How Does A Global Employee Recognition Company Do Recognition?
Updated on
March 3, 2025
3
March
2025
You may be wondering: How does an employee recognition company recognize their own people? Do they follow their own best practices?
In a word, yes.
At O.C. Tanner, we believe that every employee should feel valued and appreciated at work. Our purpose is to help people thrive at work, and we know feeling appreciated fuels and inspires greatness. Our own best-in-class recognition platform, Culture Cloud®, helps us do just that.
Here are 5 best practices, backed by research, that we use to recognize employees at O.C. Tanner:
1. We align our recognition programs and tools to our company’s brand
This ensures recognition feels authentic and connects employees to our company culture and brand. We branded our platform “Appreciate Great” to link our fundamental beliefs of appreciation and influencing greatness in employees. When our people use our tools to recognize one another, the recognition is tied back to the areas of focus from our company strategy map and we regularly connect recognition to our corporate values. Whenever we refresh our programs or tools, we use photos of our own people, rather than stock photos, in our platform visuals and communications.
2. We celebrate careers, not just years of service
We honor career anniversaries with a meaningful, memorable recognition experience. When employees have a work anniversary, we celebrate them with a:
- Yearbook™ signed by their peers, teammates, and leaders (past and present)
- Numeral representing their years of service
- Symbolic custom awards that represents our company’s history, values, and goals
- Recognition experience that includes current and former colleagues, leaders, senior executives, vendors, clients, and family members. We gather together and share stories of the employees’ accomplishments, memories, laughs, and sometimes a few tears.
- Curated selection of memorable, meaningful awards. Ultimately, we know an employee’s life at work impacts their life at home, and we want to give employees a gift they can share with their families.
We also give all new hires an onboarding box filled with company swag to help them feel welcomed at O.C. Tanner, and honor retirees with a special custom award that symbolizes our company history and business, along with a Yearbook of congratulations from peers, leaders, and friends.
3. We go big when teams or the entire company hits a milestone or goal
Whether it’s giving all employees a group points deposit, swag or a swag box, or letting employees choose from a selection of gifts, we want to thank all employees for their role in making the accomplishment happen. Often, this appreciation is accompanied by a company picnic or special event and a symbolic award.
We also have special awards for special accomplishments. Our sales field receives a Careerscape with icons they can add each time they reach their sales goals. Employees receive special symbolic awards when they achieve a President’s or Founder’s award, and we often give special coins or symbolic awards when the company accomplishes major achievements or has significant milestones.
4. Recognition is integrated into our employees’ flow of work
We know from our research that integrated recognition makes an impact. Employees can recognize one another through Outlook and Teams plug-ins and our mobile app, and physical reward codes and printed certificates are available for our manufacturing employees who don’t work at a computer all day. We also recognize wellbeing successes through our integration with Personify Health.
5. We beta-test everything on ourselves
Recognition Coach™, My Circle, and Job Transitions are just some of the new AI tools available that we tested with our own people before offering them to clients. We also leverage everything Culture Cloud has to offer, including reminders and smart notifications.
Our goal is to create a true recognition experience for our people using the technology available but also to connect with our employees through genuine and personal recognition moments.
Learn more about O.C. Tanner’s own journey to creating an authentic, impactful recognition experience for our people.
6. We recognize employees around the world
We are a global company, but we are one company with one recognition platform. While there may be small cultural differences in how we express recognition around the world, the impact is the same. Giving and receiving recognition, whether you are in North or South America, Europe, Asia, or Australia (and maybe even Antarctica), improves engagement, retention, and productivity, and lowers burnout.
How O.C. Tanner’s global HR leaders leverage recognition
Employee recognition in Europe
“Seeing the power of recognition is what brought me to O.C. Tanner. In my previous role, I was a client and saw first-hand the impact a culture of appreciation has on engagement, performance, and customer service. I am absolutely certain that our culture at O.C. Tanner is the reason we have been in business for almost a hundred years and have an incredible client and employee retention rate. There is, undoubtedly, a direct correlation between the employee experience and the customer experience.
Amongst all of the incredible data and research around recognition, I still believe that the key is to keep it simple. Recognition must be specific, timely, and authentic. We build the tools to make recognition efficient, global, and amplified so that the recognition experience itself stays simple, uncomplicated, and sustainable over the long term.”
—Robert Ordever, Managing Director, O.C. Tanner Europe
To keep recognition simple and timely, Ordever’s teams encourage employees to say thank you immediately when great work happens, even through informal methods like a few kind words in passing. They also encourage leaders to look for reasons to recognize employees every single day.
See how Chevron made their global recognition platform more efficient and sustainable.
Employee recognition in North America
“We have a great culture where people know that when they bring their best every day, they will be recognized for the outstanding work they do. At O.C. Tanner, we practice what we preach, and our mission is to help employees thrive at work. Because of this, employees love coming to work every day. Who wouldn’t want to work in such an environment?
A best practice for effective recognition is that it needs to be timely. Recognizing the work of a colleague, whether it's from a manager or peer-to-peer, reinforces the behavior and should be done as soon as possible after the great work is completed. This creates a more meaningful and impactful recognition moment and has a profound impact on the culture of the organization.
A great example of this is when we recognized one of our IT employees for managing both an office-wide flood due to storms in addition to the global CrowdStrike issue, all in the same week. He saved equipment, oversaw clean-up efforts, removed corrupted files, and reset computers for affected employees. We recognized him the following Monday for his heroic efforts. Presenting this award a month or so later would not have the same impact as giving the recognition immediately following the great work that was done.”
—Peter Ciccia, Manager, People and Great Work, Canada
Employee recognition in IMEA (India, Middle East, and Africa)
“As human beings, we may work for money. But we ‘work hard’ to be recognized. It is a fundamental need of human life. My people want to know that I see them. Whether it is a regular one-on-one or contribution to the team goal or even a life event, listening and appreciating is key. It’s not only the above-and-beyond projects or the big wins, it is all the daily small experiences and the acknowledgment thereof, that make all the difference.
There is so much power in recognition.”
—Candy Fernandez, Director, People and Great Work, IMEA
Employee recognition in Asia Pacific
“I’ve seen recognition impacting the employee experience through all stages of the employee lifecycle journey. New employees are often appreciative of having their efforts and willingness to learn and assimilate into the business be acknowledged. Joining a new organisation or learning a new role is often a challenging time, so recognizing an employee throughout their onboarding can foster connection and increase an employee’s satisfaction with both their role and the organisation.
Those who are well into their journey within the business who receive recognition for their ongoing learning and development feel supported in their pursuit of personal and professional growth, and are encouraged to continue with their growth efforts.
People who are at the end of their time with the organisation are made to feel that they made a significant impact, and leave with a sense of accomplishment and feeling appreciated for their efforts right up until their last day.
Recognition has a positive impact on overall engagement, employee wellbeing, and contributes to fostering a culture of appreciation, support and collaboration.
Be active in looking for opportunities to recognise and celebrate others for their efforts, great work, and milestones. Make your recognition meaningful for the recipient – know your people and how they like to be celebrated. And make it timely for maximum impact.”
—Melissa Niemann, Senior Manager, People and Great Work, Asia Pacific
See how CIBC recognizes through the employee journey
Appreciation works, no matter where in the world employees are. For more insight into recognition around the globe, check out our 2025 Global Culture Report.
