Employee of the Month Voting Forms
Every small business has employees who do their best to exceed the expectations of the company. These employees want to show their employers that they are willing to put in all the effort to ensure that the company is able to achieve success. So, these employers have to see which of these employees truly deserve a reward for all the hard work that they have done.
This is why there are some companies who congratulate an employee by giving him or her the title of employee of the month at the end of every working month. Although there are a lot of things to consider as to who should be an employee of the month, there is usually a voting system to help with that. This article is going to focus on how you can set up a system for an employee of the month.
Creating a voting system
It is not as simple as you may think. You cannot just randomly pick a few people to see who should be an employee of the month. There are a lot of things you have to consider when trying to figure out who deserves to acquire the title and the rewards that come with it. So, to help you create the voting system, you have to come up with the answers to the following questions:
- Who in the company can vote?
- How many votes can a single person have?
- How often are people going to vote?
- What is the voting criteria?
1. First, think about who in the company should vote for employee of the month. If you think that it should only be those with authority and who oversee how every single employee operates, then you should only have direct supervisors, managers, and possibly even those from Human Resources do the voting. However, if your company is one that usually encourages collaboration with all of its staff, then it is best that you have everyone from standard employees to upper management decide on who they want as an employee of the month. You have to make sure that there are no biases, so do what you can to remind these people to vote for the employee who has provided the most benefit for the company.
2. Next, you have to think about how many votes a single person can have. There are some voting systems in which one employee can have a maximum of three votes to determine who should be an employee of the month. While this is not such a bad system, sometimes it can create problems as there is a possibility that more than one person could win the employee of the month award. Unless the company plans on having more than one employee of the month, then it is best to go with the single voting system. That means only one vote for every employee within the business as that seems like a fairer option. Again, you have to remind everyone that votes should remain as objective as possible. You do not want your employees to vote for someone just because he or she is close to everyone in the office, despite having a poor performance. Remember that you also have the option to just have supervisors and managers do the voting as it can somewhat eliminate the possible biases, although not completely.
3. Then, you have to think about how often these people are going to vote. There are some businesses wherein they let employees vote every week to see who is performing the most. This way, it will help them see if anyone is willing to change their minds after a while and see if there is someone in the office who is consistent enough to acquire everyone’s votes repeatedly until the time comes to announce the employee of the month. Although, there is also the option of having employees only vote once near the end of the month. This way, you will be able to see who has performed the best near the end and it will also save your employees the hassle of having to think of who to vote for all the time. You may also see How to Write a Letter of Appreciation for an Employee.
4. Finally, you have to think about the voting criteria. This will all depend on your company culture and values, and you need to decide who gets to weigh the criteria. You should definitely ask those who are directly involved in observing employees as they have the much-needed information to help you come up with the criteria for voting. You need to be able to think about the objective of your company and if the employee is doing the best in order to achieve it. So, let us say that your company is one that focuses mostly on the number of sales that are achieved every single month. So, the criteria should be based on the volume of sales an employee is able to bring to your business. The criteria should also cover how the employee behaves in the general workplace and if he or she is able to uphold a positive image of the company culture. You may
After you have come up with the answer to all of those questions, then you can share with your employees the forms that they are going to need in order to vote for the employee that they think deserves the title.
Employee of the month nomination ideas
A lot of businesses use an employee of the month recognition programs to reward their employees for a job well done and to build up morale within the office. However, an employee of the month should not be chosen at random. You have to think of the proper criteria that will allow you to fairly determine who among your employees deserves the title and the rewards that come with it. Everyone in the company should know what to do in order to gain the title as that is a fair way of determining who should be an employee of the month. This will motivate these employees to meet the criteria. So, here are some ideas for an employee of the month nominations:
1. Employee nominations
One of the best ideas of nominating an employee of the month is to have the employees themselves do the nominations. Draw up a list of achievements or criteria that will qualify someone for the nomination, either on a rolling basis or by a certain day of the month. Then, once you have decided on the criteria, you can have your employees choose who among their co-workers is considered as the best nominee, or you can come up with a short list of the people that you think should be employee of the month, and then let your employees vote for who they think should be the winner. As mentioned many times before, you have to tell your employees that the decision should not be biased in any way.
You want them to pick a person who deserves to be an employee of the month—that means someone who has provided the business with a lot of work, who has exceeded expectations, and someone who has upheld company culture in a positive light. Although you could always decide to pick someone who you think should be an employee of the month, that would go against the whole point of the voting system. Just remember that you do not need to have all of the employees do the nominations. You can just have people in upper management do it as they are the ones who have direct contact with the employees and they are the ones who actually observe how employees act within the office. Remember to also point out that they should remain as objective as possible because you will never know if any one of them has some sort of bias toward a particular employee, especially one who is their subordinate.
2. Meeting company goals
You can base your employee of the month criteria on who in your company has met the company smart goals. These goals can change from month to month, depending on what your company’s objective is for a particular month. For example, there may be a month where your company is focusing more on how many sales it can generate, then another month may focus on market research on figuring out the different strategies to gain an advantage over competitors.
You can decide to have just one goal for the company, or you can have different goals for different divisions in your company. You can even decide to have your employees set their own smart goals that they will aim for. Then, you can have all the employees who have met the goals put all of their names in a box or a hat, then you will go through all of them and determine which of them has given your company what it needs. Remember to go through all of them thoroughly as you want to make a completely informed decision.
3. Nomination race
One way to determine which of your employees deserve to be an employee of the month is by setting up an “obstacle course” of tasks in which your employees will have to complete if they want to be eligible for the award. There are a number of tasks that you can ask the employee to do, although you have to make sure that these tasks are relevant to the duties and the responsibilities that can be found in their job descriptions. A couple of examples would be providing continuous excellent customer service, completing all of the assigned projects within the deadline, or exceeding sales targets for that particular month.
As employees are able to complete each task that you have set up, they can mark it off the list of things that they need to do. Once they are able to complete every single task, then they are entered as a candidate for employee of the month. Just remember to see the progress of all of these employees. Make sure to pick out the employee who has performed more than the rest and save all that information in the event that someone has any questions why you picked that person as an employee of the month. You may also see employee record templates.
4. Outstanding achievements
You can always have the option of recognizing the employee of the month by basing it off of someone who has managed to complete an outstanding achievement. Basically, you are giving the reward and the title of employee of the month to an employee who was able to stand out within that particular month. Maybe there was an employee in your company who was able to complete a major project way before the required deadline, or maybe there was an employee who was able to cover the work for multiple employees who were not present in the company during a particular period.
Depending on the type of business you have, you need to be able to think about what you would consider an outstanding achievement. Let us say that your business is one that focuses on selling products to customers so, naturally, the employee of the month would be based on who was able to sell the most products within that particular month and the person who was able to exhibit the best teamwork. Just be sure that you pick the person who actually has done what he or she needs to do in order to exceed company expectations and that you have all of the data to back up your decision.