Christmas Gifts for Employees

The best Christmas gifts for employees are free, motivate your workforce, and have a tremendous impact on the bottom line.

Recognizing your employees – that is, giving them positive feedback – is one of the most important components of your compensation and rewards package (receiving recognition for achievements is a fundamental human need).

It is a fact:
Engaged employees create superior financial performance than employees who are not engaged – there are many studies about the relationship between employee engagement and results (from Towers Perrin, Watson Wyatt, Hay Group, etc.) – and positive feedback (when done right) is a powerful and effective way in creating a workforce that is engaged.

The best Christmas gifts for employees are NOT...
- Presents
- Certificates
- Or service awards at the annual Christmas party

Many business leaders and HR departments don’t know how to start planning a recognition strategy (read “they don’t know how to best give Christmas gifts for employees”) – recognition best practices are usually not a core competency.

Five General Guidelines:

First: It’s about performance

You recognition strategy must be results oriented. It is not about whom shows up at work (it is not about physical presence) – it is about performance.

Second: Pinpoint desired behaviors

Pinpoint exactly what specific behaviors you want to see more of in your employees. For example:
- Behaviors that embody your corporate core values
- Safety behaviors
- Innovation behaviors
- Etc.

Third: How to give recognition (positive feedback)

It must be genuine – otherwise it will backfire

It must be specific – focus on behavior

It must be immediate – within the next 24 hours

It must be frequent – 4:1 where four represents the number of times you provide positive feedback and one represents the number of times you give constructive feedback

It must be pure – don’t ever mix positive feedback with constructive feedback

Fourth: Peer recognition

Create a culture where employees recognize each other.

This is not an easy task since we are not used to doing this – but the effort in building this type of culture is well worth it.

Fifth: Public recognition

One-to-one recognition is extremely effective when done right – but don’t stop there – make your Christmas gifts for employees “public” and make your recognition program even more powerful.

Conclusion:

Build your Recognition program on these best practices and you will definitely see a positive impact on your business.

The best Christmas gifts for employees do not have to happen once a year (during Christmas time). The best Christmas gifts can be given – and should be given – throughout the entire year.

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If you would like your organization to learn more about Christmas gifts for employees through my speaking, training, or consulting services, please click on this link.

To keep on learning about other useful management and leadership skills, go back to the previous page, or click here to continue reading.

To learn more about the skills you need to manage the performance of your direct reports, go to my Management Skills page.

To learn more about the skills you need to lead the performance of your entire organization, go to my Leadership Skills page.

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SBI!