Free templates for certificates make it easy for the small business employer to produce a professional-looking award to present to a deserving employee. You’ll only have to spring for the frame. The likes of Dale Carnegie and Stephen R. Covey would espouse the virtue and importance of showing genuine appreciation to the grunts fighting in your trenches.
Treat your employees well for doing good work and it will bode well for business. If you don’t seem to care about them (or have a managerial style like Bill Lumbergh from Office Space), then they probably won’t find productivity to be a priority.
This article is another in my series highlighting the free templates available on the Internet for small business owners, and as far as completing this particular desktop publishing project, it doesn’t really get much easier.
If you’re new to templates, the gist is that the design (including graphics, size, and layout) is already done for you with a template so that all you have to do is insert the appropriate information to customize the document to your specifications. You’ll find a worthy selection of templates at http://myawardmaker.com/templates/1.html to reward employees with a certificate for excellence, leadership skills, finishing course/training requirements, or whatever you want to insert onto the award.
I found another good source at http://www.dyetub.com/certificates/traditional/. This site has some good tips on printing and the type of paper you will want to use. The user interface is as straightforward as it gets here.
Microsoft also has 93 templates available at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101043001033.aspx, although these are not all business-related, but you can print something out for your honor student or the dog while you’re at it anyway.
Another source is at http://www.certificatecreator.com/main.cfm. You have to register to get at their grab-bag of templates, which I didn’t go ahead and do, but they claim to have a large library available, and the capability to build your own certificate from scratch if you’re feeling creative.
This desktop publishing project really is a no-brainer and the brief amount of time it takes to get a customized certificate to your printer might go a long way to affecting the quality of a good employee’s day.