The must-know tactics for running an employee recognition content series

Employee recognition is a regular feature of Milo’s Tea Company’s culture. It features in all-hands town halls and in daily standup meetings. But it’s also a key component of the communications team’s content strategy.

”Milo’s Moments” runs on both the company’s internal platform, Milo’s Unite, and on the company’s LinkedIn feed. It shines a light on people for all types of achievements, whether they’re related to success on the job or accomplishments outside of work. Ryan Faught, executive vice president of people at Milo’s Tea Company, told Ragan that employees, inspired by the campaign, post about their colleagues’ wins themselves, which gives comms effortless content for an audience of 1,000+ employees across all 50 states.

“I could log in to our intranet right now and see people recognizing their colleagues for a job well done,” Faught told Ragan. “Throughout our night shifts, throughout corporate — it’s happening all through the enterprise.”

For internal communicators, that’s the appeal. A recognition campaign needs material to feed it. It can be self-sustaining, as long as the comms team gets three things right up front: where the stories get collected, how the ask is worded and where they run once they exist.

Find your recognition moments in the gatherings you’ve already got on the calendar

When you’re launching any new employee comms campaign, you need to be able to get your information to your audience efficiently. Meetings and gatherings that are pre-scheduled already have that audience ready to go. Faught pointed to three main occasions:

• Recurring team meetings. Faught said that it’s standard for each meeting to begin with a positive moment shared by a team member. The manager can then relay these to the comms team for consideration.
• The opener of the quarterly all-hands. Milo’s Moments that are slated for publication are usually shared at the top of this meeting.
• New hire orientation. Milo’s introduces the format on day one.

It also makes the recognition visible, which is what prompts employees to put colleagues forward for work that would otherwise go unnoticed.

“I think they see their colleagues doing it, and so it just becomes an automatic behavior,” Faught said. “During orientation, we introduce a Milo’s Moment and we tell everybody, this is your first Milo’s Moment today. It’s the start of your career, and you’re going to have many more.”

Design your asks around who you want to hear from

Each choice a communicator makes in setting up an employee recognition campaign goes a long way toward determining who takes part in it. For instance, if you ask for project outcomes in a Google Form, you’re probably going to get matter-of-fact explanations from employees who are competent writers. But Milo’s has workers spread across the country in both frontline and corporate roles, so the asks need to recognize that work and life experiences differ. By keeping asks and nominations open-ended, Faught said Milo’s Moments are able to pull from a richer collection of stories. The range is a major plus, as a simple list of work accomplishments would have missed most of that richness.

“The moments range from promotions into new roles to being able to buy a first car or send a kid to college,” he said. “It’s my 12th wedding anniversary. It’s those kinds of things.”

Flip an internal recognition series externally

Recognition that stays on the intranet only ever reaches people who already work there. The same story posted publicly reaches candidates, partners and customers, which is the business case communicators can take to leadership. Plus, it’s a great opportunity for employer branding visibility for both current and potential employees.

But not every moment translates perfectly. A one-line shout out works internally because everyone reading it knows the person. That exact format won’t work externally, so more context is needed. The below LinkedIn post is an example of an employee-focused Milo’s Moment flipped externally.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/milo%27s-tea-company-inc-_drinkmilos-milosmoment-lifeatmilos-activity-7498017464631508992-tuj4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAbNvdIB4oedgbIhzpHLFx3gIvmY7ba0mAE

• Decide what kind of milestones are the best to highlight. When looking at items that can run both internally and externally, look for events like community awards, appointments to industry boards or other achievements with outside reference points.
• Internal shorthand is fine on the intranet post — take it out for external posts. Rewrite every inside reference for a reader with no context and cut anything that needs a paragraph to explain.
• Connect the person to something the company already cares about. A promotion is a personal milestone. But a promotion tied to a partnership, a facility or a hiring pipeline is a company story. By drawing those connections, internal comms can influence the external version to ensure that stories that tie back to the business are being highlighted.

For comms pros, the reason to run it in both places is that the audiences feed each other. An employee who sees a colleague celebrated on LinkedIn learns what the company considers worth publishing, and the next round of recognition stories become easier to collect. That then feeds the pipeline back for internal stories, and the cycle can continue.

“When you look at recognition systems, a lot of times it’s just centered on the person that’s receiving it,” Faught said. “What I love about our recognition programs is we recognize people who recognize people.”

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.