On the Job Training: How to say "Keep up the Good Work!"

Don’t wait until the holidays or retirement offers you the occasion, take the time to recognize your employees’ diligent work ethic today! Whether you’re a corporate CEO or a small business entrepreneur with a staff of three, showing day to day employee appreciation will be worth your time and effort: such recognition serves to reinforce employee accountability as well as enhance work-place motivation overall. Here are some surefire methods for both showing your employees that you appreciate their hard work and improving work-place motivation:

1) Recognize your Employees with Fruit or Wine Baskets

Giving industrious employees gift baskets sends them the message that you recognize and appreciate their hard work. Due to the great variety of gift baskets available online, gift baskets are also a very convenient and time-efficient way of showing your appreciation. Some generous employers arrange for the regular delivery of fresh fruit baskets to the work place or their employees’ homes. In addition, a wine and cheese basket is a wonderful way to say to your staff, “job well done!”

2) Offer Health Club Memberships to Your Employees

A productive work place is dependent upon happy, healthy employees. Daily exercise not only provides great stress release, but also boosts the immune system. In providing your employees with health club memberships, you will not only be increasing their on the job satisfaction and productivity, but also reducing the number of employee sick days your business must pay for each month.

3) Create an “Employee of the Month” Program

The best way to develop an Employee of the Month program is to ask all levels of staff to work together to choose the monthly awardee. This important measure will prevent the Employee of the Month Club from becoming a way of selecting “favorites” and will keep it from becoming a point of ridicule by employees. In fact, Employee of the Month selection can be a valuable collaborative exercise for your employees as they work together to select the most worthy recipient; it will also add an element of social pressure for high work performance. Employees are often eager to recognize colleagues who are sincerely doing their part to make the work place run efficiently and productively, and such recognition will be a source of reinforcement and motivation for the recipient and others. You might produce a certificate to present to the awardee and also display the employee’s name, photo, and a brief bio in a prominent place in the workplace.