Glossary of Human Resources Management and Employee Benefit Terms
Employee recognition is a way for organizations to appreciate publicly and acknowledge their employees' efforts, so they feel motivated and valued.
When employee recognition programs are genuine, unique, and thoughtful, they strengthen the employer-employee relationship. It reinforces behaviors that align with the organization's mission, vision, values, and strategy.
Employee recognition is the act of appreciating and acknowledging employees for their contributions to driving an organization's mission, purpose, and values. It is one of the most crucial factors that help drive positive company culture, workplace engagement, productivity, and retention.
Employee recognition can take up different forms, which include:
A well-planned, well-timed, and well-executed employee recognition program can positively impact different business aspects, including turnover, morale, purpose, productivity, and engagement.
When employees feel appreciated and valued, they are not only motivated and engaged but also go the extra mile with their day-to-day tasks. They are high performers, committed, and connected to their organization. Companies that emphasize recognizing and praising employee achievements witness higher engagement levels.
On the other hand, an unintuitive, non-existent, and poorly-implemented recognition program can turn things upside down. It decreases engagement levels and even pushes top performers away.
An employee recognition program is a method to recognize, appreciate, and motivate employees by rewarding them for their excellent work. These programs are designed to drive engagement, maintain high behavioral standards, and publicly applaud big wins.
A well-planned employee recognition program helps:
You'll know the importance of recognition better if you have felt undervalued or under appreciated at work. Employees who aren't recognized or rewarded for good work are twice as likely to quit within a year.
People aren’t motivated only by money. Instead, sincere and smaller gestures like ‘thank you’ can be highly powerful in leaving a positive impact.
Here are some tips to help you improve employee recognition:
Employee recognition can be classified primarily into two types:
Make peer recognition candid, social & fun. Let’s start building a culture of appreciation
Here’s a step-by-step process to help you create an employee recognition program:
Measurement is no longer a 'nice to have.' Instead, it is crucial to know how successful the recognition strategy was. Most business leaders often face the issue of using engagement platforms that fail to measure data with their recognition initiatives.
That's why choosing a platform with built-in capabilities to measure those metrics is vital – it's the best and most straightforward way to track your success and shortcomings.
Here are a few ways to measure employee recognition programs:
These are short surveys that can be sent frequently to check what your employees think about an issue quickly. The survey comprises fewer questions (not more than 10) to get the information quickly. These can be administered at regular intervals (monthly/weekly/quarterly).
Having periodic, hour-long meetings for an informal chat with every team member is an excellent way to get a true sense of what’s happening with them. Since it is a safe and private conversation, it helps you get better details about an issue.
eNPS (employee Net Promoter score) is one of the simplest yet effective ways to assess your employee's opinion of your company. It includes one intriguing question that gauges loyalty. An example of eNPS questions include: How likely are you to recommend our company to others? Employees respond to the eNPS survey on a scale of 1-10, where 10 denotes they are ‘highly likely’ to recommend the company and 1 signifies they are ‘highly unlikely’ to recommend it.
An employee experience software is a set of tools companies, and HR leaders use to manage every facet of the employee recognition program. It's a brilliant way to improve company culture; help teams recognize workplace success and other important milestones.Pro Tip: Make peer recognition candid, social & fun. Let’s start building a culture of appreciation Talk to our culture expert today!