18 Fun Employee Recognition Awards to Add More Humor Into Your Workplace
A simple but really effective way to add more humor and up the fun factor in any workplace is to create some fun or even funny employee recognition awards – some awards could be just plain fun and silly, while other fun employee awards can also help you encourage more of the attitudes and behaviors you want to see more of in your workplace. Here are 18 examples of fun employees awards to get your creative juices flowing!
A really simple but effective way to up the fun factor in your workplace to add more humor into your workplace is to create some fun employee rewards. It also sends the message that you value fun and humor in your workplace when you create fun rewards.
Now, they could be just plain fun, goofy, wacky rewards, like the percolator award to whoever is most likely to OD on caffeine. Or the “jammer award” for the person most likely to break your photocopier award. Or how about the punster for the resident “punner” on your team who makes the most groan-inducing puns. Or you could create some rewards even better that not only inject a little fun, they encourage more of the behaviors and attitudes you want to see in your workplace.
I’ve got 18 ideas for you right now.
1. The “Houdini” award for whoever magically makes a big problem disappear!
2. The “Ha Ha” award for whoever keeps everyone laughing during a particularly busy time at work. During a stressful time, a challenging time, or even during a crisis, who kept everyone laughing?
3. The “I Got Your Back” award for whoever best looks out for each other’s safety at work.
4. The “Bonehead Play of the Month” award, where you reward somebody for owning up to their bonehead move. This is a great way to de-stress somebody who had some stress in their life because they did something that was a little boneheaded, but also a great way to encourage people to own their bonehead plays so that we can all learn from them and not repeat them!
5. The “Survivor” award for the person on your team least likely to be voted off your island.
6. The “Virtual Rock Star” award for whoever has just rocked it in terms of working in this new virtual workplace reality.
7. The “Bridge-builder” award for whoever best unites everybody in your workplace. Or it could be specifically for whoever best unites the people who are working remotely in a hybrid workplace with the people who are working in your office.
8. The “Extended Neck” award, or the “pot-stirrer” award for whoever asks the most challenging questions of your senior management team as a way to encourage people to ask those tough, challenging questions.
9. The “Phil Collins” to whoever did something against all the odds.
10. The “Welcome Wagon” award to whoever does the best job at making new employees feel welcome in your workplace.
11. The “Road Warrior” award for whoever logs the most work-related travel miles.
12. The “Almost Hit It Out of the Ballpark” award to whoever tried a new idea but it didn’t quite work this time, but you want to reward people for their creativity, for their innovation, for taking a safe risk!
13. The “MacGyver” award or the “duct tape” award for whoever can fix anything in your workplace.
14. The “Customer WOWzer” award to whoever wowed your customers.
15. The “I Survived the Biggest Jerk” award to whoever managed to survive an interaction with your jerkiest customer.
16. The “Superhero Award” for whoever swooped in and saved the day during a crisis.
17. The “Underdog Award.” Now, we often recognize the people who saved the day, the superheroes, but what about the people who prevented the day from happening in the first place, who prevented a crisis from happening in the first place? We often forget about those unsung heroes! So…how about an “Underdog,” an “Unsung Hero” award or the “Great Golden Shield” award for whoever quietly prevented something bad from happening in the first place.
18. The “Groaner” to whoever tells the most number of dad jokes – those jokes that make everyone groan! But, hey, at least they’re still trying to bring a little levity to your workplace, so let’s reward those people who tell those jokes such as, “I have a fear of speed bumps, but I’m slowly getting over it.”
So what about you, what fun creative rewards have you tried in your workplace? Leave a comment in the comment box, we would love to hear from your experience. If you haven’t subscribed to my Inspiring Workplaces channel, I would invite you to join our growing community as we continue to talk about rocking inspiring fun workplaces.
Michael Kerr is a Hall of Fame business speaker. His latest book is, The Jerk-Free Workplace.
