Celebrate Valentine’s Day at Work Without Spending Money

Many organizations spend more money than they have to on employee recognition gifts and appreciation programs that often involve bonuses, paid time off, contests, gifts, and other expensive forms of compensation. What employees want most is to know they’re doing a good job.

Giving feedback in the workplace is the cheapest, most effective, and often overlooked form of employee recognition. Employees want to know how they’re performing, and most employees get little to no positive or negative feedback at work. They may not want to hear negative feedback, but employees want to know if they aren’t meeting expectations.

In several of Candid Culture’s training programs, I give participants a box of questions to help coworkers set expectations and improve workplace communication.  Some of the questions include:

• Do you prefer to receive information via email, voicemail, or text message?
• Are you a big picture or a detail-oriented person?
• What are your pet peeves at work?
• What type of work do you like to do the most? What type of work do you like to do the least?
• What do you wish I would start, stop, and continue doing?

Participants use the questions during the training, and I am consistently amazed at how often training participants ask what their coworkers wish they would start, stop and continue doing. I assume employees will be hesitant to ask for feedback in front of a group of peers. But training participants consistently tell me that they get almost no feedback at work, and they’re desperate for the information.

Here’s How to Celebrate Valentine’s Day at Work Without Spending Money:

1. Give clear, specific, and timely positive and negative feedback. Employees want to know how they’re performing.
2. Ask what type of work employees really want to do, and let them do that work most of the time.
3. Ask what skills employees want to learn, and give them a chance to attain those skills.
4. Write handwritten notes of appreciation.

Employees at Candid Culture get their birthdays off paid. We often buy employees lunch, give bonuses, and have a generous time-off policy. Those perks are important and do help retain employees. But monetary rewards never replace or supersede the value of being aware of employees’ performance and caring enough to tell employees the truth.

Tags: business relationships, constructive feedback, employee recognition, employee retention, employee rewards, positive feedback, valentine’s day at work, workplace communication