ElevatingEX: Recognition Strategies

Building a campus culture of Celebration, Appreciation, and Recognition (CAR) requires active leadership commitment and structural support:

• Strategic Prioritization and Incentive: Deans, directors, and vice presidents can actively set aside department, division, or local funds to support non-monetary and monetary recognition awards.
• Ensure Fair Participation: Define and communicate clear, transparent eligibility criteria for all units and department programs so that all employees, regardless of work location (remote or on-site), job function, or pay band, have equal opportunities to participate.
• Align with Campus Values: Build local award criteria around our core values, student-centric behaviors, or cross-functional teamwork.
• Professional Development Sponsoring: Invest in your team’s long-term career goals by paying for professional association memberships, training webinars, or registrations for off-site conferences.

For many faculty and staff, a small gesture from a senior administrator carries immense, motivating weight. Leaders are encouraged to integrate these practices:

• Write Letters of Commendation: Provide outstanding performers or those making long-standing contributions with a formal, signed letter of appreciation to be copied to top administrators that can be added to their permanent personnel file. Send a personal email congratulations to the employee and copy your department head or senior leadership. 
• Deans/Vice President Spotlights: Ask senior leaders to send a direct email of appreciation or host a “Meet the Leader” coffee chat or lunch with staff members who completed major milestones or went above and beyond.
• Recognize the “Invisible” Work: Higher education heavily celebrates individual scholarly or academic contributions, but often under-recognizes administrative, service, and student success initiatives. Intentionally shine a spotlight on the critical service work that keeps our institution vital.
• Acknowledge Team Wins to Upper Administration: Take every opportunity to highlight and “brag” about your division’s staff and team achievements in high-level administrative meetings.
• Meeting Spotlights: Set aside 10 to 15 minutes during regular staff meetings for a “Points of Pride” or “Kudos” section to intentionally call out individual achievements and project milestones. Share these success stories during meetings with upper administration.
• Reflect on Your Own Habits: Conduct a quick monthly self-reflection on your personal leadership interactions. Ask yourself: When, how, and how often did I model appreciation this month?
• Targeted Verbal Praise: Greet your team members by name and take a few minutes to check on how they are doing. Provide praise immediately after positive actions, specifically identifying the behavior and spelling out how it benefited the department, university, or student experience.
• Appreciative Performance Reviews: Shift standard annual evaluations from deficit-finding into supportive dialogue by starting with Appreciative Inquiry prompts, asking employees what went exceptionally well and what accomplishments they are most proud of. Use their identified strengths when planning new projects or assignments.
• Professional Trust and Autonomy: Show deep professional respect by inviting employees to participate in high-level strategy meetings and seeking their direct input on process designs. Offer mentoring or give them greater autonomy to determine how their work is completed.
• Workflow Flexibility: Acknowledge intense periods of effort (such as student orientation or major system rollouts) by temporarily adjusting schedules, allowing the employee to work off-site or providing hours for personal wellness. For more information, visit the WFU Flexible Work Arrangements Policy.
• Professional Development Sponsoring: Invest in your team’s long-term career goals by paying for professional association memberships, training webinars, or registrations for off-site conferences.
• Theme Month Deliveries: Align team celebrations with fun national themes, such as delivering milk and cookies to the office during National Cookie Month.
• Physical Notes and Desktop Surprises: Keep handwritten thank-you cards on hand to add a highly personal touch. For a lighthearted surprise, write encouraging words on physical sticky notes and hide them among the paperwork on their desk.
• Personalized Snacks and Treats: Keep a small “recognition box” stocked with gift bags, movie tickets, and note cards to celebrate achievements instantly. Bring in an employee’s favorite snack, coffee, or treat to say thank you.

While recognition from supervisors is highly meaningful, high-performing university teams prioritize peer recognition. You have the power to make your colleague’s day better. Here are highly effective ways to recognize your peers:

• Shout-Outs: Create a dedicated space (physical or virtual) where colleagues can post weekly public shout-outs, celebrating everything from quick wins to major project help. allowing team members to write and display public thank-you notes for their coworkers.
• Compliment Cards: Fill out and share physical “Compliment Cards” to distribute encouraging, handwritten messages to colleagues or student workers in your area.
• Traveling Trophies: Create a fun, departmental “traveling trophy” or plush university mascot. At each department meeting, the current holder passes the trophy to a peer who went above and beyond, sharing the specific reason why.
• Behind-the-Scenes Acknowledgements: Actively look out for colleagues who are not typically in the limelight—(e.g. team members who help build or troubleshoot the work, but may not often be recognized).
• Collect Team Notes: Gather handwritten or digital notes of appreciation from current and past team members to present to a colleague on their service anniversary or department transition.
• The Digital Prize Wheel: All nominees are entered into a digital wheel (more nominations equals more entries!). The monthly winner gets to spin a physical wheel for a reward, such as a flexible schedule day, a coffee chat with a leader, or hosting a fun university-themed mascot cutout in their workspace.
• Skill-Sharing Socials (Lunch and Learns): Host monthly, peer-led informal gatherings where team members can relax, connect, and teach each other personal hobbies like crocheting, craft-making, or playing board games.
• Peer Acts of Service: Say thank you to a colleague by offering to take over their most unpleasant daily task for a day. Immediately share any positive remarks you hear about a colleague’s work with them directly.
• Year-End Lighthearted Superlatives: Conduct peer nominations for fun, year-end superlative awards that celebrate coworkers’ unique workplace personalities (such as the “Silver Lining Award” for positivity, the “Social Butterfly”, or the “Early Bird Award”).
• Physical Notes and Desktop Surprises: Keep handwritten thank-you cards on hand to add a highly personal touch. For a lighthearted surprise, write encouraging words on physical sticky notes and hide them among the paperwork on their desk.
• Personalized Snacks and Treats: Keep a small “recognition box” stocked with gift bags, movie tickets, and note cards to celebrate achievements instantly. Bring in an employee’s favorite snack, coffee, or treat to say thank you.