Employees
who have served as little as five years continuous service are just as likely
to get a long-service award (LSA) as employees who have been with the company
for 25 years, experts believe.
Cottrills,
a supplier of service recognition and retirement gifts, said LSAs are now
evolving towards multi-level schemes, with companies introducing awards at
lower levels in sectors with a high staff turnover, such as food retail.
Some
companies are even looking at awarding LSAs for as little as a year of continuous
employment, the firm claimed.
"Employees
are now likely to change jobs on average every three years because of changing
lifestyles and an increasingly buoyant jobs market," said Martin Cooper,
general manager of marketing at Cottrills.
"This
has created a re-evaluation of long-service award policies in companies to act
as a motivation to stay, rather than purely as a recognition of loyalty."
The
change in emphasis from ‘necessary evil’ to ‘necessary recognition’ has also
led to a change in gift requests, Cottrills said.
Service
recognition companies have had to move away from the traditional carriage clock
and canteen of cutlery to more fashionable gifts such as perfume, DIY and
entertainment gifts to cater for younger tastes.
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