Maximizing Value with High-Quality Recognition Awards: Why Investing More Elevates Your Business and Employee Satisfaction
Investing in Higher Quality Recognition Awards
One of the main barriers that customers seem to face before choosing the recognition awards they want to invest in is the cost. Many potential customers are reluctant to pay for higher-quality premium awards when other cheaper options are available, like mass-produced plaques or paperweights. Even the most tasteful of those less expensive options, however, can’t achieve the effects of a higher-end award, especially when that award is a custom award. Additionally, it turns out that with a little creativity and resourcefulness, creating a meaningful award can become more affordable and work within many budgets.
Why Are Quality Awards More Expensive?
Many recent studies have shown that when a company wants to recognize employees, investing in effective recognition and achievement awards is truly an investment in the business itself. Studies from recent years have shown that within companies, thoughtful recognition gestures like awards make a significant difference in employee retention, satisfaction, and productivity. The benefits only increase as the award design becomes more effective: showing that time, effort, and conscious consideration have gone into creating something the recipients will value for a lifetime. Oftentimes, a higher budget does allow for more design options to achieve these outcomes most powerfully. While Bennett Awards will always guarantee awards that are crafted carefully to last using high-quality materials, higher budgets do allow for designs that are more customized, complex, or with features and materials that are considered more distinctive or luxurious-feeling.
Do Premium Awards Have to Be Expensive?
The good news is, powerful and impressive awards, even customized, don’t actually have to break anyone’s budget. Working with the experienced consultants and project managers at Bennett Awards allows a deeper understanding of the priorities, motivations, and resources of a customer. The project managers’ individualized attention and the relationship they build with each client and customer allows for solution-focused collaboration to find and create an award that honors what a customer cares about within their specific means.
Can Distinctive Awards Become More Affordable With Different Materials?
One easy way our project managers can minimize costs is by finding cost-effective materials which have a similar effect to the most expensive options. For example, pewter is an attractive and less-expensive material to sculpt with and cast than Bennett’s traditional bronze sculptures, and is excellent for showing off intricate details in a design. Pewter can also feature gold or silver-plating as a finish if a light-catching quality is a key element of the design.
Additionally, Bennett Awards offers increasingly more options using high-quality acrylic and brushed aluminum which are ideal for highlighting more modernist minimalist shapes and a beautiful array of colors. These awards are also a lighter weight which allows for reduced shipping costs. A recent award for the steel production company Nucor actually used industrial I-beams as the foundation for the custom award itself. While this material is not the lightest-weight option, it is a readily available and inexpensive material which was appropriately highlighted and celebrated by adding elements which turned this familiar material into distinctive art.
Can Modifying the Design Save Costs with Custom Awards?
Another way that Bennett Awards’ designers can save on award costs is by modifying the award design itself. Making large, complex, three-dimensional shapes and figures can be more expensive to manufacture and to assemble, not to mention to ship. One recent example of a successful custom award design modification was with Bennett Awards’ recent customer Flagship Communities, which is one of the Midwest region’s largest developers of residential manufactured housing communities. There was also the added challenge that the award had a relatively quick turnaround time for when the customer needed it. The designers and project managers at Bennett Awards brainstormed and changed their original three-dimensional concept to a beautiful two-dimensional image that contained all the elements they wanted to make the award meaningful to their company culture, printed on aluminum and acrylic. This cut-out image was then affixed to a three-dimensional acrylic base which gave it a traditional sculptural award feeling.
Are Different Production Methods Able to Make Custom Awards Cheaper?
With a commitment to creating the most innovative and creative awards, Bennett Awards tries to stay at the forefront with the latest production technologies to create more affordable award options for customers without sacrificing quality and aesthetic impactfulness. There are a growing number of different production methodologies that have expanded design and production options, including water-jet cutting, which was also used on the Nucor awards. This method allows for precise cutouts that are guided by technology instead of the time and energy demands of a traditional craftsperson. It easily allows cutting through thicker materials, like the I-beams, as well as thinner metal pieces for a more delicate effect. Bennett Awards worked with the streaming company CaffeineTV to create a cutout shape based on their logo using water-jet cut aluminum. The genius of the design was that it was able to capture the lines and mimic the depth of a three-dimensional hexagonal figure in a more affordable two-dimensional form. This is what creativity and modern artistry can enable for customers, even when their concept is based on a traditional three-dimensional shape.
Is Quality Sacrificed With Awards That Cost Less?
While the least expensive option for a recognition award would indeed be purchasing a standard, ready-made plaque or trophy made of the cheapest materials available, a slightly higher investment can have great payoff in terms of the overall effect of the gesture and the resulting benefits and consequences for the recipients. With Bennett Awards, customers can find or create something truly impressive and unique, tailored to their needs and budget. They can rest assured knowing that Bennett Awards’ commitment to making artistic, high-quality awards will always remain consistent regardless of how economically we approach a project. Customers will always be heard and their needs will be embraced as a creative challenge which the team at Bennett Awards will be excited about and ready to take on. Nobody’s budget is unlimited, and those limits shouldn’t minimize the power of an award to inspire and move the recipients of a recognition award through the expertise, creativity, and care that have gone into it.