The Cornerstone of a High Performance Culture: Recognizing and Rewarding Team Members

As I reflect on my journey through various organizations, from full-time roles to advisory and coaching engagements, the one thing I talk about constantly is the importance of recognizing and rewarding team members. It simply can’t be overstated. Recognition—acknowledging the efforts, contributions, and achievements of team members—isn’t just a nice-to-have; it's a cornerstone for building and fueling a high-performance culture.

The data confirms this over and over again. The Great Place to Work Culture Index below shows that 37% of respondents believe recognition outweighs even promotions in driving great work. This statistic underscores what many savvy people leaders already know: people want to be seen, and they crave feedback and recognition for their work.??

If the data doesn’t convince you, another key reason to prioritize this is because recognition programs are really easy and affordable to implement! After all, at its core, noticing people doesn’t cost anything. Sure, some rewards may carry a financial implication, but it’s easy to start small and scale up. And the return on investment is truly immeasurable.

Building a recognition culture at start-ups

We all work to earn a salary and desire to perform well at our jobs. But any startup founder will tell you, there are many times when a team will need to go above and beyond. This may mean staying late during a sprint to get something over the finish line. Or coming up with a new approach that sets up a series of wins. When a team member truly makes an impact, it’s critical to praise their efforts and contributions and tie them to the overall company success.

For early-stage startups, building a rewards and recognition program should begin from day one. Even with only a handful of team members, publicly recognizing achievements sets a precedent for appreciating excellence and inspiring more high-performance. Simple gestures, like shout-outs in team meetings or Slack channels lay the groundwork for a culture that values and celebrates winning.

Keep in mind — the most effective recognition requires a level of specificity and context. Just saying “thanks” alone isn’t enough. To recognize someone properly, you should call out the specific details of their contributions and highlight the impact they've made. “Thank you for the amazing work you put into X. We were able to produce Y result which will set us up nicely with Z goal this quarter.”?

Of course, a successful rewards and recognition program should always align with organizational values. Whether through peer-nominated awards, spot bonuses, or departmental programs, the emphasis should be on celebrating behaviors that drive the company forward. Here at Relay Payments , we celebrate peer-nominated awards at our all-hands meetings, encouraging team members to highlight how their colleagues went above and beyond for them (or a customer) to represent one of our core values. It’s an amazing community-builder!

Recognition programs can scale with the company

You may think that recognition and rewards gets harder as a company scales up. But if you’ve set the foundation for this in your culture, it’s easy to operationalize for companies large and small.

To be fair, there can be some challenges maintaining consistency with recognition at larger companies. It’s possible that some department leaders are better at giving praise and fostering a culture of inspiration than others. This could lead to an imbalance across an organization for how team members are recognized. One way to minimize this is to constantly promote your recognition philosophies during manager trainings and meetings. It starts with the leadership team and the organization’s DNA.

As your company grows, you’ll need to formalize the various kinds of recognition you prioritize and can even layer in bigger rewards. Eventually, with scale, department leaders can serve as the recognition arbitrators for their teams instead of the founders. Departmental budgets for spot bonuses and gift cards for exceptional contributions reinforce the company's commitment to valuing its team members. At Relay, we added in more recognition as we grew in size, and for two years in a row, we’ve offered an annual Impact Award given to a team member who we feel has made the most significant contribution to the company’s success and is representative of our values. That person receives an all-expenses paid dream vacation for them and a guest! The Impact Award has been the highlight of our annual all-hands holiday gathering — as it should be!

In the end, recognizing and rewarding team members isn't just a boost for morale; it's motivating future performance which contributes to overall company goals — a direct impact on the bottom line. It's also about living your values and helping everyone feel like they're part of something meaningful, which drives engagement and fulfillment. When we give credit where it's due and celebrate each person's contributions at Relay, we're creating an environment where everyone can excel. One pat on the back at a time!