Posted on: Monday February 05, 2018
So, what is Employee Recognition? Quite simply, it’s the act of communicating to your employees that they have done a good job. When you recognise and reward a high level of service, you encourage employees to repeat these actions, creating a happier and more productive workforce. Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, many reward and recognition programmes haven’t ‘moved with the times’ leaving 58% of employees feeling as though they need more recognition in the workplace. Is this true for your workforce? If so, check out the five simple steps below and see if you can start improving your employee engagement today:
1. Embrace Technology
The e-revolution has had a profound effect on the sphere of employee recognition in the workplace. The majority of reward and recognition programmes now find their home on the internet, which allows access anytime and anywhere. However, even though a programme may be online, this doesn’t guarantee ease of use. Younger employees check their smartphone an average of 85 times per day, so placing your Reward and Recognition within an app, could significantly boost participation. The introduction of technology even allows for some level of automation, which can make recognising employees hard work even easier.
2. Recognise Instantly
Using automated systems to recognise employees can significantly decrease the time it takes for them to receive acknowledgement for their achievements. Whether the reward is financial, an internal announcement or simple thank you, having processes already in place speeds up the procedure. This decreases the likelihood of a good deed being forgotten by the time bonus season comes around. However, recognition still requires some level of personal interaction. Which leads to my next point:
3. Increase Variety
Variety is crucial when it comes to staff rewards. Using new technology is all well and good, but it is still important for morale that staff are recognised individually by both their managers and peers. You can easily create a range of awards so there is an element of personalisation, some of which can be presented physically and others digitally. It is good practice to include your staff in the decision process when it comes to staff incentive ideas, as increasing employee involvement has a strong positive impact on both your overall employee engagement and participation levels.
4. Include Peer to Peer Recognition
Most commonly, an individual’s hard work is first recognised by a team member rather than management, therefore, it’s important to incorporate peer-to-peer rewards in your reward and recognition platform. There can sometimes be nervousness around introducing a peer to peer recognition scheme so many employers introduce an approval layer, where all peer to peer awards go via HR to ensure the system is not open to abuse.
5. Consider Long Service Awards
It’s no secret that retaining staff saves a company money in the long term (a business loses £25,000 in lost productivity during the first 28 weeks of each new hire), so it’s always a good idea to try and ensure that good staff stay put. Formalising staff incentives such as Long Service Awards, can encourage staff to remain in your business as they know rewards are forthcoming.
Our reward and recognition programmes include peer to peer recognition and are built around your company values. Colleagues can nominate one another and track the progress of their nomination. HR can define which employees are eligible to nominate and be nominated if required, or they can open the programme to all, allowing managers to nominate team members and colleagues to nominate one another. Employees can view their recognition level and redeem points online in a Rewards Catalogue, which allows you to offer a far greater choice to your employees.
Ultimately, the right reward and recognition programme can increase employee: motivation, performance, communication, morale, retention and overall engagement. So, it’s time to make sure that your programme is working for you!
To find out more about how Personal Group can help support your employee benefits strategy, contact us or email letschat@personalgroup.com.
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