Points Programs

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Shifting Corporate Culture with Employee Awards

When organizations recognize the need to change and/or solidify the culture of a workplace, no ordinary incentive or recognition program need apply. Whether you are looking to make the workplace a safer, healthier or happier place to be, the right employee award program can help you accomplish this task.

Last week, I spoke about spicing up an incentive program with fun and creative themes or company mantras. In order to actual attempt to modify employee behavior and shift corporate culture, it takes the kind of participation/input from employees and creativity mentioned in this article.

Once an employee award program is implemented and people start to earn awards for reaching goals and milestones, I think that it is important to ensure that managers continue to sporadically and publicly recognize great performance and exemplary behavior. Carole Spiers, Special to Gulf News, recommends, “A record of performance beyond the minimum requirement should be noted, whether it's a constructive attitude that generates more innovative solutions, or just a willingness to offer guidance and possibly mentoring to a younger member of the team.”

Awarding behaviors such as those that Spiers mentioned will help to solidify the culture shift that is accomplished by a well designed employee recognition and incentive program. Continuously and consistently recognizing achievements of employees will motivate them to reach goals and is the right way to foster a positive and reward culture among employees of any organization.

Another key to implementing a successful employee award program designed to create a permanent and desirable organizational culture is to focus on employee feedback throughout the process. The value of employee feedback should never be underestimated. The amount of time spent by administrators on listening to feedback/ reviewing program statistics and tweaking the recognition program goals and awards accordingly is the difference between having a successful awards program and an unsuccessful one.

I advise clients who are looking to establish a culture of innovation and leadership to start from the top and work towards the bottom. Goals of the employee recognition and incentive program need to be based off of the organization’s overall goals in its environment. Each layer of the organization should be targeted with different goals and rewarded according to the direct impact reaching the goal has on the company.

Fostering the right environment, focusing on feedback and targeting each layer of the organization with various goals coupled with the right award merchandise are all manageable ways to establish a desirable corporate culture. Following these tips can help to ensure your company’s culture is properly established, solidified and that employees are motivated to continuously reach the goals of your organization.

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