It’s important to regularly recognise people for their efforts and achievements. Staff work hard to meet deadlines, come up with new ideas and to reach targets. They need to know that their hard work is noticed and appreciated. You should recognise their efforts both in private and publicly.

Write in the comments how you recognise your team’s efforts. 💬

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Make sure to send quick emails or messages to staff when they’ve done something well. Say “great job getting back to that customer so quickly, I can see they really appreciated that.” or “Way to go on exceeding your targets this month, your hard work is really paying off” or “great ideas on that project, that really helped us exceed the client’s expectations.” 

When someone does something well, they need to know they did a good job. Your communication with your team can’t only be around when they didn’t do something well.

It’s also nice to give public recognition when appropriate. You can let everyone know how well someone did on something, so they know that’s a positive behaviour.

For example, one of our staff was updating a website page, and noticed a pdf it was linking to had our old address on it. He could have easily just dismissed it, as no one would have noticed it wasn’t updated for some time and it wasn’t part of  his original scope. Instead, he found out where the pdf was hosted, where the original was and took it upon himself to update the pdf. He didn’t make a big deal about it either.

When I found out, I told him how impressed I was with his initiative and gathered the team around to share what he did. I explained how this is the type of behaviour we as a team need to have. If we see something wrong we need to either fix or let the right department know so they can fix it. It is not okay to just ignore things that don’t fall under their scope of work.

Instead of waiting for staff to do something worth praising, tell them what you expect of them and reward them when they do it.

Other ways some of the teams we work with give recognition is through monthly or annual awards, monetary bonuses and incentive trips. Some teams will do a team dinner in honour of their top sales person for the month which makes that person feel pretty darn good.

It’s also important to set and recognise team goals which in turn helps to foster a high-performing team.

For a sales team it could be if they reach their team target, everyone gets free movie tickets. If a marketing team achieves their organic reach targets they get gift vouchers, or if a customer service department reduces their number of complaints by 10% they get a pizza lunch.

Rewards don’t have to be big, it’s more of a gesture of recognition and thanks for their efforts. It’s an opportunity for everyone to recognise their own accomplishments.

I’d like to know how do you recognise your team’s efforts? Share in the comments so everyone can learn from each other. And remember, you don’t have to rely on your company to do this, every team leader can reward their team with something as simple as public recognition or team pizza lunches.

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