The Anatomy of an Appreciation Message

Isn’t it a wonderful feeling to be on the receiving end of someone's sincere appreciation and admiration?

You must have considered appreciating your employees or colleagues for their good work on numerous occasions. But didn't know what to say or how to say it, so you chose to withdraw at the last minute. Or you may be holding back on showing your employees how much you value them because you are apprehensive.

Employee recognition is an integral part of healthy company culture. It is a key point determining a company’s growth and productivity.

What's stopping you from putting it into practice? A lack of confidence in your verbal abilities? Or are you stumped about what and how to write in their cards?

Impacts Of Employee Recognition on Organizational Success

1. It Promotes a Robust Corporate Culture

Employee appreciation gives birth to a company culture of kindness, empathy, and motivation. And this, in turn, brings substantial benefits to you and your team as it depicts your company values are aligned with yours.

2. Increases Employee Satisfaction and Boosts Morale

For an agile and energetic workforce, maintaining strong employee morale is your main objective. A  modest act of gratitude can boost employee satisfaction and morale, and you won't notice any glum faces at work.

3. It Encourages Peer-to-Peer Recognition

If recognition begins at the top level, it will also slide down to peer-to-peer interactions and appreciation. All you need is a common platform where peers can publicly appreciate their co-workers, which is possible with a robust rewards and recognition platform.

4. Encourage Repetition

Recognition encourages employees to repeat their actions with the same efforts in the future. It showcases you have confidence in them and support their success.

5. Employees become your Brand Advocates

Happily recognized and motivated employees will share their good experiences with their friends and family, and as a result, you get your very own brand advocates. In addition, you will see a diverse talent pool approaching your company.

How to Frame your Appreciation Message?

A little kindness can go a long way. You can use the following template as a guide to create thoughtful and heartfelt appreciation messages for your colleagues and express your gratitude for their contribution.

1. Be Specific

Saying “You did a good job” is fine, but detailed praise motivates the person. It feels genuine when a particular action is emphasized as an outstanding job. Let’s look at some examples of how to make recognition specific–

2. Create a Visual Connect

You may highlight your employee’s efforts and work by including a photograph. For greater impact, you may even link their work to your message. This creates an emotional connection and gives employees an idea about their unique work style.

3. Showcase how their Efforts Helped the Organization

You may depict how an employee’s individual contributions align with the organization’s goals. This makes employees feel highly valued and promotes a sense of belonging in them and the organization.

As an example,

4.  Looking ahead

Encourage them to do so again in the future. Let them know you believe in their abilities and are rooting for their success. A suitable phrase would be –

And you’re good to go.

Do you have an Employee Rewards and Recognition Program in place?

The desire to be recognized for one's efforts is innate in humans. Employee rewards and recognition matter more than you think because it has an immediate effect on job satisfaction, employee engagement, and increased productivity.

Your employee recognition program can be enhanced and streamlined by using Vantage Rewards. Once onboard, you will discover more options to make sure that you and your team are making recognition like pros.

Effective Appreciation with Vantage Rewards

We follow the following principles as a guide for meaningful Employee Appreciation.

• Visibility– We have a social feed that is accessible to all the employees of the organization, which promotes peer-to-peer recognition.
• Diversity and Inclusion– Diversifying the groups responsible for recognizing people is a potent strategy to ensure that more people receive recognition. We always encourage everyone on the team to have the ability to both give and receive appreciation.  

• Celebration– Vantage Rewards makes appreciation more meaningful by celebrating their achievements by sharing tailor-made badges with your peers.

• Engage– Peers can engage in real-time by liking and commenting on the appreciation post and see immediate growth in their feed engagement score.

• Personalize– This allows the appreciator to upload pictures and the recognition that they are making as a picture is worth a thousand words.

• Personal Branding– Socially share your achievements with loved ones and followers across social media platforms.
  

Take Away

Every employee deserves to be recognized for their contributions. The small extra effort of writing an employee appreciation message demonstrates your gratitude for all the persistent efforts that have either directly or indirectly contributed to accomplishing a project or business objectives.

However, be sure to include "Thank you" or "Thank you for your hard work" or a phrase to that effect in the beginning. This will help the recipient understand the context easily.

Happy Recognizing!

This article is written by Rithika Sarmah. Besides working as a Product Marketer at Vantage Circle, she is an inquisitive reader who enjoys learning about human anatomy and physiology. In her leisure hours, she hums to the melody of her guitar and captures snapshots of her best moments. To get in touch, contact editor@vantagecircle.com