Human talent is undoubtedly one of the most valuable resources of companies, and as such it must be valued and cared for. Hence the importance of generating dynamics such as employee of the month to motivate the team and fill with pride who is worthy of receiving it. But do you know how to choose the employee of the month correctly?
Sometimes we can be naive, and it is common for such initiatives to end up being viewed negatively by employees because some organizations do not manage them properly.
Keep in mind that this is a tool that will allow you to improve the productivity of your company as well as strengthen the organizational culture and the spirit of your team as long as you do it well.
Today you will learn how to choose the employee of the month in 4 simple steps and what benefits it will bring.
Steps for choosing the employee of the month
1. Explore
This will always be the first step for everything to go well. We recommend asking questions such as:
- What do I want employees to do better?
If you know what they need to work on a little more you can have it as one of the goals to achieve to be the employee of the month.
- What are the goals of the month of the organization?
These will also be within the employee performance measurement of the month.
- What are the motivations of my collaborators?
By knowing what motivates them, what they like to work in your company you can have more clear what is the best prize for them.
- What channels do I count on to communicate the initiative?
If all your employees don’t know about the dynamics you will have a big problem that will affect your organizational culture.
- What’s my prize budget?
This is very important, remember that the prize should be proportional to what you choose to win it and clearly also according to your budget.
2. Plan ahead
After having the clear information you must create the bases of the contest and for this, the most important is to make clear the goals that must be achieved to become the employee of the month, as well as the methodology, the period to be evaluated, the awards (this can be surprising too) and the Publication schedule of the winners.
Keep in mind that the whole process must be carried out with transparency and objectivity. For this, the clearer the terms and conditions are, the easier it will be to communicate.
Perhaps setting the goals to be achieved can be the most complicated. We help you with some examples, but not the only ones:
- Objective-based Each post has its objectives and is generally easy to quantify/measure. It’s a way to keep employees motivated to achieve and exceed their monthly goals and avoid making them a routine. In sales this is very clear.
- By tasks performed. This is another data very easily quantifiable and for which you can even use variousonline tools that will help you to measure them very accurately. Of course, you must decide whether to reward the quantity or the quality of the tasks performed.
- For punctuality:In this case, punctuality not only referred to the time of arrival at the office, but also in compliance with the established deadlines. It is a way to reward and maintain the discipline and good habits of employees.
There are other more subjective variants such as teamwork and professional development, these could be subcategories for other awards that you could consider.
For example, your collaborators might vote to give the teamwork award for the person who makes the team improve every day.
Remember that the most important thing at this stage is to make it very clear what the evaluation process will be, what will be evaluated and the timeline of the initiative.
3. Take the time to choose a good prize
Being the employee of the month means having worked very hard to achieve the objectives and goals proposed so the award must be special, and it is not something extremely expensive, but something well thought out.
One of the questions at the beginning was about the motivations of your team, well there is the key. With this information you can provide a prize that motivates and fills with pride not only the winner but all the collaborators.
It is said that the details are what is best and if so, if your collaborators see that you have taken the time to understand their motivations they will value all activities much more for their well-being.
Any ideas? Well, it’ll depend on your team, but it could be an experience, couple hotel nights, extra vacation days, an increase in salary that month, a gift certificate.
The best way to get to know your employees is to talk to them, do surveys and listen to them.
4. Evaluate and give continuous feedback
It is very valuable that your collaborators participate in the process by giving ideas on how to improve this type of initiative.
This is not a static process but a dynamic one, so we will have to constantly review whether all the points in the plan are right, if they are clear, if they are achievable.
Something that you must take care is that if in the process you must modify some criteria you communicate it very clearly to the collaborators and the argument of the change must be very strong, which does not lead to misunderstandings.
Bonus: Employee of the month in group
The choice of the best employee of the month does not have to be always individual. If your company has a strong departmental culture, very cohesive teams and healthy competitiveness among them, this can allow you to create activities that also reward the “team of the month” instead of a single worker.
In case this is not the situation of your company, it may be a good idea to encourage teamwork and improve organizational culture, you can alternate activities of team building and team professsional training.
Benefits of choosing employee of the month
We know that performing this type of activity not only requires an economic expense but also time, but it certainly brings excellent benefits.
As we indicated at the beginning of this blog, collaborators are the most valuable resource of the organization, without them the processes cannot work. Many times we take this for granted and forget to give them the value they deserve.
So by having these initiatives you will have a motivated and more productive team.
Some of the benefits of choosing the employee of the month are:
- Clarify the evaluation criteria for employees
- Reinforce in employees the goals they must achieve and what the organization expects from them.
- Increase employee motivation and confidence for their own work
- Increase commitment to the company
- Improve the company’s Employer Branding
- Strengthen the image and trust towards the organization
- Motivate collaborators who are stagnant or unmotivated
At the end of the day, the key to this process is to be clear, transparent and of course deliver.
How have you fared with employee of the month management in your organization?
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