Building recognition into your culture is a sustained effort, and it works best if it’s cultivated as a habit. If the leaders (business or cultural!) of your organisation lead by example and actively recognise staff for a wide range of reasons, your team members will pick up this habit for themselves. The aim is to get to a point where recognition is occurring regularly, organically, and from all levels of the business.

To kick start recognition from the top down, here’s a simple email template you can send to the executive team, management team, or team leaders, to give them ideas on what to recognise staff for.

Hi X,

Here at [COMPANY NAME], we want to make an effort to build recognition into our company culture and we believe the success of this will come from the top down.

We would like you, as a leader in the business, to lead by example and make an effort to recognise your team members and members of other teams when you see them contribute or achieve something.

As this is new, here are some suggestions to spark a bit of inspiration for reasons to give recognition. Pick one each [DAY/WEEK] and recognise someone who...

Remember to also have fun with it! You can recognise someone for absolutely anything, no good deed should go unnoticed.