26 Apr
Employee Recognition Strategy: Transform the New Normal Workplace Culture
The global pandemic has reached almost every corner of the map and has shaken up the corporate world too. While most of us are used to go to swanky offices in tony areas of our cities, covid-19 has swiftly transformed many companies to enable remote work at a large scale. Nobody has ever anticipated the launch of the world’s largest work-from-home experiment. Remote work culture has got its own set of unique challenges- both for the employees and employers. Employees feel a little lost and demotivated when working remotely, which in turn results in productivity loss and hampers the organization’s culture. This is a major problem that needs to be taken care of when we don’t know how long the remote working can last.
Creating a positive work culture is making sure that every employee is represented and accounted for. Company culture should unify the employees and drive them towards achieving the shared goal. As per Randstad, 38% of employees want to leave their current jobs due to negative company culture. Time has come to make changes, to transform your enterprise’s culture.
Employee recognition can be an excellent way towards driving your company’s culture. But how it can be achieved, virtually? And what kind of recognition strategy can make employees feel motivated? These are the questions every organization must have before implementing employee recognition programs.
Employee Recognition Strategy
Being acknowledged for being good is the best way to earn respect. Employee recognition programs are the initiatives taken by employers to reward their employees for achieving milestones, anniversaries, contributions, etc. It includes meaningful appreciation, recognition, and celebrating the shared success that will drive employee engagement. This keeps employees motivated throughout, results in better performance, and helps the company achieve positive work culture.
Employee Recognition benefits
- Drive Engagement— There is a powerful link between recognition and engagement. Employee engagement is the emotional and functional commitment that employees have toward their organization. According to an employee engagement research, around 58% of employees say that recognition and praise could drive employee engagement. People want to feel celebrated for their contributions. These contributions need to be rewarded and recognized in meaningful ways.
- Boosts productivity—Recognition of your employees can lead to greater productivity. People want to get recognized for their achievements and contributions. When employees are valued for their work, they feel connected to their organization. This drives dedication towards the work and improves productivity.
- Companies that do not offer flexibility to the employees are most likely to quit. As per CNBC, 26% of the workforce are planning to quit their jobs post-pandemic-80% of the workers are willing to leave their jobs for career advancement, and 72% say the pandemic has caused them to think about their skill sets. Due to the remote work culture, employees feel that their contributions are going unnoticed, and this leads them to feel disconnected. Employee recognition programs will recognize the employees for doing great work, keep them engaged throughout and lessen the turnover rate in an organization.
- Boosts customer satisfaction—Appreciating the employees for good work has a direct impact on customer satisfaction. A happy employee will give your clients a better service. Employee satisfaction is directly related to customer satisfaction. According to research, it shows that 35% of companies said that their customer satisfaction rate is increased due to employee recognition programs.
- Support workplace wellbeing— Low wellbeing and feeling left out will harm employee productivity. This issue needs to be addressed and create a workplace where wellbeing can be successfully nurtured and sustained. Making employees feel valued for their contributions through rewards and recognitions will create a positive environment, that has an impact on employee health and wellbeing, as well as increased job satisfaction and productivity levels.
Best practices to implement employee recognition strategy
- Determine your recognition strategy: Make your executives understand the impact of the employee recognition program. Set the guidelines that describe the standards of assessment, qualities, and behaviors of the recognition program, frequency of the program, and type of rewards. Inform the guidelines to the employees, making them aware of the company’s expectations. Lastly, make sure that the program is achievable, relevant to the employees, and quantifiable.
- Sync up with everyone: Involve high levels, managers, and employees in the recognition program. Leaders and managers play a vital role in the success of the global recognition program. Since rewards and recognition retain employees, it is very important to involve them in the design and implementation of the program- to find how they want to be recognized and give them a choice.
- Multidirectional recognition: In general, recognition structure is from a manager to employee, it comes only from the top. It should not come from only managers, recognition and appreciation should come from all directions including peer-to-peer, clients, etc.
