Getting recognised for the work they do helps employees stay motivated. It increases job satisfaction and encourages them to work harder. It also helps to create a culture of appreciation and recognition, which is essential for any successful team.
What is employee recognition and why is it important?
Employee recognition is the process of acknowledging the contributions and efforts of employees by the leadership team of a company. It is practised in order to enforce a positive workplace culture by motivating employees through rewards and recognition.
Companies employ a number of rewards and recognition ideas such as verbal appreciation, written praises, awards, and other incentives. It can be a true game-changer to motivate and engage your employees leading to high productivity and efficiency.
Traditionally, employee appreciation was through quarterly or annual rewards programs that included monetary benefits. However, the modern employee rewards and recognition approach centers around imbibing positive behavior and acts as a feedback mechanism. By celebrating employees for their efforts at the workplace, you can reinforce an attitude that focuses primarily on organizational goals.
Key benefits of modern employee rewards and recognition:
- Through rewards, you can improve employee engagement as it shows that you value their efforts, which further pushes them to go over and beyond.
- By implementing various employee rewards and recognition ideas, you can nudge your employees into improving their performance leading to better business outcomes.
- You can facilitate healthy competition between employees through tangible recognition for their contributions. It creates a positive workplace culture that stems from mutual respect.
- Modern employee rewards and recognition strategies are designed to boost workforce morale by creating a positive sentiment for the work they do.
- When employees realize that their work is directly helping the company’s profitability, it not only motivates them but also makes them feel a part of the growth strategy.
Different types of employee recognition
- Formal Recognition Programs
These are a type of modern employee rewards and recognition program that follows a structured strategy and is usually organized at the management and HR level every quarterly or annually. The primary aim of formal recognition programs is to recognize the contributions and milestones of employees. Ex: awards, bonuses, promotions, and work anniversary awards.
- Informal Recognition
Unlike formal recognition, this employee rewards and recognition idea is designed to acknowledge the day-to-day achievements of your employees through a spontaneous process. It could be through verbal praise, thank-you notes, and small impromptu gifts.
- Public Recognition:
Public recognition is all about recognizing your employees’ achievements in front of a large audience through a word of praise or a present to make their contributions known to everyone. Companies usually implement public recognition through general announcements, team celebrations, and spotlight events.
- Private Recognition:
Modern employee rewards and recognition that occur at an individual level through one-on-one meetings, personal emails, or handwritten notes are considered private recognition. It allows the company to share personalized feedback with the employees and helps in building a professional bond with their supervisors.
Benefits of employee recognition platform
Check the below table to understand different types of employee recognition and their benefits.
| Recognition | Purpose | Held by | Recipient | Frequency |
| Annual recognition | To motivate loyalty & enhance productivity | Management | Employees who are associated with the company for a stipulated period or more. | Yearly |
| Bi-annual | To reward top performers | HR | Employees who were top performers for the period. | Twice a year |
| Quarterly | To reward top performers | HR & Management | Employees who were top performers for the quarter | Four times a year |
| Work anniversary | To reward loyalty | HR | Employees who complete a year with the company | Yearly |
| Birthday celebrations | To celebrate employees | HR & Team | Employees celebrating their birthday | Yearly |
How to measure the ROI of an employee recognition program
As much as it is important to implement modern employee rewards and recognition strategies, you must measure their effectiveness. You can do this by calculating the ROI of your employee rewards and recognition ideas through a number of metrics. Some of them are listed below:
Measure employee engagement with programs
Evaluate the metrics that indicate the engagement rate of your employee recognition programs. You can do this by recording the number of participants, level of involvement and activity, and increment in participation rate.
Measure hard business metrics
Check the business metrics that you can attribute to the employee rewards and recognition programs. For this, you must calculate employee productivity, rate of attendance, brand advocacy, and overall profitability.
Measure the direct impact on revenue
Motivated and content employees have a positive influence on your bottom line. To effectively calculate the impact of your employee rewards and recognition by measuring the revenue per employee before and after the program.
These are broadly the three categories of metrics that you can check to evaluate and optimize your employee rewards and recognition ideas for better outcomes.
Tips for implementing an effective employee recognition program
Businesses must constantly work towards improving their employee recognition programs to maximize the ROI. Below we listed some of the best practices that ensure that your programs generate desired results.
- Determine and define clear recognition policies so that your employees across levels understand the details of the entire scheme, without creating confusion and conflicts.
- Your employee rewards and recognition idea must be easy enough to be embedded in their day-to-day work life instead of being overhead. It should be easy to adapt and exciting for better participation.
- Your program objectives, guidelines, and criteria must be crystal clear and communicated to your employees through different channels.
- The rewards that you pick must be relevant to your organization and also represent your company’s core values.
- Facilitate peer recognition through modern employee rewards and recognition strategies to create a culture of mutual respect and collaboration.
- Measure different metrics to assess the effectiveness of your program so that you can use this strategy for better business results.
- Get feedback from your employees regularly, so that you have a clear understanding of their challenges and expectations.
Conclusion
Like the adage ‘if you keep your employees happy, they will keep your customers happier’, your workforce plays a critical role in your business growth. Employee recognition programs are important to keep your workforce motivated and productive, which will translate into profitability.
To ensure you leverage employee rewards and recognition ideas to their fullest, use Zaggle Propel. It is an all-in-one platform to manage your employee rewards program by automating the complete workflow. It is a unified solution that allows you to conduct polls, surveys, and peer nominations in addition to creating a personalized rewards catalog.
With a modern employee rewards and recognition such as Propel, you can also track and measure the impact of your employee rewards program on key metrics. As well as access real-time data and analytics to optimize your program and improve your ROI. Zaggle Propel is the ultimate modern employee rewards and recognition platform that can help you create a happy and productive workforce.
