An employee reward is considered to be the most influential of the employee engagement and retention tools any company has besides salary. Companies that successfully and consistently implement employee recognition programs enjoy long-term stability and higher profit margins.
Key Features to Make an Employee Reward Program Work:
Frequency
To make recognition highly effective, companies must make it frequent. It is essential to acknowledge their efforts and make them realize that they are valued. Regular recognition, weekly, monthly or even yearly, is constant reassurance that you treasure your employee’s efforts, regardless if it’s a small win or a major accomplishment.
Timeliness
The timing of recognition plays a vital role in building motivational inertia. Telling employees that they made a great contribution on time is essential since getting applauded for great work weeks or months later does not create the same positive feeling amongst the employees.
Spontaneity
While recognition and appreciation can be made frequent by incorporating it into an effective recognition program there should also be a spontaneous component. Just acknowledging employees on a schedule, even a regular one, can start to feel hollow. But offering spontaneous recognition soon after a goal is achieved build gratuity and corporate “buy-in” for your employees.
Visibility
An effective employee reward program isn’t only transparent to how it works but it’s highly visible to everyone. This is in response to the increasing need of private recognition in the companies. Public recognition carries some exclusive benefits that just cannot be underestimated since, for the majority of people, public recognition is a high motivator. Visible recognition provides a wonderful example of a “job well done” culture which encourages others to also work hard and make parallel contributions so they will also be considered valuable.
Specificity
When employees have a specific and effective recognition program, one attached to definite actions and achievements, it lets your employees know not only that they did a ‘wonderful job’ but also how to trigger more recognition in the future.
Feedback
Sincere and constructive feedback is vital, and to your team, it’s an invaluable resource. You can utilize it to help set up the most effective employee recognition program possible. But there’s also the other side of the coin. You need to seek out and understand feedback from your team. Basically, you need to understand what makes them feel motivated about the program. Identify the things that are working and those which are not. The answers might astonish you and you can work on them can help you make your recognition system better.
NextBee specializes in developing high-end solutions related to employee reward programs. If you wish to implement a successful employee reward program in your business ecosystem, feel free to contact NextBee.
