Improving Award Presentations

Sign up for a free webinar on how to improve award presentations called "Creating a WOW! Moment." The webinar takes place Thursday, May 21 and is free to HR professionals and business leaders while space is available.

Mike Byam, author of "The WOW! Workplace" and managing partner of Terryberry will present best practices for award presentations that make a lasting impact on recipients and align with business goals.

Power of Presentation

by Chad Zamler

I was recently given the task of analyzing the data from a company's employee recognition satisfaction survey. Being new the field of employee reward and recognition, I was not sure what to expect. After analyzing the responses and reading the comments, there was one thing that certainly stood out to me. These surveys showed me how essential the award presentation is to the success of a recognition program.

The presentation can make-or-break the entire recognition program. The results of the surveys proved to me that no matter how much employees like their reward, most will not be completely satisfied with the program unless there is some type of personal/meaningful presentation. Some of the employees who were satisfied with their reward, but not satisfied with the overall program commented that they would be more satisfied if "my GM would have known and acknowledged", if there was "actual acknowledgement of my time, dedication, and energy towards the company's success", and if the reward was "handed to me by my manager with a handshake and thank you, not just sent in the mail".

As you can see from some of the employee comments, most employees do not require an extravagant presentation (even though many would like this). They simply want to be recognized by someone that they know and respect. Something as simple as a 30 second acknowledgement with a handshake, "thank you" and "congratulations" by a manager when presenting an award can greatly increase the overall employee satisfaction of a recognition program and employee satisfaction with their job and employer.

Not Everyone Needs to Speak at Every Presentation

The comments that are shared at an awards presentation can be the highlight of any recognition program and often times an employee's career. At Terryberry we invest a significant amount of time and energy with our clients to insure this is a component that is not overlooked. Recently, Erik, a Human Resource Manager from Washington state pulled me aside and conveyed a story of a previous employer where he was involved in an award presentation where they "open up the floor for people to share a few words."


To give you a little more background on the situation, we've got to set the stage. The business was involved in an employee recognition initiative and they had reached the point in time where awards were to be presented. They thrust to make it a first class event with appropriate attire, food stations, and an OPEN BAR.

As the evening wore on it became time for the award presentation and the company leadership worked through the recipients noting the positive contributions that had led to the various awards. At the end of the presentation a final award was planned for a long standing employee, who made his career with the company. It was clear that the presenters had prepared remarks and noted many of the neat contributions that the recipient had made to business. After sharing their thoughts the presenters turned to the people in attendance that had been "celebrating" a little too much and offered the opportunity to share their thoughts.

Unfortunately, these folks had not given much thought to what should be said to enhance the moment instead they talked of times that weren't pertinent to the achievement and in one case began to share an embarrassing story about the award recipient. At that point the company leadership was able to rein things back in and end on a high note. However, it could have happened very differently and all the businesses investment would have led to a moment to forget.

Terryberry's Employee Recognition Blog

Welcome to Terryberry Company's Employee Recognition blog!

We are fortunate in our travels and interaction with people and businesses to consistently learn about creative employee recognition award ideas and programs that exist in the corporate world. Our objective is to share these stories and experiences with the greater business community to improve employee satisifaction, job performance and ultimately, overall business success through postive personal interaction.

Over the years, we've seen and heard a ton of different stories a relating to the topic that we hope can help you and your business. A recent offering comes from a presentation to a group of Human Resource Professionals in New England. One of the attendees spoke about an interesting byproduct of public award presentations. Walter was his name, and he spoke about how PR was a neat outcome of Service Award Programs. Due to the fact they were consistently recognizing longer term employees it sent a message to some of the newer hires that "this is a pretty good place to work" and "people make a career out of it".

We apreciated Walter's mention of that neat outcome as it was one more reason for putting some thought and preparation into proper employee award presentations. The message you are sending through recognition impacts people in many different ways!