Five ways to praise employees.

AuthorNelson, Bob
PositionRewarding Employees

In my ongoing research on employee recognition, I have identified five unique ways that you can thank employees: personal praise, written praise, electronic praise, public praise and indirect praise. Although these different types of praise may all seem related, I have learned that they are each mutually exclusive, that is, they tend to be separate and unique actions, each with their own benefits. Let me discuss each type of praise and how you might use it with your employees.

Personal praise. Employees consider this the most important type of praise. It consists of being verbally thanked one-on-one for doing good work, being specifically sought out for such praise by one's manager or being commended for good work in front of another person. The best personal praise is timely, sincere and specific. Create time to connect with each of your employees--even if it's over coffee or lunch--to see how they are doing and to thank them for all they've done. You could even personally praise each of your employees when your staff gets together for a meeting. If you use this tactic, make sure you find something positive to say about everyone present so that no one feels left out.

Written praise. This is considered to be the next most valued type of praise by employees and it, too, comes in several varieties: from a letter of commendation being added to one's personnel file to a written note of thanks or a thank you card. In past years I've taken time to write an individual letter to each of my employees, specifically listing highlights of their performance I was proud of over the past year. This takes less time than you might think and the impact on the employees is significant.

Electronic praise. This is similar to written praise, but enables you to leverage positive communication as it occurs in your daily work. Twenty-eight percent of employees report it is "extremely important" to them to have positive e-mail messages forwarded to them and 65 percent say it's "extremely or very important" to be copied on positive e-mail messages. Use this technology to highlight any good news as it occurs. And don't forget the use of voicemail as well to leave a positive...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT