A company is the employees and the culture they foster. Content employees in a positive environment boosts productivity and enhances revenue. Unhappy employees, on the other hand, do just the opposite. They bring down morale which leads to lower productivity.
One core aspect of creating a thriving culture is appreciating your employees for their contributions. Interestingly, companies are fast realizing the importance of employee recognition programs. The majority of them conduct employee rewards and recognition initiatives on a regular basis with 80% of companies having a employee recognition program in place. However, one that that most employers overlook is the role of employee-led appreciation.
Also known as peer-to-peer recognition, this approach facilitates effective collaboration and bonding between your employees. It will further help employees become each other’s professional champions.
In this blog, we will explore in detail the importance of employee-led appreciation as a part of employee rewards and recognition programs.
Importance of peer-to-peer recognition
If your employees don’t relate to each other for their work, it may create a glaring gap – if not friction. By involving their opinions in employee recognition programs, you enable a socially charged culture. Your employees will begin to seek each other’s feedback and suggestions to improve themselves. It will also create the practice of peer mentorship. Let’s discuss the benefits of peer-to-peer recognition.
- Employees usually consider the recognition shared by their peers as more authentic and genuine than the one bestowed by senior management. Since they work alongside, and understand each other’s contribution better, peer recognition is considered the most real form of appreciation.
- By including peer appreciation in employee recognition programs, you can create a mood of team spirit. Being valued by the people they work closely with helps in building mutual respect.
- Unlike your regular employee rewards and recognition, peer-to-peer recognition can happen on a weekly or monthly basis. It will form an employee engagement activity.
- Being acknowledged by your fellow colleagues is one of the most satisfying feelings, that will lead to a more cooperative and positive team culture.
- As teams work together on the same project or are aware of each other’s contributions, they are more likely to highlight unsung performers on a regular basis. It will help in encouraging everyone to do their best.
- Employee-led appreciation in employee rewards and recognition reduces the operational burden on the management including managers in inviting nominations, evaluating candidates, identifying key performers, and creating an elaborate employee recognition program to celebrate the winners.
Increased opportunities with virtual recognition
An unpopular opinion about employee rewards and recognition activities is that they can disrupt the flow of work and momentum. Since these employee recognition programs take away at least half a day of work time, employees may feel that it is time wasted. The same goes for peer recognition. This is where you can adopt a virtual strategy to conduct a peer-to-peer recognition program without affecting your team’s productivity.
Virtual peer recognition is a rather new concept that more and more organizations are taking up. Some of the ways that you can leverage this concept to increase employee satisfaction.
It decentralizes the power of appreciation
With virtual platforms, every employee can recognize their colleagues for a job well done. It doesn’t restrict employee recognition programs to senior management or team leads. Usually, employees help each other out without their managers being aware of it. Because of this, some key performers remain undisclosed. Through programs like peer recognition badges, you can create a team that celebrates each other. You can do these in two ways:
- Impromptu recognition: Whenever a teammate receives help or support from their peers, they recognize it by giving them an impromptu badge and a small note.
- Recognition week: You can assign a day in the week, where everyone will share badges with team members who had standout performances.
You can make employee recognition programs more exciting by creating a digital wall of fame. On this wall, you can list employees who received the most badges or appreciation during the week or month.
While these plans seem fun and doable, they require you to select a well-suited platform for a peer-to-peer recognition program. One of the top solutions is Zaggle Propel.
Zaggle Propel: Easy-to-use employee recognition platform
Zaggle Propel is a facilitator of employee recognition programs including peer-to-peer recognition. It allows you to create and run an effective employee rewards and recognition initiative through badges, nominations, and approval-based rewards. It provides below advantages:
- Customize recognition badges through personalized purposes, titles, slogans, and images.
- Gamify employee rewards and recognition initiatives through reward points.
- Design your own peer recognition badges and assign them reward points to enhance the program.
- Create an approval workflow for employee rewards and recognition programs to make the entire thing more legitimate.
Conclusion
Employee recognition programs are non-negotiable in improving your attrition rate. Employee rewards and recognition help you create a bond of trust, respect, and appreciation with your workforce. Although it does sound nice and important, there’s one important part to it that most organizations forget: peer recognition. Employee-led recognition initiatives create a positive work culture and enhance collaboration between teams. However, to implement an effective peer recognition program, you must partner with a platform like Zaggle Propel, that can customize the entire program to suit your business structure.
Check out Zaggle Propel today.
