7 Surefire Ways to Appreciate Your Staff

By Hillary Ryan, Western Museums Association; based on an article by Halden Ingwersen in Talent Management

National employee recognition day is coming up next week, Friday, March 2 to be precise. Employee recognition is the praise, acknowledgement, and appreciation given to employees in the workplace. And it’s effective. In fact, receiving praise in the workplace has benefits like increasing productivity, fewer absent days, better teamwork, and higher employee loyalty.

And while not many museums can roll out the fancy catered lunch or giveaway spa gift certificates, we wanted to provide you with some fairly easy and inexpensive ways to honor your hard working staff.

Open praise sharing: Don’t just praise your employees to them in private. It will mean more to them to be publically recognized. Praise in front of peers and superiors.

Travelling trophy: One idea for peer-to-peer recognition is to have a trophy that employees award one another for jobs well done. Each recipient keeps the trophy until they see someone else who deserves it.

Internally-facing praise: Praise publicly, starting with internal bragging. If you have a newsletter, mass emails, or regular all-hands meetings, praise successful employees with them, making sure the organization knows of a job well done.

World-facing praise: You have a website right? Use it to spotlight employees who are out there crushing it. Not only will your employees feel good, but it will help display your authenticity and success to your stakeholders and visitors.

Work from home days: If it works for your institution, hand out coupons for work from home days.

Breakfast: Grab a griddle and flip some pancakes for your staff. No one will forget it and there is always room for second breakfast.

Sweets & Snacks: Nobody will ever complain about a special treat like cookies, cupcakes, or donuts in the office kitchen or common room. If you are implementing a wellness program, how about popcorn, fresh fruit or veggies?