Thinking of new ways to keep your employees motivated and productive at work? Then maybe you can start looking into starting an employee of the month Program where you can give out employee of the month certificates.
Showing your employees that you are grateful and you appreciate their loyalty and service is key in keeping the best employees happy with their jobs. Having a high turnover of employees in your company is extremely difficult and very expensive. You would have to put in a lot of time, effort, resources and even money just to be able to find good employees to take the places of those who have left.
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Employees who feel overworked, underpaid and underappreciated would most likely start looking for better opportunities, leaving you lacking in manpower, which may affect the productivity of your company. So an effortless program which would enhance the retention rate of your employees, which comes with an incentive which is easy to make would be very beneficial for your company.
Employee of the Month Certificate Templates
You may think it as a simple step but you’d be surprised at how influential a certificate can be to an employee who wants to feel appreciated. When employees know that the management is paying attention to their work and sees how productive they are, they tend to perform a lot better in the workplace, which would be a great advantage to your organization. Happy and appreciated employees are better employees.
This article is all about employee of the month programs, employee of the month certificates and how to make your own template. Knowing all these would be helpful for you to start your own program at work and take a step towards having more productive employees.
Advantages of Having an Employee of the Month
Before we start with making your own employee of the month certificates, you should first learn the advantages or benefits of actually having an employee of the month program. These advantages extend to and are the same with the advantages of making and giving out certificates to your employees to give them recognition and show them an appreciation for their overall productiveness.
Here are the advantages of starting this program in your own company or organization:
To Encourage Healthy Competition in the Workplace
Starting such a program such as giving an award for the best performers at work could encourage your employees to do their best with their work or the tasks which are assigned to them. For instance, for employees in sales, the one who has the highest sales amount in a month, the one with the most number of satisfied clients or the one who has the best networking skills may have an opportunity to get the incentive. Such an incentive could be in the form of a certificate and this could serve as a motivation for your employees.
Augment the Retention Rate of Your Employees
Employees who are happy and motivated at work would most likely stay on for the long run. Giving out the employee of the month certificates to your employees would be an enormous accomplishment for them which they can add to their resume.
Having awarding or recognition programs can augment the retention rate in your company as your employees would feel happier and more secure knowing that everything they do is being noticed and appreciated. This is especially true for employees who have come from companies wherein they hadn’t experienced being valued by their superiors or by the management.
Increase the Sense of Employee Engagement
Employee engagement refers to the employees’ feeling of belongingness or oneness with the company. Giving out certificates and recognizing workers in the organization increases employee engagement as people generally work a lot better and are more productive when they know that there is a chance of getting an award by the end of it.
Employees who are engaged see the mission, vision, and goals of the company as their own and they tend to put a lot of effort into the betterment of the company in terms of its interests and reputation.
Ensure the Highest Level of Productivity
It’s a fact that companies and organizations pay to get work done. If the work done by employees is optimal because they are motivated, then that means that to company or organization is definitely making a profit.
Giving employees incentives in return makes them happier, thus making the whole process a win-win situation. A simple employee of the month program can do so much despite it being almost effortless for the employer.
Planning Your Employee of the Month Program and Certificate
Knowing the advantage of having an employee of the month program would probably be enough to encourage you to start one in your organization. Before doing so, it would be helpful to be guided by some steps in planning such a program, along with the certificate which serves as an incentive which goes along with it.
1. Establish the Objectives of Your Program
Think about why you plan to start such a program in your organization. Refer to the advantages of having such a program and see if they all fit into the objectives of your organization. You’d have to have clear business objectives in order to successfully launch and maintain it. Once you have clear objectives, then you can move on to the next step.
2. Make a Plan of the Whole Program
From how you will introduce the program to your employees, to the incentives and to how you will give out the recognition and the awards at the end of each month. Usually, the person who receives the award is decided through votation. So the whole program needs to be outlined well for it to operate successfully.
3. Introduce the Voting System to the Staff and Employees
Make sure to have clear criteria for voting. You can involve the employees in setting up the criteria to ensure transparency and fair judgment. This would also guarantee that all the employees agree to the criteria and that they are familiar with it.
These criteria should be moving towards the increased productivity and all the targets and goals of the organization. It would also be important to make clear who gets to vote when the voting will happen, the voting procedure and all other information, which should be known by everyone in the organization.
4. Plan How to Make Your Certificate
Planning your program would include coming up with the content as well as the format of your employee of the month certificate. You’d have to know how to make a good employee of the month certificate template, which we will discuss further on in more detail.
5. Be Sure to Follow-Up Your Program
If you are planning to start an employee of the month Program in your organization, you’d have to do a lot of trial and error processes in order to work out all the possible kinks and errors to arrive at a foolproof program.
Make assessments of employee performances to see if your program is actually contributing to higher productivity or not. Also, check to see if your objectives have been reached. Ask feedbacks from your employees to see if your program works and keep on working on it until it does.
How to Make Your Own Employee of the Month Certificate Template
Once you’ve come up with a plan of your program, you can start thinking about designing your company’s employee of the month certificate template. There are no specific formats for these kinds of certificates, but you need to at least have all the relevant information for it to become official and efficient.
