Verbal praise as an employee reward

A high impact employee reward that doesn’t have a sky high cost

Most managers and supervisors are extremely uncomfortable giving praise, especially as an employee reward. It’s about time we understood this or figured it out, I’m guessing that if they feel that they give praise once, the employee will continue to expect it all the time or maybe if they feel they give praise, they’re crossing the boundary of being that harsh, objective, rational manager or maybe they’re just uncomfortable giving a compliment.

So, one of the things we got to be able to do is to teach people how to give verbal praise as an employee reward.

Train your managers to give verbal praise
Do you have guidelines that you give to your managers? Do you train them how to do this? Do you teach them to say, okay, when an employee stays late, they don’t have to stay late, you’ve asked them to or they do it on a voluntary basis to help on a project, do you immediately give them verbal praise? Do you say something as simple as thank you?

How many of you have a list of, what I’ll call, thank you categories for which managers can look at and understand when they should be giving verbal praise as an employee reward?

Classify what gets praise
These can be things like, okay, when someone stays late, when someone goes above and beyond the call of duty, when someone helps someone else on the team and shows great teamwork, when they show initiative, when they tackle a tough project, when they do something that they weren’t asked to do that was very positive. This is a great way to give employee rewards that impact positively on the company goals

And we could have a list of, you know, 20 of these things as a guideline for managers of when to give verbal praise.

Along with — and by the way, verbal praise should always be done immediately, instantaneously when the activity that’s going to be recognized or rewarded is done. Like when someone stays late. Don’t wait two days to tell them you appreciated it. Give them the employee reward them right then and there on the spot.