Presentation Ideas for Years-of-Service Award Events

It's WOW Wednesday! HR leaders, execs, and managers: How do you WOW the people who go above and beyond for you in your business? Or, how have you been WOWed?

Today's WOW Wednesday idea comes from Terryberry in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
"To recognize the outstanding achievements of Terryberry employees in Michigan and beyond, Terryberry hosted a dinner celebration to honor the years-of-service award recipients. Honorees included welcome aboard awards and anniversary levels 1 and 3, followed by increments of 5 years of service all the way to 50! WOW!

As your organization plans award celebrations, consider using Terryberry's helpful tools to prepare your remarks for that special occasion. An Award Presentation Cheat Sheet and tips for Employee Recognition Speeches can be found at www.terryberry.com/tools.

Remember to personalize each aspect of the event for your employees. Use this as an opportunity to showcase how each contribution connects into the company's mission, vision, and values. For example, you could prominently display special projects that people have worked on in the past year. This makes for a great conversation starter and encourages peer recognition!"

Share your own "WOW Wednesday" tip or story. Leave a comment here or post on www.facebook.com/TerryberryCompany or Twitter using hashtag #WOWWED. Make it a WOW day!

Practicing What We Preach: Terryberry Employees' Recently Recognized

As a leading provider of solutions that help our clients create “great places to work” we are often asked about our own internal recognition programs and their effectiveness. At Terryberry we take our belief in a balanced approach to recognition to heart and have a number of formal, informal and day-to-day initiatives that drive real value for us.

As the National Sales Manager for Terryberry, I’ll focus on the impact our initiatives have on our nationwide sales force. Keep in mind these folks work in any number of environments from single team member home based offices to larger regional offices with 6-8 team members.

Throughout the year we utilize Give-a-WOW, so a large and geographically diverse sales force maintains a ‘family’ feel. Daily, our sales force interacts with each other as well as local and national support staff to recognize their successes. When it comes to achievement, no woman or man is an island, and peer-to-peer and team recognition is critical in fostering higher levels of engagement and winning effort.

We also recognize with a significant travel incentive that drives a ton of excitement all year. It is a huge honor to earn our annual spring trip and the spirit of that event drives a great deal of internal competition that directly impacts our corporate success.

Our recent National Sales Meeting provided ample opportunities for both informal and formal recognition. We work to maximize a culture of recognition throughout this annual event. For example, we ask for high levels of sales team participation. It is a big deal for our team members to be invited to present in front of their peers and the pats-on-the-back they receive after leading an impactful session are gratifying. These sessions also directly impact our corporate success, so it is a true win-win. The creation of the Terryberry Flight Team this year allowed us the opportunity to recognize the achievements of our top performers. Flight Team members were flown in private planes for a life changing aerial tour of the Grand Canyon. For many of our folks this was their first time to see the Canyon! Finally, we split our sales team service awards and our sales team performance awards into two distinctly different events. This strategy allows us the time to fully recognize and personalize the process and maximize the impact.

Maybe the best thing we do is work to keep things fresh. The structure of our year is similar from one year to the next, so the more creative we can be, the higher levels of performance we can earn from our tremendous people.

- Bill Bergstrom, National Sales Manager

4 Easy Ways to Improve Service Awards Impact

Awards for years of service are the foundation of many recognition programs in North America. Make the most out of your service awards for your employees and your business. Here are three easy things you can do today that will make a big impact on your service awards.

1. Recognize earlier

   It's no surprise that employees are changing jobs much more frequently these days. Getting your newer employees involved in your service recognition program can make an impact on your new hires' level of engagement. If your recognition program starts at 5 years of service, consider giving a small award for Welcome Aboard, 1 year and 3 years.

2. Add verbal or written recognition on the anniversary date

   If you have a formal service awards event, employees may be getting their recognition months after their anniversary. You can add instant impact by recognizing employees on their anniversary day in addition to the formal event. It can be something as simple as a card from the individual's manager. Try keeping a supply of Milestone Messages cards on hand for employee anniversaries.

3. Use awards that support corporate pride

   Make the item memorable and special by incorporating your company symbol or engraving the years of service. View sample awards from Terryberry.

4. Praise the recipient's personal accomplishments during the presentation

   The presentation of an award is arguably as important as the award itself. Experts agree that a presentation will have better impact when the comments are personalized for each recipient with specifics about the individual's contributions and achievements. Terryberry's award presentation cheat sheet helps presenters prepare for recognition speeches.

Learn more about service awards programs from Terryberry.

from the Recognition Bulletin for HR- Winter 2009 Edition

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Length of Service No-No

Determining qualifications for length of service awards is generally a pretty straight forward process. If your awards are presented after two years then on their second anniversary with an organization an individual should be in line for that award. Certainly, the same holds true at the various intervals businesses recognize (1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, etc.). This simplicity is part of the appeal of this type program as it allows organizations an opportunity to systematically acknowledge team members that continue to contribute year in and year out.

Recently, we stumbled on an uncommon process that was taking place at a hospital in Louisiana. The medical center had numerous employees who had changed status from time to time, going from part time to full time and back (or vice versa). The HR department was thrust with determining when and if people had worked enough hours to qualify for the various year levels based on a full time schedule. What the HR group soon determined was that this time consuming process created confusion for the department and the employee base as they couldn't determine when and if they were due to receive an award. With this in mind the leadership team simplified the process and based their criteria simply on the hire date math. What they quickly found out was that this created a sense of relief through the hospital and employees began to further embrace the program.

Terryberry helps thousands of companies with their length of service award programs on a daily basis and the most common approach to qualification is "hire date math" where employees reach milestones based on the same date of different years. We do see an increasing trend where companies are recognizing their employees early on in their career to engage them into their culture of recognition early and often. Often times the initial award will be given prior to one full year with the business.