Modern Service Awards - HALO Recognition

1 Celebrating Milestones is Still a Cornerstone for Employee Recognition By Cord Himelstein, Michael C. FinaModern Service Awards | 35november 2015 workspanWe celebrate personal milestones to recognize growth, maturity and track our accomplishments. Honoring a birthday or anniversary is a time to acknowledge how far we ve come in life and our careers, which is why celebrating work milestones with Service Awards Make Awards meaningful with Modern programs. 2015 WorldatWork. All Rights Reserved. For information about reprints/re-use, email | | 877-951-919111 | 2015 The Magazine of WorldatWork 36 |workspan november 2015has become a cornerstone of employee Recognition programs.

2 Service Awards are an important part of recognizing the progress that an individual and a business have made together. These celebra-tions build strong personal bonds and help drive employee engage-ment, ultimately contributing to a company s growth and overall success. According to Bersin by Deloitte research, companies with high-performing Recognition programs are 12 times more likely to have strong business outcomes. However, while companies continue to search for new ways to celebrate a more mobile and remote workforce, Service Awards remain a foundation of Recognition and need to stay relevant. Programs can be rendered ineffective or lose their spark if they do not keep up with Modern challenges.

3 In our current work environment, there are two key factors that require special atten-tion generational demographics and remote/virtual programs use demographics, technology and leadership savvy to create memorable experiences to maximize Service award programs and include employees of all generations, whether they work in the office or ways to reinvigorate a legacy Service award program to ensure Recognition resonates with workers across multiple generations. Oftentimes a company s legacy Service award program was put into place long ago and not updated frequently enough, resulting in an outdated program that fails to connect with Modern employees, lags on the technology side, or both.

4 There are likely four different age groups within a company: Traditionalists Baby Boomers Gen-X Gen-Y/Millennials. There is a good chance of some-thing appealing to one demographic but being unappealing to another. There is also a good chance of remote workers feeling forgotten and younger workers feeling disconnected if Modern tech is not being taken advantage are some tips to keep legacy Service Awards Modern and relevant:Awareness is key. You can raise awareness by program branding, highlighting Recognition in group settings and through active involve-ment from senior management. It is best to employ all available technology to send out reminders, including communication with remote employees.

5 Social Recognition tools can be helpful as can your company s top media outlets, whether that is via email, intranet, the company newsletter, at employee orientation or through fliers around the office. Awareness drives participation. So get the word Recognition meaningful. Service Awards should be presented in a meaningful way. Take the time to review the award options and update them regularly. The rewards should reflect certain core values of the company and should be:1 | Personalized and related to the company s mission2 | Presented in a meaningful way3 | Appropriate for everybody4 | Valuable and Candle recently restructured its legacy Service award program and emphasized these same key points.

6 Over its 45-year history, the company enjoyed exponential growth, but has struggled to keep its legacy Service award program fresh and relevant for its employees. While it offered some milestone gifts that were iconic and unique to the company, a large portion of its Awards had lost the ability to generate excite-ment in its workforce. Moreover, many Service Awards were often unceremoniously dealt with through the mail, leaving the Recognition aspect out of the return the program to its best-in-class status, Yankee Candle implemented an on-site award Programs can be rendered ineffective or lose their spark if they do not keep up with Modern challenges. | 37november 2015 workspanpresentation on the day of the employee s anniversary.

7 New manager training regimens featuring easy-to-access digital tool kits for making meaningful and timely presentations turned the act of Recognition into an anticipated event in the workplace. Yankee Candle also refreshed and expanded the iconic pieces within the rewards program to make them more Modern , align with the present-day corporate image and create more diverse offerings for its multigenerational workforce. By employing its World s Best Loved Employees corporate mantra to the program for branding, the company created a unifying theme for the Service award program. The results were a more efficient and meaningful program with an extremely high participation rate.

8 But Yankee Candle HR and benefits teams are most excited that the program has become roughly 95 percent hands COMPENSATIONGLOBAL COMPEXECUTIVE COMPSALES COMPBENEFITS/WORK-LIFETOTAL REWARDS with WorldatWork Training for HR ProfessionalsPOWER UPYOUR Class Schedule Now Available! 110/7/15 8:05 AMThe key to building a strategy for recognizing virtual or remote workers is in leveraging technology and logistics to deliver the same Recognition |workspan november 2015free thanks to updated program auto-mation, resulting in time savings and peace of mind for program owners, as well as a strong sense of fairness and structure for the for involving employees who telecommute or work in remote office companies struggle to keep their Service Awards Modern , they are also confronting how to recognize the growing numbers of off-site workers.

9 The Global Workplace Analytics State of Telework in the study estimates that the demand for telework in the United States has increased 80 percent since 2005, and it s easy to see why. In addition to trimming office-related oper-ating costs, the increasingly virtual workforce has the added benefit of significantly reducing burnout and employee turnover. The key to building a strategy for recognizing virtual or remote workers is by leveraging technology and logis-tics to deliver the same Recognition experience that on-site employees get. There are three main Service award program characteristics for remote workers that help generate success:Consistency. Virtual employees should be able to enjoy the same Service Awards as site-based employees, so consistency is key.

10 If you are unable to meet in person, remind colleagues to send congratu-latory messages, recognize the individual during conference calls or have goodies or gifts delivered to their home. Some other ways to make virtual employees feel recognized could be through an e-card or social Recognition tool, or by making sure to nominate remote workers for rewards just as on-site workers would be. Communication. Be especially mindful of email communications with remote employees. It is easy to fall into a pattern of short or incomplete communication when speaking via email, especially if a manager can swing by an employee s desk to clarify any ambiguous points. But email messages can be easily misinterpreted when communicating remotely, so if trying to recognize an employee using this route, be sure the message is clear and The best Service award programs consistently and efficiently recognize their employees.