1. Informal, funny, or fun awards are essential for fostering employee engagement, team bonding, and a positive workplace atmosphere.
2. These awards, which can be creative and innovative, recognize employees for their unique traits, hobbies, and interests. Examples include “The Dr. Fixit Award” and “The Office Picasso Award.”
3. Guidelines for implementing such awards include being creative, involving employees, being culturally sensitive, using digital platforms, developing a schedule, and effective communication.
Informal, Funny, or Fun awards are not new—they have been around for a long time. Moreover, they have often been used as icebreakers in office get-togethers and parties. Therefore, they can help build an atmosphere of fun, camaraderie, and team bonding.
Hence, in the current situation, with a large segment of the employees in most organizations working remotely, funny or fun awards have acquired new relevance.
Therefore, fun awards are slowly becoming mainstream rewards and recognition programs. Let’s try to understand how they work.
Organizations have realized the importance of fun awards for employee engagement; to break the monotony of work from time to time and create a more fun-filled and informal atmosphere that foster better team building and collaboration.
So, fun awards are a way to appreciate and recognize co-workers informally and creatively, as well as their hobbies, interests, and personality traits.
Hence, they create a positive and informal workplace atmosphere without offending anyone.
The whole idea of funny or fun awards is to ensure that the employees feel valued while having a good time and a great laugh
Hence, it’s all about recognizing an employee as a person, not just a coworker or organizational resource.
Therefore, they should be integral to the employee engagement plan of every organization.
Undeniably, fun awards are a great way to build a positive, informal, and engaging atmosphere at work.
Therefore, every organization should look at incorporating them in their employee rewards and recognition programs.
So, here are a few creative and innovative ideas for funny/ fun awards:
It seems to have a solution for every problem.
The most artistic person around.
Live and breathe fitness.
Those who cannot do without his or her cup of coffee.
Arrives at the office and to every meeting much before anyone else.
Keep their work areas spic and span.
Always perfectly dressed for the occasion.
Those who seem to know everything about everything.
Those who always crack witty jokes to keep others in good spirits.
Those who are true foodies and live and love their food.
Those who are very active on Instagram post stories several times a day.
Always have the best music playlist for office parties or trips.
Have a terrific memory and rarely forgets anything.
Those who always have the best recommendations for shows on Netflix.
Those who are excellent at organizing office parties and other events.
Those who always have excellent recommendations for the best places to hang out.
There is no limit to the number of categories of fun awards that can be conceived and implemented.
1. Gadget Guru
2. Trivia Buff
3. Master Chef
4. Smiling Face
5. Turbo-charged
6. Sports Champion
7. Ace Adventurer
8. Bookworm
9. Car Czar
10. Music Maestro
11. Best Dancer
12. Biker Boss
13. Gaming Guru
14. Selfie Champion
15. Crossword Master
16. Marathoner
17. Shutterbug
A media company celebrated International Men’s Day (November 19) in a fun and exciting way based on a cricket theme.
The company invited all employees to recognize their male coworkers for various attributes through the HiFives employee rewards and recognition platform.
Multiple categories of fun awards were created under which an employee could be nominated based on prominent cricket players.
1. Sensational Star
2. The Dependable One
3. Style Icon
4. King of All Times
5. The Hitman
The recipients of these fun awards received e-cards via email. These awards were also posted on the HiFives platform’s Wall of Fame, where other coworkers could like and comment on the posts.
The program generated considerable interest and excitement among the employees, leading to a good level of participation.
The key objective of any employee recognition program is to keep the employees motivated and engaged.
Hence, enhancing the fun element of these programs can prove to be a simple yet effective way to make the employees feel appreciated and happy.
So, here are a few guidelines that can help organizations come up with a tremendous funny awards program:
1. Be as Creative, Innovative, and Wacky as possible
2. Seek the Involvement of the Employees
3. Be Sensitive to Cultural Nuances
4. Use a Digital Platform for Implementation
5. Develop a Calendar for Fun Awards
6. Communicate to Drive Participation
Since the entire focus of funny awards is being as wacky and amusing as possible, this must be reflected in all aspects of the program.
So, from the award categories to the titles of the awards, the nomination criteria, and even the process of recognition should be innovative and creative.
Hence, the awards should recognize employees’ quirky and exciting traits that only a few co-workers might know.
The organization should seek ideas and inputs from their employees while deciding on the fun awards and titles.
This could be achieved by getting together a group of employees to brainstorm ideas for fun awards.
Hence, making the process of deciding on the funny awards inclusive in this manner can go a long way in enhancing employee engagement and their involvement in the program.
Organizations need to ensure that the fun awards they choose do not embarrass the employees rather than entertain them.
Also, the awards should never make fun of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin, or other such aspects.
Organizations should consider their employees’ cultural sensitivities when deciding on a fun awards program to avoid hurting their feelings.
A digital R&R platform such as HiFives should be leveraged to facilitate the implementation of the Funny or Fun Awards program and ensure a high employee experience.
Hence, the digital platform should make the process of recognition, communication, and reward simple, seamless, and easy.
Social features such as a digital wall of fame, likes, comments, leaderboards, etc., can help enhance the employee experience.
Additionally, reward points given along with the fun awards can be redeemed for electronic gift cards, driving greater participation and engagement.
Also, it might be a good idea to create a schedule for inviting nominations and announcing the winners of the funny awards.
For example, every fourth Friday of the month can be called a ‘Fun Friday’, ‘Freaky Friday’ or ‘Fantastic Friday’.
So, nominations could be accepted throughout the week, and the winners could be announced that Friday.
Regular, engaging, and peppy communication can also help drive participation in these programs.
Digital means of communication such as email, Teams/ Slack channels, and WhatsApp groups can be leveraged to build up excitement for these fun awards.
Also, read How to Make Employee Recognition Fun and Wacky
In conclusion, informal or fun awards can be an excellent and inexpensive way to drive greater employee engagement and create a positive, informal, and friendly atmosphere at work.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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