One of the first things you can do to make sure that you’re setting the tone for a highly engaged workforce is bolstering your recognition program.
According to Bersin & Associates, 87% of recognition programs focus on tenure—rather than contribution and efforts. Especially with a millennial-heavy workforce, where the average tenure is somewhere between 1 and 3 years, it’s unlikely that your new workforce is feeling the impacts of recognition programs targeting 5-year anniversaries.
Though over $100 billion is being spent annually on incentive programs in the US, 58% of employees responded that their leadership could “give recognition” first, to improve engagement. Having free recognition programs that focus on highlighting exceptional work ethic or output means that you can positively reinforce that awesome behavior, and increase your employee engagement, without extra cost to the company.
The most successful recognition is highly personal. The value of highly-personalized rewards can’t be understated, even in the case of those tenure-based anniversary gifts.
It’s also a great opportunity to reinforce the value to employees of sticking around that long—while poor rewards like keychains and plaques might demoralize an employee who’s feeling undervalued, a reward which was chosen with them in mind, or which they can look forward to, is a great motivator to keep going during moments of low-morale.
On the other hand, having a recognition system that stacks employees against each other does more harm than good. While competing for points might motivate the top performers to try even harder, it can be demoralizing for those at the bottom of the competition, and even cause employees to act poorly in order to win.
Instead of having employees compete against each other for the most recognition, have them work towards a personal objective. Perhaps recognition can translate to bigger rewards with some accumulation, like free lunch, or some extra pto.
Unfortunately, not enough companies are providing peer-to-peer recognition opportunities, according to our Employee Engagement Report. And peer-to-peer recognition can be one of the easiest ways for employees to feel connected and recognized, without requiring a costly rewards campaign.
That increase in morale translates to end-consumer benefits too. 41% of companies that have peer-to-peer recognition in place have seen positive increases in their customer satisfaction.
Recognition isn’t a difficult value to put some action behind, and it doesn’t need to cost a fortune—but it is important to recognize what your existing programs aren’t doing, and how you can supplement those.