Does your team need a motivating boost? Maybe your office has been low-energy lately. You might have missed a goal, and your team is feeling down about it. Perhaps the winter chill has made its way into your office morale.

It’s time to make a comeback. Even if your day-to-day business has been running smoothly, the last few years have been draining on the world. You may be looking for a reason to bring a little brightness back into your employees’ work lives.

Of course, low morale isn’t the only reason to reward your employees. Even if your team is on fire, you’ll want to keep that positive attitude going and build upon your momentum.

In a world that isn’t slowing down, it’s important to take the time to make employees feel valued for their positive contributions to their teams and the business at large.

A one-time gesture isn’t going to keep your employees happy forever. Let’s talk about how you can establish employee appreciation practices as a permanent page in your company playbook.

What Are the Risks of Unhappy Employees?

According to PR Newswire, 59% of employees experienced burnout in 2022. Those who are fighting burnout report lower job satisfaction and unhappiness with their work/life balance. It also influences how they see management, with 47% of burnt-out staff members believing their employers don’t care about them. Managers are seeing this and responding.

It’s more than doing the bare minimum to make sure your employee doesn’t take an extra day off due to workplace stress; it’s about bettering the employee experience from the inside out.

What Are the Psychological Benefits of Feeling Valued?

REPLACE WITH IMAGE

While working styles can be vastly different within teams, every employee has one thing in common: They feel valued when they’re recognized for their work.

Benefits of making your employees feel valued include:

• Increased employee engagement
• Better quality work and higher productivity
• Positive effect on workplace culture

Need real-world proof? Take the findings of a study by Harvard Medical School and researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, for example.

Researchers divided university fundraisers into two groups at random. The control group made phone calls to solicit alumni donations with no change from their usual workflow. The second group got a pep talk from their director, who said she was grateful for their hard work.

The employees who received that pep talk made 50% more calls than the employees in the control group.

The bottom line? Appreciation makes a big difference!

What Are the Best Ways to Reward Employees?

Ready to start showing your employees how much you care? First, we have to review the dos and don’ts of how to show appreciation.

Don’t

• View expressing appreciation as a box to check off on a to-do list: Employees will see right through an ingenuine gesture.
• Use gag gifts or inappropriate items as rewards: When in doubt, don’t do it. You can always consult your HR department if you’re unsure about a gift or reward you’d like to give.

Do

• Include a note: A thank-you note with a reason why recognition is being given shows genuine effort. With Prezzee, you can write a note or send a personal video Describing what about their hard work deserved the spotlight. This shows that you pay attention to the details.
• Pair with a healthy work-life balance: If providing a gift, encourage your employee to use their gift during the workday. For example, if they received a membership for a meditation app, make it clear they are welcome to use it during work hours. This will solidify the message that their time and well-being are priorities.

Rewards Are Better Than Awards

Stick to rewards, not awards. Sometimes, awards given to a minority of employees can make those who were not acknowledged feel inadequate and defeated.

Look for ways to regularly recognize and reward instead so your team can understand their actions' direct causes and effects. This will benefit you more in the short and long term than awarding a few awards that might feel more subjective.

Establishing an Employee Recognition Program

Gifts and celebrations aren’t just for the holidays. One way to combat burnout and boost employee morale is to increase efforts to make your team feel valued.

Consider breaking up the everyday monotony by creating an employee recognition program to celebrate the accomplishment of team goals; individual contributor wins, and even random gestures. A little employee recognition can go a long way — Gallup reports that with regular recognition, employee engagement levels quadruple, and teams are happier as a whole.

Recognition Occasions

Employee recognition doesn’t always have to be a result of meeting a goal or obtaining a new client. Think outside of the box when finding reasons to create a special day in your employee’s career.

Consider the following reasons to show appreciation to an employee:

• Celebrate work anniversaries: Remember to acknowledge when each employee completes a new year with your company. While someone’s first year is the most common time to celebrate, keep in mind how important each career stage is for your employees. Keep the journey at your company exciting by emphasizing the significance of each step.

• Make onboarding a success: A positive first impression can have a lasting impact. Researchers found employees stuck around for three or more years if they experienced a top-notch onboarding.

Don’t just make onboarding clear and easy to follow — truly celebrate it! Take the time to introduce your newest team member and let everyone know how excited you are about this new hire. If you can, put together a welcome kit with everything they need, including some fun extras like an eGift card for dinner tonight to celebrate their first day.

• Important milestones: When the goal is to recognize your employees, anything can be worth celebrating. Did a teammate learn a new program after training and complete their first day using it independently? Hand out eGift cards to Krispy Kreme for a celebratory round of celebratory Starbucks coffee or tea for that person’s team for showing them the ropes.

• Behavior that creates positive company culture: Keep an eye out for employees who go above and beyond with their teammate interaction and the positive values they bring to the company. Use their actions as a star example of how coworkers should treat and work harmoniously — and supportively — with each other.

What Are Some Effective Employee Recognition Ideas?

REPLACE WITH IMAGE

You can create a lot of buzz with small actions. Don’t start off immediately with rewards as the first step in employee recognition; this jump can cause the occasion to become expected and dilute in impact.

