Best-Of-The-Best Recognition - This Is How You Do It!

Our team was recently invited to attend the annual recognition banquet for a large and successful healthcare client. What an amazing and powerful night it was to see xxx awardees from all walks of life be recognized for their outstanding actions and results that supported the organization and its patients and fellow employees.


The evening could serve as a primer for “How to Run a Recognition Banquet:”

• Funnel the recognition awardees with the most compelling stories to a cross-functional team to analyze and choose the best individuals and teams.

• Choose those individuals and teams whose actions and results really made a difference

• Throw the banquet at the most elegant venue – in this case, the ballroom of an upscale hotel

• Provide a cocktail hour so the awardees can relax and meet other awardees

• Fete the awardees with a magnificent dinner

• Have the process organized and orchestrated so that it moves quickly and efficiently

• Focus the evening on telling the awardees’ stories and inviting them to the stage to be recognized by their own manager and top management

• Celebrate the passion and emotion while embracing the smiles and tears that spontaneously erupt

• Marvel at how much highly engaged healthcare employees really do care about their jobs, their patients and their co-workers

• Appreciate how rewards and recognition really work in building a true performance culture

• Know that these people’s stories will circulate throughout the organization, providing countless more recognition impressions

How about you? Do you celebrate your best of the best each year?  How do you consistently build a culture of recognition?