Here are a few tips on how to make your own template:
- To start off, there are lots of ready-made templates which are available online. Different sites offer free templates which you can use, where you just have to input your information and print it out. The problem with these templates is you won’t have the freedom to format them to fit in with your company’s design, you’d have to use whatever is available online.
- On the other hand, if you want to make your own template from scratch, all you have to do is open your software of choice. Use a regular letter-sized paper size in landscape format and set normal margins for it, usually 1-inch margins all around.
- Place a border of your choice on the page, which can be found in the software programs or you can also try looking for border graphics online. You can find borders which have the same colors as your company logo or go with more formal or simple black or gray borders.
- It would be most useful to place the border on the bottom layer of the page so that you will be able to paste other graphics and type the text you need to type on top of it.
- Once you have a page with a border, you can start personalizing your certificate before adding in the content. You can insert logos and other graphics such as medals or ribbons, as much as you see fit.
- Insert the title of your certificate. This is one of the most important parts and is found at the topmost part, usually with the biggest font size. You can use wordings such as “Employee of the Month” or “Employee of the Month Award,” depending on which you prefer. Format the title however you wish, whether you’d like the title to appear very formal or not.
- Under the title comes the presentation line, which comes in a smaller and more ordinary font. You can use wordings such as “is hereby awarded to,” or “is given to,” or “is bestowed upon,” or whatever phrases you think would suit your certificate the best.
- Next comes the name of the recipient, which is the other most important part. When adding in the name of the recipient, you’d have to ensure that you have it spelled right. Fill in the name of the employee who has had the best performance of the month and make sure that the font is clear, readable and big enough, just like the title.
- After the recipient’s name comes the name of your organization, from which the certificate came from. The font doesn’t have to be big, as long as it’s readable.
- The description or narrative about the certificate is written next. It could be as simple as “for being the most productive employee in terms in the sales department for the month of…” You can make this part as simple or as comprehensible as you want. It all depends on you.
- We’re almost done! The next thing to place is the date. You’d have to place the date when you plan to award the certificate on it as well. The format of the date – month, day and year, would be up to you.
- Before you award your certificate to the right employee, you need to get a person in authority to sign it. This is usually the director, manager, supervisor or the head of the department. This makes the certificate official.
- These steps would ensure that your template would look official and would be much appreciated by the one who receives it. Make smart decisions when making your template so you won’t have to change it each month. You can make use of the same template as long as it is made well and given a lot of thought.
Alternatives to Employee of the Month Certificates
When starting an employee of the month program, the most traditional incentive is a certificate. The fact is, incentives can come in different forms. Though employee of the month certificates are the most conventional and the most effective, you can also opt to choose these other alternatives:
Give Your Employee Verbal Praise
Showing gratitude and appreciation to employees by giving a verbal word of thanks would go a very long way. Managers or supervisors thanking and giving recognition to their employees would definitely raise their self-esteem and motivate them to be more productive at their jobs.
It would be most helpful to put in effort to emphasize the top quality work done by an employee by verbally expressing it in front of clients or other employees and staff in meetings or presentations.
Give Your Employee a Thank You Card
Giving thank you cards attached to a simple token or flower bouquet would be much appreciated by your employees. More than the card, your employees will appreciate the reason behind it, which is that you have noticed the excellent work of the employee and that you recognize and appreciate it.
Have a Hall of Fame
All organizations or offices have bulletin boards or company websites where you can start a “Hall of Fame,” which highlights the best employees in the company at a given time.
Give recognition to your employees by placing including them in the Hall of Fame for as long as they are the highest performers in the department or in the whole organization.
Give Your Employee Gift Certificates or Other Fun Gifts
Gift certificates, movie tickets or even event tickets can be very useful tokens to give to your employees. This would not only motivate them but would also be very much appreciated especially if you know your employees and you know what they want.
Giving your employees these sorts of tokens will allow them to have fun outside of work through simple activities like shopping, watching movies or attending live concerts or sports events. It all depends on what tokens you will give to your employee.
Have a Celebration for Your Employees
You can either have a simple get together at your office, with food, games and a simple recognition ceremony or have a team building event at a different venue. Whichever kind of celebration you choose, just make sure to set a schedule to recognize or give awards to the most productive employees of the month.
Give Employees Paid Rest Days or Opportunities for Training
A paid day off is probably one of the best kinds of incentives you can give to an employee. If you think you can afford to pay an employee once a month even though he/she doesn’t show up to do for work, then this would be a kind of incentive employees would appreciate the most.
For those who would also like to further their skills and knowledge, you can give your employees opportunities to do so. This kind of incentive would benefit you and your organization as you would end up with a more productive employee.
Give Employees Opportunity to Lead
If you have employees with special skills which are beneficial to the company and they perform excellently at work, then you can give them an opportunity to lead a group of employees to help train them so they can acquire the same skills.
This kind of incentive is more abstract in nature and it would give the employee more confidence as he/she would feel like he is good enough to help other employees out. The employee would also be recognized by others as someone who is doing exceptional work, which would also give the employee a boost in confidence.