It’s better to introduce routine recognition practices to establish a constant beat of encouragement. Think of it as a constant drip of praise versus a firehose of rewards that can quickly lose meaning.

Below are a few ideas to get you started:

Shout-outs

If your week begins with a huddle with team members, consider making shout-outs a tradition to highlight wins. If not, a team slack shout-out will do just fine! Not only will this action give employees a boost of motivation for the day, but it will also encourage good work.

Wall of Fame

Convert a blank wall at the office into a Wall of Fame area. Have employees nominate others to have their framed photo added to the wall at the end of the year. Peer-to-peer recognition is extremely meaningful and should be encouraged as much as manager praise.

As a bonus, you can ask employees to provide shots of themselves showing off their personality for the Wall of Fame portrait. To make it more inclusive, take away the nomination factor and make it more people-centric. Put everyone up on the Wall of Fame with a self-submitted fun fact about the individual under the photo.

If you have fun with it, you’ll set an example that your teams can enjoy work, too.

What About Remote Workers?

Recognition ideas can be done for work-from-home employees as well: Anything can be virtual. You can even use LinkedIn as a recognition platform to take praise externally with a positive employee review or a post on company-wide social media platforms.

Public recognition will be felt as a high honor for your employee because you want to show off your team’s talent.

What Are the Best Employee Rewards Ideas?

In today’s fast-paced climate, what better message to send your employees than taking the time to highlight their wins — especially with rewards? After recognizing a deserving employee or team, keep the productive momentum going with the next step in positive reinforcement: a reward.

First, here are a few tips to consider while implementing new office reward programs:

• Show praise earnestly: Reward with intention. When thinking through gifts to offer as appreciative gestures, consider what problems they could face during the work day and how you could solve them. Make the experience emotional, not transactional.
• Make it personal: Step up your game by personalizing the reward. We’re not talking about a desk nameplate. You can send a uniquely-you eGift card with Prezzee Business. Prezzee Business allows senders to send eGift cards in bulk, customized with your corporate logo or a personalized video.
• Be meaningful but not hyper-specific: Avoid the stress of fearing your reward will fall flat upon receiving by staying away from niche gifts and brands. Stick to universally needed gifts that work for all your employees. Plus, with digital gift cards, you’ll never have to worry about packages getting lost in the mail. Concerns like changes of addresses or shipping problems simply vanish.

With those tips in mind, let’s dive into five reward options that can motivate employees to do great work:

Incentive Programs

While a gift is an example of a reward system for good work, an incentive is a motivating factor to be part of the team that does the good work. What can you offer to bring in (and keep) great talent that other competing companies don’t have?

Examples include:

• Allowing your office to be pet-friendly
• Work-from-anywhere Fridays or half-day Fridays to encourage work-life balance
• Yearly allowances to be used toward mental and physical wellness
• Memberships to local gyms, Peloton, amusement parks (like with a Disney eGift card), or museums

Prezzee eGifts

What makes eGifts better than gift cards? eGifts are instant digital gift cards that can be sent directly to email inboxes.

Prezzee saves the day by eliminating the anxiety of the guesswork of selecting a gift. If you’re stuck between an Apple or an Uber eCard, don’t fret! The receiver can swap the value of their existing card for their brand of choice. With the 370+ brands Prezzee has to choose from, they won’t run out of options.

You can customize your card with your company, logo, or photo, but that’s not all. Personalization capabilities to attach a video, note, or GIF makes the gifting experience feel more emotional for your employees.

To get started, sign up for a free Prezzee Business account, and bring a smile to your teams’ faces today.

LinkedIn Premium Membership

Employee appreciation can come in the form of investing in an individual’s growth. Employees will cherish a professional development opportunity that will equip them with skills for career advancement.

With a LinkedIn Premium Account ($19.99/annually), employees can access LinkedIn learning with thousands of courses for them to choose from.

Company Swag

Swag can be creative gifts while still falling within a low-cost budget. T-shirts are a great blank canvas for how you can express gratitude, which can be done humorously.

Has your team shared any hilarious experiences that can be used as graphics, or share nicknames you can print across the back? Make it a one-of-a-kind trophy piece that symbolizes memories they will want to cherish forever.

Host a Company Party

One way to get coworkers to build a genuine bond and, in turn, a stronger team is the shared experience of in-person events. Hosting a company happy hour is a fun team-building opportunity as employees get to know each other better organically.

You can even level up the party with a gift drop mid-event! Use Prezzee to schedule a bulk eGift delivery to the inboxes of all attendees at any point in the party you want. You can even ask them to check their phone email on cue during a thank you speech!

Conclusion

REPLACE WITH IMAGE

Happy employees cultivate a better work environment — which creates a better company — which is the gift that keeps giving.

Receive a return on your reward investment with not just measurable business results but, most importantly, the intangible meaningful experiences of your employees.

Sources:

Employee burnout is on par with levels at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic; job performance impacted | PR Newswire

Workplace Stress - Overview | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

In Praise of Gratitude | University of Montana

Giving thanks can make you happier | Harvard Health

Is Your Industry Delivering on Employee Recognition? | Gallup

Don't Underestimate the Importance of Good Onboarding | SHRM