Why do some leaders kill it with the employee of the month presentation while others completely drop the ball? The answer is in mastering three key essentials.
Presentation is everything
Your employees’ levels of engagement will closely mirror that of their leaders. If your team sees your recognition program as something that is important to you, it will be important to them.
Make a huge deal during your employee of the month presentation. Do it in a public setting. Use the biggest company meeting you have each month that involves the most team members. If this scenario doesn’t currently exist, create it.
Take a picture of the management team with the winning employee and their award. Pictures make awards ceremonies feel even more official, increasing the trophy value of each award & your entire recognition program. Give the employee a copy of the photo so they can remember their special day forever.
BONUS TIP: Post the pic of your employee of the month presentation to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and be sure to use @myemployees on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram so we can share it on our pages, too!
Timing is everything
The sooner your team members get their pat on the back, the more impact it will have. The reasons you recognize them will be more closely tied to the behaviors they exhibited. This goes a long way toward reinforcing that behavior.
Keeping your monthly recognition current and awarding winners as quickly as possible once the month is over maximizes the impact of your appreciation. It also proves to employees how important it is to your team’s leaders. Falling behind with your recognition program (and worse, staying behind) has the opposite effect.
Sincerity is everything
Seeing the pattern? All of these elements are crucial, and they all work together.
Sincerity is the ultimate follow-through with the ultimate payoff. In his Wall Street Journal best-seller Built to Lead: 7 Principles for Becoming a Top 10% Manager, MyEmployees CEO, Dave Long, said:
“If you show your employees that you genuinely care about them, they will appreciate you in return.”
If your leadership team invests time to set proper criteria for picking winners, measure employees’ performances, purchase awards, and set an appropriate time & place to award your winner, don’t waste all that effort by having someone casually or insincerely present your team members their awards.
Here’s a tip for painlessly achieving sincerity in your employee of the month presentation: Explain precisely WHY each person is being recognized. Getting specific makes recognition more meaningful and, when done publicly, reaffirms what it takes to win for your entire team.
Examples of employee of the month presentations done right
It’s been our pleasure to partner with some awesome leaders through the years. As a result, we’re able to share some of their employee of the month presentation examples with you!
Chili’s – Grapevine, TX
Lisa Wherry, GM at Chili’s in Grapevine, TX, posts every winner’s pic to Twitter, and tags it with @myemployees so we can retweet it to our audience.
Fulton County School Systems
Eric Flint, Coordinator for Environmental Services at Fulton County School Systems shared some pics from a recent awards presentation. Look at those smiles!
Hear what Eric has to say about the presentations, the feelings that were shared, and his excitement about the rewards program:
“Wanted to share the first round of pictures from yesterday and today. We are going around and surprising the custodial staff with the awards this week. Today was the quintessential moment for me to why we need to do this.”
Read Eric’s full letter to MyEmployees HERE.
MyEyeDr – Washington, DC Metro Area
Byron Garcia, GM for MyEyeDr in the Washington, DC Metro Area went in another direction with the recognition on LinkedIn. Byron won for Top Performing GM for District 1 so he took the opportunity to include his team in his own presentation!
These are just a few examples to get you thinking of creative ways you can amplify your employee of the month presentation. Most importantly, do what you can to make the winner feel special. After that, they’ll be twice as likely to try to win again next month.
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