Ways to Show Appreciation to Employees.

Every now and again each and every employee wants to feel appreciated and in most cases its just a simple "thank you", for your daily duties that enables the organisation to go forward or earn it; its reputable status. Therefore at Humba-HR-Consultants we intend to focus at the attributes of employee appreciation other than incentives and bonuses. You can tell your colleagues, co-workers and employees how much you value them and their contribution any day of the year. Trust me. No occasion is necessary. In fact, small surprises and tokens of your appreciation spread throughout the year help the people in your work life feel valued all year long.

Happy employees are productive employees, and productive employees are the driving force of any business. However, sometimes business owners can get caught up in work, work, work and forget to show their appreciation to hard workers. Everyone likes being appreciated, and it’s pretty easy to dish it up.

Here are 5 little great ways to show appreciation:

1. Say Thank You–and Mean It Train all managers and supervisors to say thank you for a job well done or anytime an employee goes above and beyond what’s required. It’s also important for very small businesses to do so, even if it means taking time out of the busy owner’s day. A heartfelt thank you, preferably in person whenever possible, goes a long way. Remember that employees are not required to excel, they’re only required to do the bare minimum.

2. Foster a Team Environment From annual retreats to a gift of team clothing from a reputable site like Nubian Royalty Clothing (www.nubianroyalty.com), working together as a team matters. When a business invests in quality team shirts for a company softball team, it gives employees something tangible to hold onto. Ideally, let employees have a say in the clothing so that they feel like their opinion is important (because it is).

3. Actually Celebrate Birthdays Don’t let the famous birthday cake scene from “Office Space” dissuade company birthday celebrations. Forget lumping monthly birthday parties together unless the business has hundreds of employees (in which case, separate departments can celebrate independently). Invest in a quality cake and carve out 30 minutes to appreciate a birthday. Get employee input to figure out exactly what kind of celebration they would like.

4. Encourage Personalisation of Space it’s no secret that cubicles can look like a farm, but employees should feel comfortable when at work. Encourage employees to decorate their space with photos, clippings and anything else they’d like. To kick start the process; give employees a small plant that will flourish in any condition. Living things naturally make people feel more alive, and create oxygen, too.

5. Reassess the Review Process No employee looks forward to annual reviews. It’s a time when shortcomings are highlighted and employees worry about their place in the company. Work with a professional in the field to restructure the review process. Focuses on what the employees have achieved just as much as what needs improvement (if anything). Remember that reviews are not an excuse to find something wrong. Employees are the skeleton of a business companies would not exist without them. Show them some appreciation, and watch productivity soar.

Looking for ideas about how to praise and thank co-workers and employees? The opportunities are endless and limited only by your imagination. You can thank employees in these 40 different ways in your workplace.

 Here are ten ways to show your appreciation to employees and co-workers:

• Praise something your co-worker has done well. Identify the specific actions that you found admirable.

• Say thank you. Show your appreciation for their hard work and contributions. And, don't forget to say please often as well. Social niceties do belong at work. A more gracious, polite workplace is appreciated by all.

• Ask your co-workers about their family, their hobby, their weekend or a special event they attended. Your genuine interest - as opposed to being nosey – causes people to feel valued and cared about.

• Offer staff members flexible scheduling for the holidays, if feasible. If work coverage is critical, post a calendar so people can balance their time off with that of their co-workers.

• Know your co-worker’s interests well enough to present a small gift occasionally. An appreciated gift, and the gesture of providing it, will light up your co-worker’s day.

• If you can afford to, give staff money. End of the year bonuses, attendance bonuses, quarterly bonuses and gift certificates say "thank you" quite nicely. Tech-Smith staff receives a percentage of their annual salary for their end of year bonus.

• Almost everyone appreciates food. Take co-workers or staff to lunch for a birthday, a special occasion or for no reason at all. Let your guest pick the restaurant.

