The Importance of Acknowledging Your Employees

This article, in an edited format, was written for the Houston Business Journal and ran in it’s “Best Places to Work” issue in July of 2008. I am sharing this as I never posted it to my blog when it originally written.”

Employee acknowledgment is one of the best tools a company can use for creating a work environment that fosters loyalty and stimulates high achievement. Put simply, people appreciate and respond to recognition. They are motivated by praise, which validates and strengthens their commitment to a team.
Rewarding your employees by paying tribute to them for a job well done also demonstrates to their co-workers that your company or organization truly does value them. It builds pride and reinforces a sense of belonging to something worth being a part of.

Traditionally, companies honor special accomplishments or milestones with newsletter articles, gifts, coupons, or custom artwork like statues and plaques. While no doubt appreciated, most of these things are quickly forgotten and few have any lasting value for the person being honored.

A more meaningful, enduring, new way to acknowledge employees is an entertaining, professionally produced, in-depth multimedia presentation on DVD. If done right, it is an impressive method of celebrating a person – one that can be shown to fellow workers, important clients, and valued associates during a formal ceremony and viewed with pride for many years to come.

Regardless of scope or budget, here are some basic guidelines to follow for creating an effective multimedia presentation to recognize, honor, and celebrate people that have made special contributions to your organization.

1. To convey the important virtues of your company, select video footage and still images that accurately represent those virtues. Also use pictures of actual employees, not generic stock photography or clip art. After all, this is intended to be a personal tribute and the audience will relate much better to familiar faces and authentic settings.

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