employee workplace achievements manufacturing

How Celebrating Victories Can Build a Strong Company Culture

It’s not just our personal lives that need celebrating; work lives do as well. Businesses experience a lot of success stories and milestones unique to their companies alone — patents filed, licenses acquired, and milestones reached. By celebrating victories at work, businesses encourage their employees’ productivity and morale, fostering a company culture that strives for success!

Celebrating Victories: An Integral Part of Building the Right Culture

Most companies go to some effort to give a bonus, however small, to the troops at Christmas time. These are corporate devices, and the only thing you have to do to get your turkey or gift certificate is to be an employee. This is not a celebration of victory (unless you are celebrating simply staying in business for another year); it’s a bonus. We believe the holiday season is a perfect time to pass out bonuses to everyone.

But today, we are talking about celebrating achievements by individuals, teams, and even the entire company. These achievements can happen any day of the year, not just during the holidays.

Wrong Ways to Recognize Employee Achievements

When done correctly, employee recognition in the workplace increases productivity, loyalty, longevity, and overall morale. But unfortunately, many employers are going about it the wrong way. If you want to create an employee recognition program with great results, avoid these approaches.

Employee of the Month

So, you have a business with 200 hourly employees and 25 salaried, non-exempt folks, and you have one “Employee of the Month”? You might as well pass out 224 notes that say, “you failed!” Recognizing one employee benefits one person. So, in effect, you are saying that 224 people made no contribution to your factory. You know that isn’t true unless you have a really bad culture.

One Month of Preferred Parking

See Employee of the Month. We have seen the Employee of the Month parking space perpetually vacant after it became known as the “my car gets keyed” parking space. 

The Catalog

These awards, unfortunately, are very popular in the corporate world. Actually, they are popular with many managers because they don’t have to do anything; some catalog company does all the work — a catalog company that never met a single employee who works with you.

Any reward or recognition that removes you from the process is bad. Yes, you are busy, but is there anything more important than your people? We think not.

We hope you aren’t, but you might be asking now, “Why do I need to recognize and reward people?” It’s about motivation. Motivated people are odds on to excel; they contribute to the bottom line over and above their salary. They are happy and are a joy to lead.

Motivated people also make your life easier, so motivate them! However, YOU alone cannot motivate people. People can motivate only themselves. So your job is to build a culture where people are more likely to be self-motivated.

All motivation is self-motivation. Your family, your boss, or your co-workers can try to get your engine going, but until you decide what to accomplish, nothing will happen.” – Seth Godin

employee recognition company culture

Contact IntoCeramics to learn more about our ceramics and manufacturing consulting firm.

Right Ways to Recognize Employee Achievements

A positive company culture is crucial in helping to keep employees motivated and engaged in their job. Fortunately, there are several ways companies can improve work culture using nothing more than celebrating success.

Everyone Likes Two Things: Food and Company-Logoed Clothing

That’s right, barbecue and t-shirts. These two awards form the basis for an easy-to-manage celebration process. If you have a large victory-record sales quarter, safety improvements, increased profits, etc., a simple program can be used to recognize everyone. Everybody eats! The supervisors and managers should do all the cooking (or catering), serving, and clean-up. The menu is less important than the fact that the hourly and non-exempt employees were waited on by their leaders. So in one simple and inexpensive program, you have allowed your employees to motivate themselves.

Smaller Groups and Victories Call for A Different Reward Method

Let’s say you have a new machine installed in record time by operators and maintenance groups. This achievement may not warrant plant celebration, but you want to recognize the group. So award them with company-logoed clothing. Custom apparel embroidered with the employee’s name and position is perfect for such events. You will be amazed how often you will see these articles of clothing worn in the business and outside in the community.

Be Personal

You may have a lot of people working for you and may not know every person’s individual life. Still, you have a personnel supervisor/manager, and you should enlist them to aid in recognizing personal achievements or milestones. They can monthly prepare birthday cards for you to sign and personalize for your employees. The 30 minutes a month you spend wishing an employee a happy birthday will yield happy dividends for you and the employee. 

Recognize victories, both large and small — and do it personally. The money and effort invested in the celebration will be returned to you many times over. You will find that some of the happiest moments in your career will come at 3:00 am over a charcoal grill while barbecuing steaks for your employees. This may appear to be a simple and basic thing to do in today’s business, but it’s often overlooked on the way to forming the culture needed for continued success.

Learn More from The Experts at IntoCeramics

Success is the best motivator for people and for business. Gifts are nice, but having a healthy collaborative environment and building a supportive community is priceless. Visit the IntoCeramics Blog for more tips, tricks, and expert advice! At IntoCeramics, our team of skilled industry experts provides various services in ceramic consulting, manufacturing leadership, ceramic engineering, manufacturing consulting, and more.

Connect with us today for more information.