Got a recognition program? That’s great! You can recognise preferred behaviours among your workforce to create an engagement culture, regularly rewarding staff for the excellent work and progressive ideas that take your company forward – but it needs to be done with purpose.

There’s more to building engagement with incentives than churning out gifts – engaging staff from the top down will guarantee program adoption and success companywide, so making sure your managers deliver recognition enthusiastically is key. Take a look at some common mistakes to avoid.

Getting the Delivery Wrong
Standing up for a handshake and a gift presentation at the end of the meeting might be someone’s idea of recognition heaven, but to others, it might be a living hell. A successful recognition scheme is all about utilising the freedom of delivery – send a letter of congratulations, have a presentation with the top performer’s team, or make time to thank them one on one. Honouring the individual’s personal preferences is part of the recognition package.

Non-Specific Praise
One guiding principle of the recognition program is to offer specific praise that identifies preferred behaviours and promotes their repetition. “Great work!” just isn’t going to cut it any more – time to wipe out the non-specific thanks and approach each circumstance with a summary of the great performance you’d like to see again.

Insincere Rewards
Beware the check-box rewards issued hurriedly at the end of the month to meet targets – a half-job thanks, or one that feels forced, is totally transparent and negates the whole point of the reward. Instead, train managers to identify great performance and get creative with the reasons they choose to reward; setting daily, weekly or monthly targets creates short term, inspirational goals with which managers themselves are engaged.

Also under this umbrella: rewards that don’t mean anything. Cut those out. Employee of the Month and Top Performer aren’t accolades against which employees can measure their own performance – set up friendly competition with rewards for Top Mobile Phone Cross Seller of the Fortnight or better yet, for individual achievements as and when they’re appropriate for a more well-rounded improvement in performance. Specific rewards will show employees that their personal investments are appreciated.

Ill Chosen Gifts
Misjudging gifts is a common error in no way exclusive to the professional world, but an ill-fitting recognition gift can really devalue the gesture. A manager who takes the time to learn about their teams can really make an impression with a personal gift by asking friends and teammates what an individual might like, or asking the recipient directly.

Avoiding a non-starter of a gift is easy with an incentive based reward program – managers issue points or vouchers to a value that bests rewards the performance observed, and employees save or spend on something they really want. Simply Thank You is an employee engagement expert and can help bring a reward program – and reward process – up to speed. Find out more at www.simplythankyou-corporate.com