When you run a business, you will often need to offer employee service awards from time to time. This is one of the most effective ways of showing your members of staff that you truly do appreciate the service they offer to the company. This will then increase their morale to work harder, which will in turn benefit the company in the long run. One of the considerations you might need to make when in this position is how to ensure that giving out such awards is not only timely, but also makes sense in the eyes of the employees. One of the most critical aspects of doing this is by letting them play a role in determining how the awards are going to be given. There are a number of ways of doing this including:
Letting them decide who will win some awards
When you give the employee service awards on a regular basis, it’s normal for the employer to first find out who deserves such an award depending on the criteria that they set. The most common of these include metrics such as how much sales they have made during a certain period of the year. However, you could decide to give more than one award, and let the staff members decide who will get it. This can be done by first coming up with an award designation that the employees can get to vote on. This is usually a more or less subjective kind of category, such as the most jovial member of staff.
One of the benefits of letting the employees play a role in determining who will win what at any one time is that it gives them a sense of ownership of the awards. This in turn means that they are likely to end up looking forward to it, rather than thinking that it’s just one of the ways in which you want to control them. In many cases, it also gives the whole ceremony a sense of fun, such that they will want to take part in it actively rather than just because you asked them to.
Letting them decide where the awards can be held
One of the ways of spicing things up is by changing where you hold the awards rather than letting them be in the same place over and over again. For instance, if you normally give out staff awards during end year staff ceremonies, you could opt to ensure that you do it in a new venue every year. There are plenty of team building and conference facilities in the country, so this should not be very difficult for you to do.
Once you have selected a number of facilities that you can afford, you can then ask the staff members to then vote on which one they want to go to for the awards. This has the effect of making it a lot more fun for them, since it means that they can get to experience new locations as well. The only issue you need to keep in mind when doing this is to limit the number of choices they can make, such as by making a preapproved list and then having them vote one facility out of the list. This way, you will not be forced to rent a facility that you can ill afford.
Having them do part of the planning
One other way of involving the staff in the awarding ceremonies is by letting them be part of the planning. Issues such as what type of food will be served during the event and what activities will take place can be determined by the staff members. You can facilitate this by asking them to form committees that will handle the different aspects of the award ceremonies. This has the effect of not only making them be part of the planning process, but also reducing how much work you will need to do in planning. It also ensures that you end up with an event that the staff members will actually like since it will be in a format that they are familiar with. In the end, this will result in a better outcome for all involved.
As you can see, there are many things you can do to involve the staff members in your firm when you are planning an award ceremony. There are many other things you can do, and you only need to be creative in order to come up with more ideas. The most important thing to remember is that doing this is very important, since it reduces the risk of having the employees feel like you are lording over them. This will also go a long way in making the event feel like a lot more fun for all the employees involved.
