Deliver Incredible Recognition by Celebrating Employee Anniversaries

Recognition, when it’s at its best, has a certain feel to an employee. When it’s right, it can become memorable. It can spur on higher engagement and motivation to keep working and doing great things on behalf of the organization.

At its best, it can be incredible.

Our job as human resources professionals is to offer a set of tools that mean something to as many employees as possible.

According to our New Rules of EngagementSM research, employees who feel they’ve received that “incredible” recognition deliver far better results:

• 87% of employees who have received incredible recognition say that their employer brings out their best ideas.
• Only 46% of those who have not received incredible recognition say the same.
• 95% of employees who have received incredible recognition say that they are willing to work especially hard for their organization’s customers, versus 77% of those who have not received recognition.

If we want our employees to be creative and engaged to work hard for our business and on behalf of our customers, we need to recognize them in ways they see as incredible. So, what is “incredible” recognition? To gain specific ideas about what constitutes “incredible”, in our New Rules of Engagement research we got into the specifics of the issue. We asked:

“Thinking about recognition you’ve received during your career, what is the most memorable recognition you’ve ever received?”

According to our research, one of the most “meaningful, memorable and motivational” forms of recognition for employees is when their employer recognizes … their service anniversary.

It turns out that being recognized for their service anniversary is one of the ten most frequently mentioned forms of recognition that was identified in our study. Interestingly, participants who had just made it to their first year at a company saw this as meaningful and, on the other end of the life cycle, participants who had achieved thirty-five years of tenure indicated this was the most memorable recognition for them. There are other experiences employees view as incredible recognition—a promotion, a year-end bonus, winning “employee of the year.” But it’s clear a service anniversary is something that’s important to a large segment of employees, along with other performance-based achievements.