Honorary Awards and Informal Recognition Awards Honorary Awards and Informal Recognition Awards FAQs Agencies are authorized to grant honorary awards and informal recognition awards to recognize their employees' performance. An honorary award is a gesture of respect given to an employee to recognize his or her performance and value to the organization.
Honorary awards are generally symbolic.
Often, such honor award programs do not use monetary recognition at all, but emphasize providing formal, highly symbolic recognition of significant contributions and publicly recognizing organizational heroes as examples for other employees to follow. They typically involve formal nominations, are granted in limited numbers, and are approved and presented by senior agency officials in formal ceremonies. The items presented, such as engraved plaques or gold medals, may be fairly expensive to obtain. However, they are principally symbolic in nature and should not convey a sense of monetary value. In other, more routine situations, many honorary awards are provided to commemorate the presentation of cash or time-off awards.