I am fairly confident that this employee is known by name several tiers of management upwards for exactly the traits I would like to point out, but I would like to remind them of that yet again. This is one of those people who you sure can pay, but you can't get the value that they contribute just by paying someone enough money. Sort of like the 1000x developer, in a different industry.
Any tips? Any dos or don'ts? I don't need to deal with companies or workplaces in my regular life and am pretty gormless.
The reason for asking is that the praise that you want to offer may not be in line with their career goals (e.g. if you're praising their management style, decisions, etc but they want to move toward development or support or something). This also gives you an opportunity to communicate the praise directly to them.
This most often happens in hotels where a particular day-to-day employee is extremely helpful or thoughtful. Upon checking out, I will call the hotel and ask to speak to the GM. Ironically this is the hardest step, because most people who ask for the GM have something to complain about, and then I tell my story once on the line.
In the same vain, I think it should be pretty easy to reach out to somebody more senior than and in the same chain-of-command as this person - find out the name of their boss' boss on LinkedIn or something, then guess that person's email address (it probably has the same format as this employee), etc.
It's something we need more in society, people like you doing a good deed for a good person. I hope the company is smart enough to acknowledge and foster it.
Given the asymmetric nature of feedback (people are much more likely to contact you to complain than to praise) I absolutely love it when I get positive feedback about people in my team from clients etc, and it often helps provide evidence for me to justify an unusually fast promotion, salary bump etc.
Years ago, I'd done phone calls to companies, asking for a manager (shift, dept, store, regional, whatever), and almost always they were... somewhat agitated/defensive. I expect 99% of phone calls they get were people calling to complain. I'd say something like "I dealt with person XYZ the other day and... they were phenomenal. This was some of the best service/care/etc I've had. You keep that person and/or get more people like them and you've got a customer for life". That sort of thing. In one case, the person said "ok, thanks." and that was it. In most other cases the person was generally pleasantly surprised to hear good news. Looking back, I'm pretty sure a written letter or email would possibly have done more 'good' for the person in some respects, but having a pleasant/positive conversation with someone talking up good points about another person was, for me, a positive experience in itself.
Good on you escape_goat.