From the moment you onboard an employee, you have just hit the first milestone in their employment lifecycle. Milestone recognition is a fantastic way to make a real positive difference in the employee satisfaction and culture at your business. The myjoboffer founders have an extensive HR background and understand the importance of keeping track and recognising employee milestones. While it may seem like a simple addition to your people and culture processes, there are definitely some businesses who are strides ahead when it comes to this.
Firstly, you need to define what the primary and secondary milestones are.
They can be broken down into 2 categories. Work related and personal life. Work related milestones include moments that are specific to their career. Moments that happen within the typical employee lifecycle. This includes:
- Probation review
- Depending on your employee agreement, you may have a probationary period that is concluded by conducting a review. This should be made clear in employment agreements from day 1 so the employee knows and is aware of this milestone.
- Performance reviews
- Again, the timeframe on this is dependant on your business. Some do yearly, some do 6 months.
- Learning and development
- It is extremely beneficial to set up learning and development pathways for your employees. Having a roadmap with milestones and achievements to hit can really improve culture and satisfaction.
- Years of service
- Celebrating years of service of your employees is vital. Not only are you recognising loyalty, it gives other employees something to look up to. Client retention is a changing game in the new employment landscape, so hitting milestones is often an exciting moments.
Celebrating the moments that happen in employees personal lives can create a welcoming, community culture. Being celebrated in your work life positively impacts the satisfaction of employees. These include (but are not limited to):
- Births of children
- Birthdays
- Engagements
- Marriages
- Graduations
- Things that happen in your employees lives that they are excited and proud of
So how is the best way to celebrate? As much as we would LOVE a limitless budget to shower our employees with perks and gifts and money… it is simply not the case for the vast majority of us. SO what can we do? First and foremost – start with a simple email/announcement to all staff recognising/congratulating their milestone. An important tip with this is to talk to them and gain their consent to share with all staff.
Some other employee milestone recognition ideas include:
- Give them an early mark for the afternoon
- Buy a gift (for personal milestones such as child birth or marriage)
- Take them out for a coffee/lunch
- Put on a morning tea where all staff can bring a plate
We recommend getting creative and personalise the way you celebrate. After all, you should know your employees best.
Step one of the process is ensuring you onboard your staff with accurate and timely information. Ensuring you understand the important employee milestones, and setting them up with learning and development plans can drastically improve employee culture (and ease of doing your job is just a bonus). If you want to hear more about our awesome onboarding software – contact us today.