Human Resources is excited to announce a new service awards program for employees who attain five-year service milestone intervals beginning July 1, 2023 and thereafter.
This month, the previous quarter’s (July-September 2023) employee service award recipients will receive an email from Awardco to select a gift of their choice. The Awardco program is catalog-based and provides access to anything on the Amazon platform with award options that will increase progressively with service milestones. This process will continue every quarter.
Historically, the awards/gifts provided varied across employee classifications, began at 20 or 25 years of service, and were decentralized. In 2018, Human Resources (HR) formed a college-wide committee to explore feedback received from employees regarding the retirement and service awards program. Employees expressed the need for earlier and more frequent service recognition, and voiced concerns about the limited awards presented.
The committee considered ideas for improvement, met with vendors, and recommended Awardco (a division of Amazon) for the retirement and service awards. In February 2020, HR presented a new retirement and service recognition model to the Senior Leadership Team. This model would create a uniform program across all employee classifications with earlier, more frequent, more diverse, and progressive recognition. The Senior Leadership Team supported the recommendation, and HR implemented it for retirees in the spring of 2020.
Since the retirement award rollout, HR has received positive feedback from retirees regarding the available gift options, the ease of use in selecting their gifts from Awardco’s website, and the convenience of having the gift shipped directly to them.
Although the new retirement awards were launched prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, service awards were suspended during that time. In April 2023, HR issued those service awards retroactively to employees who attained milestones under the previous program (20 and 25 years) in 2020, 2021, and FY 2022-23.
We are looking forward to launching the College’s improved service award program. If you have questions, please contact Human Resources at 610-330-(ext. 5060) or hroffice@lafayette.edu.