An overwhelming majority of 61% of employees already seek better opportunities, as per Achievers report. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because employees value being recognized more than better pay. Yet companies don’t seem to leverage employee rewards and recognition programs. They are not just essential to retaining high-performing resources but also to building a thriving work culture. It enables healthy competition between your workforce and accommodates the growth aspirations of your employees.
Every individual joins an organization to build their career and grow in terms of both money and expertise. For this aspiration to be consistent, they need regular doses of motivation. The employee recognition program is a brilliant strategy to keep employees motivated and improve productivity.
However, it is necessary to measure the ROI of employee recognition programs to see if they’re making a difference. Measuring the value of your investment will require you to capture metrics that will give you a clear understanding of the impact your recognition program is having across the organization. Some key benefits of measuring the ROI of your employee recognition program are:
- You can justify your rewards and recognition initiative by proving the positive impact it has on the company’s growth and revenue.
- Tracking metrics will help you differentiate well-performing programs from those that are not delivering any value.
- It allows you to tailor recognition programs for different motivating factors of your employees.
Metrics to Track to Measure ROI of Employee Recognition Program
Employee recognition programs are aimed at improving employee engagement. While it might seem hard to quantify how it affects the experience of your employees or translates into business growth, you can look at some key metrics to measure the difference you are making.
Rate of Participation
Check the number of people participating in your rewards and recognition program to track the participation rate. If you are using a platform like Zaggle Propel, you can track the number of employees who are sending gifts or nominations. This measurement will ultimately tell you how many individuals are excited or interested in the program. The higher the participation rate, the stronger your recognition-centric work culture.
Percentage of budget exhausted
Companies allocate a budget for employee rewards and recognition programs to be used across a month or quarter, which is usually used to purchase gifts as part of the program. You can look at the budget amount spent to understand how well the employee recognition program is going. If the unused budget is high, then management must come up with tactics to increase the adoption rate.
In addition to overall budget spending, you must also track the amount used by every department and employee. This detailed analysis will give you insights into department-wise acceptance of the program. You can use tailor-made strategies for departments with the lowest participation.
Get employee feedback on the program
One of the simplest and most effective methods of checking the success of your employee recognition program is to get feedback directly from the employees. Getting the truth from the horse’s mouth will give you accurate insights into program adoption and impact. You can use the feedback to tweak your program to better suit the workforce. The challenge here, however, is getting their genuine opinions. Employees may be compelled to say only the positives fearing punishment or retribution if they give negative feedback. Using Zaggle Propel allows you to conduct reviews anonymously so that you can solicit their honest and real feedback.
Employee attrition rate
Most employees leave an organization due to the lack of recognition for their work. Therefore, employee recognition programs must improve the retention rate by making employees feel appreciated and valued. This means, looking at your attrition rate can give you the right measure of the success of recognition programs. However, expecting the rewards and recognition programs to change things overnight is impractical. Instead, its magic will work slowly and over time, which means you must take a look at the historical data when calculating the attrition rate.
Track employee behavioral changes
Employee recognition programs must inculcate positivity across the organization with enhanced compliance with company policies. There is not one single metric that you can track to measure the behavioral changes in your workforce. You can look at different factors collectively. Some of these factors are punctuality, the number of leaves being claimed, the number of grievances being filed, and so on.
Tracking the health of employee recognition program with Zaggle Propel
A lot of companies make the mistake of templatizing their employee recognition programs. Such an approach will not yield the desired results as employees will see through it. To maximize the advantages of your rewards and recognition schemes, you must constantly review their performance and adjust the programs to suit the employee’s expectations.
With Zaggle Propel, you can customize your recognition programs that align them with your business values, processes, and culture. Zaggle Propel is an all-in-one solution for employee rewards that comes with a powerful dashboard to help you control the program. It offers real-time visibility and AI-based analytics to make accurate predictions with respect to employee recognition strategies. Check out its full capabilities here.