While you should recognise your employee's efforts all year round, there are plenty of reasons why you should show your team some well-earned recognition at this special time of year from improving employee morale to job satisfaction. No matter the size of your organisation, employee Christmas rewards should be on your wish list this year.
The End of the Year, a Time to Reflect
Christmas marks a time for spending precious time with family and friends, but also reflect on the past year. The last thing you want as a manager is for your employees to keep holding their grudges towards you throughout the festive period. While you can’t remove the past year’s office drama but employee recognition can help to build some bridges within your organisation hierarchy. Make sure they know they are a valued member of the team, that you have noted their efforts and collaboration, so their New Year Resolution is always to achieve more or gain more recognition going forward.
Job Satisfaction Is Low
In 2016, it was reported that job seeking had hit a two-year high (24% of employees) as employee satisfaction at work plummeted across all sectors, particularly in the private sector (net score = +40, compared to +48 in Autumn 2015). Claire McCartney, research adviser for resourcing and talent planning at the CIPD, said: “Employers need to think of new ways to keep their employees engaged and committed.”
The 2017 Job Satisfaction and Engagement survey from The Society For Human Resouce Management, found that 40% or two out of five employees in the United States expressed that they were potentially looking to leave their current organisation next year. The leading contributor to this scary figure was for them not feeling compensated and rewarded in their current job roles. Christmas rewards can help organisations to engage, increase morale and retain their employees over the coming year.
Christmas Is No Longer A Slow Time In Recruitment
Job seekers have wised up to the fact that January is now one of the busiest and most popular times to change jobs. For that reason, December is becoming a great time to look for new roles, avoiding the rush of CVs landing on management desks in January. So it is more important than ever to plan how you will say thank you to employees earlier than the 20th December or at the Christmas party. Also, if you are to reward your team with retail gift vouchers, doing so in early December can help with the Christmas shopping, a stressful time for many households.
Accentuate the Positive
Even if the year hasn’t been a massive success, at the Christmas party, concentrate on the positives, the opportunities and the learnings for the upcoming year.
Research from the University of Warwick found that positive and happy workplaces see up to 12% increase in productivity. Recognition can contribute to the wide range of factors that affect employee happiness and Christmas is a key moment to set the stage for a productive January and avoid the common post-holiday blues.
It is estimated that we spend over 92,000 hours in our job over our lifetime, which highlights the importance of having a positive company culture and workplace with all the time we spend at work.
What You Say Is As Important As What You Give
Do you remember that bottle of wine you received for Christmas 2008 or do you specifically recall the time your boss thanked you for your contribution to the company’s achievements that year? Recognising people personally for their efforts is an obvious win-win all around. It costs nothing but means the world. A heartfelt letter or more vocal and public acknowledgement of their role in company successes will do. If you have a social recognition platform with a recognition feed or wall, a team or company-wide message from your organisation’s management can go a long way.
Conclusions
Use this festive period as a time to surprise them with the perfect reward. As psychologist Ron Friedman comments in his book ‘The Best Place To Work’, “Unexpected positive experiences deliver a bigger impact. When something surprising happens, our brains automatically pay closer attention, lending these events greater emotional weight. Thus you must make positive surprises more frequent.” So, end the year as you mean to start the new one - rewarding those behaviours you want to see more of, with employee recognition that is meaningful.
Interested in rewarding your employees this Christmas? Contact us today!