Personal Accomplishments Worth Recognition – Striking a healthy work-life balance is paramount for employees of the post-pandemic workplace. It’s vital to their emotional, physical, and mental health and well-being.
That focus blurs the line between employees’ work and personal lives. To be happy and productive in either requires being happy and productive in both.
It’s not enough anymore for employers to only recognize job-related events, such as tenure, promotions, and other milestones. Employees want their personal life events recognized in the workplace as well. Doing so benefits both employer and employee by creating a corporate culture with a family feel.
Honoring workers in a personal way produces happier and healthier employees. They’re more engaged, more productive, less stressed, and more resilient. If that’s what you want from your employees, here are six important Personal Accomplishments Worth Recognition life events you should recognize at work.
1. Life’s Journey
How do you make sure you celebrate a personal and professional life? You begin by making the effort proactive rather than reactive. For that, you’ll need a map.
Employee journey mapping begins with a list of all potential touchpoints in an employee’s life. You’ll include hiring and onboarding, promotions, and even the exit interview. But you’ll also include significant life events each employee has, like birthdays, or may have, like weddings.
Once you plot everything on a single map, you can visualize each employee’s individual journey. Plus, you have a reminder of when each one should be recognized. That makes the whole thing easy to manage.
2. Birthdays
Birthdays are an obvious life event employers should celebrate with their employees. After all, birthdates are part of the employment file, and they occur on the same day every year. But there’s more to it than that.
Celebrating birthdays in the workplace gives everyone a reason to interact with each other on a personal level. Employees can put a challenging project or stressful issue aside for a moment to celebrate one of their own. It builds a sense of camaraderie and community.
Remember, too, that for some employees, the workplace birthday celebration will be the only one they have. Honoring them for another trip around the sun will shine some light into what might have otherwise been a depressing day. And that makes everyone’s day brighter.
3. Anniversaries
Weddings and anniversaries are an often-missed opportunity for workplace recognition. After all, the employee works here, not the employee’s spouse. But it’s the work-life boundary blur that makes this recognition so important.
Spouses and partners are the people who hear most about your employees’ ups, downs, trials, and tribulations at work. They leave the office and unload on those they share their personal lives with. They rely upon their significant others to provide the support and encouragement that makes them better employees.
Celebrate your employees and the people in their lives. When you do, you show their partners that you value their loved ones. Everyone can feel the love.
4. New Arrivals
Shower recognition on employees who are welcoming new arrivals in their lives. These events mean their lives are changing significantly, and that can be stressful. Embrace their changes with them to show your support.
Don’t limit this recognition to the birth or adoption of a child. The adoption of a pet or purchase of a home are just as important. So is the moving in of a parent who needs your employee’s care in their golden years.
Change is difficult, no matter how welcome or prepared for it your employees are. Help them by celebrating such personal changes with their work family as well.
5. Personal Bests
Sometimes, what makes employees stellar while they’re on the clock is what drives them when they’re clocked out. Encourage them to share their personal accomplishments in the workplace and recognize them there as well.
Finishing a 5k or marathon, getting an essay published, completing a degree, or reaching their goal weight all take focus and dedication. When employers publicly applaud these personal bests, they’re also honoring that determination. And employees will also bring the same traits to their jobs.
Workplace recognition of employees’ personal bests shows you’re interested in each of them as a whole person. After all, when you have done your best at something or reached a goal, you want people to know. Give your employees the floor.
6. Leadership and Involvement
Employees who are involved in their communities outside of the workplace do it for all sorts of reasons. But what they all share is a desire to make their communities better places to live. Recognizing that external involvement will help build community at work as well.
Call it the bandwagon effect or feeding employee competitiveness. But when some employees are recognized for their community involvement, others will want to get on board. That will improve everyone’s community as well as the workplace.
Companies that create a sense of community within bolster employee engagement, retention, and happiness. The pride and assumption of social responsibility of one employee can be contagious. And that’s just the sort of attitude you want to spread.
Personal Accomplishments Worth Recognition – Life and Work Life
People want to feel positive, healthy, and optimistic about everything in their lives. They aren’t reserving those goals only for work or only for personal time. Most yearn for an even keel.
Employers who recognize work achievements at work are doing right by employees. But they need to do more. Employees are no longer drawing a stark line between their personal and professional lives, and neither should you. Extend recognition to events outside their jobs and celebrate their lives wherever good things are happening.