Having a brilliant working record and being a constant over-achiever doesn’t mean that someone has all the leadership skills necessary to manage an entire team. Leadership skills are something that we get over time, and not exclusively and only based on experience.
Luckily enough, there are some minor hacks everyone can resort to in order to boost the morale of his team and to become well respected and trustworthy in the eyes of his peers. One of the most important thing there is in managing team is giving proper credit to the members of the team who present outstanding performance and achievement.
However, there are lots of things you need to pay attention to when rewarding your employees.
Transparency is the Key
Giving praise to outperformers is one thing, but presenting rewards that has material value is a whole other. You have to be careful when doing this as this can detriment team cohesion to a great extent and even can segregate and inflict sparks between certain members of the team.
Also, notice that rewarding single member of the team can also lead to him being dubbed as a manager’s pet and losing trust with the others. So, what you can do in order to avoid this?
One simple hack that works well for everyone is to let employees themselves decide on who has been the best. Putting the decision into their own hands will eliminate any doubt that there have been subjective reasons involved when labeling someone as an employee of the month.
Although sparks can still be present and this may lead to minor segregations inside the team, this strategy will keep team’s transparency on a high and will contribute to building on the feeling of righteousness.
Restrain From Giving Away Pricey Gifts
Rewards must be in line with employees preferences and must be valuable enough to them to keep them going and striving for perfection in everything they do throughout the week, month or a year.
Giving exclusive gifts with high material value may result in faulted results and breaking the team spirit because members of the team might want to put themselves in front of the team in order to get a prize. This has proven to be counterproductive in a way.
Therefore, giving out gifts of a less value, yet powerful enough to keep them going is always a better solution. You have to know what your employees might prefer at first. For instance, if they are overwhelmed at work, giving them an opportunity to have an extra day off when they need it might be a good idea.
On the other hand, if they are into sports you can opt for treating them with tickets to the ball game. Or you can simply present them a little something as a token of gratitude and recognition of their outstanding performance. Challenge coin for example!
As challenge coins are not exclusive to the military personnel anymore, they are rising in popularity among corporations and other non-military affiliated organizations lately. There are many companies who can design and create custom challenge coins for you. Embleholics would be a good pick if you decide to go this route!
Public Shoutout
Many factors can lure potential employees to your company. Some of them are attracted by the location of your company’s headquarters, some of them are attracted by the brand..
One way or another, if your company is big enough and has a sizeable community on social media, one way of giving praise to your employees is sharing their professional profile on company’s pages. This way they will be recognized on a global scale and not only within company’s boundaries. Something that will be beneficial to their career in many ways.
Leave a Reply