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How To Show Employee Appreciation As An Entrepreneur Boss
Having varied tactics for handling employee appreciation can make a big difference.
Researched, written by 
Amber & The Team
Updated on August 20, 2023
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Rethinking management techniques is crucial to keeping employees on-side and motivated.
In our ever-changing world, you can’t afford to stick with the same old strategies time after time and expect to get better results.
With that in mind, here are some fresh ways to show your appreciation for the hard work of team members in the current era.
Give personalized gifts
Gifts are a great way to recognize employee achievements, but you can’t just give everyone a gift card and assume that this is a sufficient reward.
Instead, it’s much more meaningful to give gifts that are unique to the individual and clearly show some care and attention has been put into the decision.
If you’re at a loss for where to start, SnackNation’s list of employee appreciation gift ideas will help tremendously.
Another great idea is to give personalized thank you cards from Cards for Causes to acknowledge the employees’ contributions.
With these, you can not only recognize the team members’ efforts but also reinforce a sense of value and belonging.
Provide opportunities for career progression
One of the biggest workplace motivators is knowing that all the effort you put in today will lead to better things for your career tomorrow.
It’s not enough to give the vague promise of the potential for promotion at some undefined point in the future; you need to be specific in outlining what team members can expect if they achieve certain goals and reach particular milestones in their development.
Part of showing appreciation here also means giving them the means to unlock their full potential through training and other developmental tools.
Provide a flexible working policy
The need to adopt flexible working as a policy in your business is pressing, especially since the rise of remote working means that employees are struggling to strike an agreeable work-life balance more than ever before.
This is about appreciating the mental challenges that come with fitting into a career with the personal responsibilities that we all have.
It’s also about ensuring that there are the same benefits in place for all employees and not just for those on the upper rungs of the power ladder.
Don’t shy away from giving feedback
Recognizing a job well done with positive feedback is just as important as highlighting areas where there’s room for improvement through developmental feedback.
And most of all, you should strike a balance between the two rather than veering too far in either direction.
For example, you might find it easy to praise team members, but they’ll also appreciate it when you pick them up on foibles and imperfections in their work.
That way, they will know that the praise is genuine because there’s light and shade to make judgments against.
Be specific
This feeds into the need for feedback, because if your praise is generic, then employees won’t know exactly what they’ve done which pleased you, or might feel that you’re not being especially authentic at work.
It’s more useful for all involved if you are particular in picking out what to heap praise upon, not just in terms of what an employee did to merit positive feedback, but also how their actions led to good outcomes.
Deal with employee appreciation in a structured way
It’s easier to keep on top of your employee appreciation responsibilities if you’ve got a format and structure for taking care of this.
Don’t just trust that when there’s something worth celebrating, you’ll speak up.
Making this part of your routine will have the added benefit of ensuring that you are more comfortable with giving feedback, rather than being daunted by the prospect.
Wrapping up
Having varied tactics for handling employee appreciation can make a big difference, because it accounts for all sorts of scenarios and means you can adopt a bespoke approach for each team member.
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