Blog by Tracy Stock, CSP
When employees feel like they are appreciated and recognized for their day-to-day work and they have meaningful relationships with their team members, they are more likely to work harder and stay with your company longer. In fact, “recognition” is the most important driver of great work—outranking higher pay, greater autonomy, and even promotional opportunities. Effective recognition pinpoints moments of success and praises specific behaviors, which—when implemented at scale—lead to happier employees, stronger engagement, higher performance and greater retention. In fact, employees are five times more likely to stay at their organizations if their managers regularly acknowledge them for great work. Here are five strategies for making appreciation and recognition an integral part of your workplace culture:
- Set a purposeful foundation. Align employee recognition to what matters most—your organization’s purpose, values, and objectives. Be sure to recognize a variety of accomplishments: personal victories, big wins, extra effort, career achievements, healthy habits, and company milestones. Reinforce the “why”: what are you trying to achieve through recognition, and why is recognition important?
- Encourage both manager and peer-to-peer recognition. Recognition is meaningful when it comes from both your leader and your peers. Have both types of recognition available in your solutions. Allow leaders to create their own recognition campaigns that are specific to their teams and objectives and give peers the opportunity to recognize one another when they see someone helping out or catch a colleague doing exceptional work.
- Match awards to accomplishments. Ecards are great for saying thanks, bonuses may be perfect for a phenomenal idea, gift cards may work well for putting in a weekend of work—but there is no one-size-fits-all award. Provide a variety of meaningful awards, appropriate for the level of accomplishment. Both your awards and recognition experiences should be relevant and delivered in meaningful ways—certainly not every time someone does a little more than expected. Encourage leaders and teams to recognize in a timely, specific way, that includes what the individual accomplished, and how their great work contributed to your organization’s purpose.
- Leverage the what, why, and how. In order to have recognition become a defining characteristic of your workplace culture, you’ll need to have a communication and training plan for your solution. It’s more than about just bringing awareness; it’s focus should be on deepening your employees’ understanding of the what, why, and how of recognition. Share best practices, highlight stories of great work and make career anniversaries an opportunity to celebrate and connect as a team. Keep recognition top of mind with employees via contests, email campaigns and talking points for team gatherings.
- Demonstrate success through ROI. Utilize three levels of measurement: usage metrics (who and how often employees are giving and receiving recognition); culture measures (how recognition is impacting engagement, perceptions about leadership, and company culture); and business results (how recognition is improving retention, customer satisfaction, sales, quality metrics, etc.). Determine solid baselines before implementing a solution and re-assessing the impact on a regular basis.
By making recognition a priority and having a program with meaningful experiences and awards, you can build a recognition solution that increases the quality and quantity of peak employee experiences, builds connections and a sense of belonging, and acts as a primary catalyst for your workplace culture.
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