Vacation days and pay bonuses can be some of the more notable rewards your employees could be eligible for.

It gives them a reason to go above and beyond while showing them you care.

Showing Employee Appreciation: Wrapping Up

Showing employee appreciation is vital to making sure your company runs properly. It avoids employees wanting to leave or doing their jobs poorly. It doesn’t have to be complicated to show your employees you care about them, however. By using a few simple strategies, you can do it quickly and easily.

Having a system, making a day out of it, sponsoring volunteer activities, and several other employee recognition ideas can all be effective ways of doing this. While they’ll take a bit of time and effort, the benefits you’ll see because of it are worth it. You’ll have a more cohesive and happier workforce than you would’ve thought.

Image Credit: Lukasbieri from Pixabay.