- Align your recognition efforts: Corporate decisions should always mirror their company values. It is important to align the recognition program with the company’s goals and objectives to achieve success. Employees are more inclined towards their organization for what they stand for as an individual. Recognizing employees for embodying corporate values will make them feel connected and valued on a personal level.
- Choose a recognition platform: Companies will need a recognition platform for their employees. This platform should be customizable and enable the employees to contribute their innovation, track their status, etc. Competition creates a healthy environment and creates attention. Also, with the intranet-based scoreboard, everyone will be aware of who is being recognized.
Click here to explore AI-powered idea management in SharePoint intranets.
Types of recognition:
- Positive feedback: Sharing positive feedback regularly via mail or in-person is a flexible method of recognition and is universally accepted.
- Value-based awards: Presenting a monthly or quarterly award, where the team selects the employees who are doing an excellent job. It will make employees feel engaged and motivated to meet their goals and it is a terrific way to make sure that employees are aligned with the organizational values.
- Cheers from peers: Many employees prefer peer recognition to get acknowledged at the office. Make your employees show recognition or appreciate each other on a common platform and an intranet can be the best solution that anyone can opt for. Allow other employees to call out the positive things one is doing.
- Work anniversaries: Do not let your employee’s work anniversaries go unnoticed. Employees these days tend to leave their organization often. So, reward them for staying.
- Client recognition: Client recognition can go a long way, help the employees to stand out from others. Employees are boosted and feel motivated to work more and achieve goals that are defined to them. Clients are happy with the employee’s performance and spread the word about your company, which will help to build a brand reputation as a good company to do business with.
How can the intranets help with employee recognition?
Recognition is an important aspect that an organization should focus on if they want to transform their workplace culture. Employees need to be valued for their work, dedication, and efforts they contribute to meet their company goals. Intranets are the best platform to recognize and strengthen the work culture in an organization. An intranet can provide many opportunities for an employee to shine compared to traditional offline approaches.
Intranets built on SharePoint have a wide variety of features—one of them includes integration with collaboration tools like teams, yammer, etc. These tools are perfect for collaborating with employees and employee recognition. It enables fellow employees to indulge in discussions with their team members and they can like, comment, and share to appreciate their colleagues’ efforts. Backing up employee’s accomplishments across the intranet can bring transparency within the organization and the workforce is aware of one’s contribution.
Conclusion
Recognizing and rewarding the employees for their efforts will create a culture crafted with positivity. C-level recognition should be imposed to remind their employees about how their contributions have benefited their organization as a whole. It is best to enable recognition on mobile devices, especially during the pandemic where employees are available 24/7 and they do not miss out on any notification. Showcasing talent and efforts on a global level will overwhelm the employees and drive motivation to strive hard to reach the company’s goals.
The modern intranet will be a perfect solution for implementing the employee recognition scheme. With the remote culture taking a hit, dispersed employees across the planet will be connected throughout irrespective of the time and location. Recognition forums in the intranet platform will enable employees to track their input, have a look at the leaderboard and make people aware of one’s contribution.
We, at Acuvate, help clients build a robust intranet with digital workplace accelerator Mesh 3.0. It has all the features that can meet every aspect of the organization’s goals and transform the company culture. Some of the features include
- Personalization and recommendation
- Multilingual capabilities
- Azure cognitive enterprise search
- Ideation management
- Collaboration tools
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our digital workplace consultants for a personalized consultation.
Poonam Chug is AVP - SaaS Strategy & Business. She has worked in various areas, right from designing and executing sales & account management strategies to reengineering digital workplace solutions. With her determined focus on our mission and progressive approach, she has achieved customer delight in the space of AI, Knowledge Mining, Content & Collaboration, Virtual Assistants, RPA and more. Backed with a deep understanding of customer needs and technology, she leads the SaaS business unit with an upshot of maximizing revenue while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Poonam Chug