Employees love to be recognized. There are various studies revealing that an employee reward program is a key component to encourage engagement and keep hold of the employees and “feeling unrewarded” is one of the greatest reasons for employee attrition. In fact, there are organizations that unambiguously embrace ‘recognition’ as an essential part of the Employee Value Proposition.

Ina survey conducted it has been found that the most terrific recognition comes often from the employee’s manager (28%), followed by the chief or CEO (24%), the manager’s executive (12%), a client (10%), peers (9%) and “Other” (17%). It is obvious from this data that the management of an organization, counting from the leaders to immediate supervisors, is significant in building a culture of recognition.

Here are some of the work practices that drive strong recognition. HR department must take care of these practices together with the business leaders & managers.

The ‘What’

The initial thing is to know ‘what’ to recognize. You need to acknowledge it at two levels – the overarching organizational level and team/function level. An organization has a set of ‘ideal’ behaviors that define the culture. There are many organizations that have linked annual employee reward programs with the employees’ success stories on the grounds of organizational principles.

Besides culture, organizations have formal employee reward programs set in place at a team or individual level. So, the team/function leaders make specific goals and behaviors clear to the employees. It becomes important for business leaders to create a balance between individual and team recognition.

The ‘How’

You need to measure the following things when working on employee reward programs:

• Timely – Recognize the employees immediately after they achieve a milestone. Though official organizational programs take place at the planned time, it is vital for the managers to acknowledge the employees through other means in an appropriate manner.

• Specific – Emphasize the particular behaviors and outcomes that you value the most. This helps to reinforce preferred behaviors and encourage related actions in the time to come.

• Authentic – employee reward benefits must be real and the managers must appreciate the behaviors or the efforts made by the employees.

• Personalization – Personalization drastically boosts the impact of recognition. Managers should get to know their teams well. There are plenty of ways to recognize them – emails, conversations, informal lunch or coffee, gifts, etc.

• Celebration – Celebrate milestones and accomplishments to boost morale and employee performance.

Identifying Gaps

Forming a recognition culture in an organization is unquestionably a constant process. There are ways to identify the employees’ perception towards the recognition and to check if it exists at the finest level in the organization. Some of these ways include:

• Engagement surveys: These surveys have questions related to the existing employee reward process. Responses to these questions can help make out the employees’ opinion.
• Exit interviews: Talking to the leaving employees about certain things related to their job generally helps to understand if he/she felt effectively recognized.

If a gap exists, organizations must work to understand the challenges.

These are few things organizations must pay heed to in order to design an amazing employee reward program. For more information, feel free to contact NextBee and ask for a live demo.