When you’ve worked hard on a project, nothing feels better than having someone acknowledge your success. A simple compliment can help you feel appreciated and valued and can even increase your productivity in the future.
Employees, especially millennials, are driven by positive encouragement. One of the biggest issues with employee-employer relationships is that employees don’t feel valued. These simple tips can help you, as a boss or manager, make your workplace better for your employees, just by acknowledging their success or hard work.
Change Company Attitudes
If you want to create a positive work environment, then the first thing you need to do is change your or your company’s attitude. If you view your employees’ hard work as “just doing their jobs” then you’re going to have a lot of uninspired, unappreciated employees. Instead of seeing your employees’ perseverance as “just doing their job” look at what they’re helping you accomplish.
Every time an employee goes above and beyond, you win. You get a little bit closer to your dreams because your employees are working hard. Acknowledging success isn’t a weakness on your part. It’s a way to make your business more successful.
Reward Hard Work
When an employee goes above or beyond what is asked, show your appreciation through a reward. You can set up a system with rewards as employees hit certain marks, or give a reward when a particular employee is doing a great job and you want them, and their coworkers, to acknowledge their success.
Here are a few ideas for rewards
- Certificates: It’s simple easy and really only costs the price of paper and ink.
- Gift Cards: A $10 gift card to a local hot spot is fairly inexpensive but shows you really do appreciate hard work.
- Cash: A little bonus on a paycheck is great, but so is a Visa card.
- Food: If you want to recognize your team’s success then go with food. It’s easy to have lunch for your team or company catered.
- Company swag: You probably have promotional items sitting around, so give some to your employees when they’ve earned it. Just keep in mind that a promotional frisbee, probably doesn’t show how well they’re doing. Think of something that’s actually useful.
Pay Compliments
A reward is a great way to acknowledge milestones, but it may be too much on a day-to-day basis. The easiest thing you can do as an employer is to pay your team compliments.
Paying someone a compliment helps in numerous ways.
- Increases confidence: When an employee is unsure of how well they might be doing it can cause them to make more mistakes. Compliment them on their job and give them the confidence to succeed.
- Boosts productivity: Employees who receive compliments on their efforts are more likely to continue to work hard. On the opposite side, when employees work hard but never receive praise they feel unappreciated and begin to slack off.
- Builds trust: Complementing people helps show that you care and when your employees know that you care they’re willing to talk to you when they face a problem, instead of trying to place blame on someone else.
- Create positivity: If you’re working to build a positive work environment then create a culture of complimenting. When you compliment your employees, they’ll begin to compliment the coworkers. A team that gets along and looks for the good in those around them will automatically create a great working environment.
There are even studies that show paying your employees compliments can be as effective as offering a cash incentives.
Read the other posts in this series:
Offer Developmental Opportunities