• Create a fun tradition for a seasonal holiday. Re-Cellular employees draw names for their Secret Santa gift exchange. Alison Doyle, About Guide to Job Searching, also works in Career at Skid-more College where they do a "gift grab" at their holiday party.
  
  Some organisations match up departments or people who don't normally work together as a unit and assign a day to provide gooey, healthy or scrumptious treats for the other groups. It's a great mixer, an opportunity to show off our culinary skills and a morale builder - to say nothing of the sugar high.

• Bring in bagels, doughnuts or another treat for staff and co-workers. Offerings such as cookies or cupcakes, that you've baked personally, are a huge hit. (Have you tried baking cupcakes in ice cream cones? People love them.) Another hit? Bring chocolate - chocolate anything.

• Last, but not least, provide opportunity. People want chances for training and cross-training. They want to participate on a special committee where their talents are noticed. They like to attend professional association meetings and represent your organisation at civic and philanthropic events.

These are my top ten ways to show appreciation to employees and co-workers. Stretch your imagination. There are hundreds of other employee and co-worker appreciation ideas just waiting to be found. They'll bring you success in employee motivation, employee recognition and in building a positive, productive workplace.

Employee appreciation is never out-of-place. In fact, in many organisations, it's often a scarce commodity. Make your workplace the exception. Use every opportunity to demonstrate your gratitude to employees.

Understanding, measuring and managing critical success factors, is increasingly important to ensuring the survival and future prosperity of organisations, in these times of economic recession and uncertainty.

Most organisations know their success factors, however few organisations have:

• worded their success factors appropriately
• segregated out success factors from their strategic objectives
• sifted through the success factors to find their critical ones – their critical success factors
• communicated the critical success factors to staff.

It is the CSFs (Critical Success Factors), and the performance measures within them, that link daily activities to the organization’s strategies.

In these trying times knowing your CSFs maybe the deciding factor in survival.  If your organisation has not completed a thorough exercise to know its critical success factors (CSFs) performance management cannot possibly function.
 Performance measurement, monitoring and reporting will be a random process creating an army of measures producing numerous numbing reports, full of measures which monitor progress in a direction very remote from the strategic direction of the organisation.  Very few, if any, of the measures in these reports could be defined as ‘winning KPIs’ as they have been derived independently from the CSFs.

Besides focusing on the relevant performance measures, thus significantly reducing the number of performance measures used, knowing ones CSFs will reduce the number of reports that are produced at the end of the month. CSFs, and are reporting progress too late, well after the ‘horse has bolted!’ so the question has to be asked “Why do we have them?”  Pareto’s 80/20 rule most certainly applies with reporting, with 80% of management’s need being met by 20% of the reports prepared.

  Many of these ‘monthly’ reports are not related to the

The process outlined in this article will crystallise and communicate the organization’s CSFs.  The beauty of the method, like all great methods, is that it is a simple methodical process, which can be run by in-house staff.  In order to find our CSFs we need to first know our success factors.

Some relevant success factors for these turbulent times

Set out below are some relevant success factors for these turbulent times:

• Supporting local businesses.
• Delivering in full, on time, all the time, to our key customers.
• Prioritising all activities that will collect cash quickly from major accounts.
• Finding better ways to do the things we do everyday.
• Maintaining a safe, happy, and healthy workplace .
• Implementing innovative ideas from staff quickly.
• Finishing what we start.
• Starting only value-adding projects.
• Selling a greater share of our profitable products to our key customers .
• Increasing repeat business from key customers.
• Encouraging our key customers to be active advocates for our business.
• Increasing adaptability and flexibility of staff.
• Attracting quality staff to the organisation.
• Maintaining a ‘stay, say, strive’ engagement with staff.
• Maintaining regular recognition of staffs’ contribution.

Appreciation will continuously be tweaked with generations to follow because of its complex, fast paced evolving innovation and especially economic factors which are fluctuating on a regular basis.