Turn fear into courage. The most detrimental consequence of change to an organization is fear, which causes employees to immediately disengage. By giving consistent recognition, you can help your team calm their internal “fight or flight” response and focus on a positive future. Make sure you broadcast when your associate helps your organization think outside the box, be creative and innovates – all key actions to staying competitive and relevant.  The consistency of the recognition will also build trust. Incorporate this practice into your weekly team calls.

Tell the story! Employees want to hear the story behind the “thanks” or “way to go” – so make sure you take the time to share the details of what the individual did to win your kudo’s – this also serves as a teaching moment for others to better understand what “going above and beyond” means and be inspired.

Understand your employee’s personality. Are they more reserved – in which the recognition will be better received in a more private group call, a 1:1 call or email or are they more outgoing and welcome public fanfare by copying others and positing accolades on your intranet site?  If you don’t know, ask them directly, giving them the opportunity (and encouragement) to be more vocal.

Use old-fashioned mail. Don’t neglect the power of a handwritten note.  For a virtual employee, mail is the highlight of their day and sometimes the only time they step outside!  This note will be shared with family at the dinner table and posted on outlets from the fridge to Instagram – all helping your team build a sense of belonging and company loyalty.

Toot horns. Virtual recognition is an opportunity to showcase a person’s talent in front of other leaders. This helps to elevate their visibility in the organization and position them for future new roles and responsibilities. This is probably the greatest gift you can give and will elevate how they feel about management and the future stability of the organization.

A note to HR leaders:

 It’s important to provide your leaders with easy tools and guidelines to recognize their teams.  Here are a few ideas:

• Develop a message! Whether an employee received accolades or not, they will all see the messaging, so don’t forgo this important step.  Additionally, outline your guidelines for recognition.  Leaders need clear program steps.
• Make recognition easy! Create an online STAR (or other positive symbol) that management can easily fill out and virtually give to their teams.  It’s important to include a prompt for managers to fill out their name, the date and the reason for the recognition.  The reason can simply be identifying which guiding principle or core value that the associate demonstrated and why. This entire process should take no more than two minutes of time. (Note:  Summit provides this online system for eCards, but we can also provide an online graphic).
• Provide snail mail tools. Make this STAR easy to print so managers can also mail. Make it easy for managers to find their teams’ home address and consider sending leadership a box of notecards and stamps so there is no excuse not to send their teams personal, handwritten notes.
• Increase adoption—start at the top! The best way to increase adoption is to have the same program run from your most senior leadership down to managers. Your managers will experience first-hand how powerful and “game changing” recognition is, and the adoption will be much faster.
• Surprise and delight. Last, consider giving a tangible/monetary reward at the end of the quarter/year for the associate who received the most STAR’s, the manager who gave the most STAR’s, posted the most STAR’s, etc.