Why Employee Recognition is Important
Human nature is such that humans like to feel valued and special for what they are and what they do. This basic psychological tenet is applicable in the workplace as well, and forms the basis for rewards and recognition. While some organizations prefer paying a premium to make employees feel valued, others believe in a more culture-centric way of making employees stick. For the second type of organization, recognition comes as a savior tool. Recognition is nothing but appreciation given in a structured manner. Appreciation is known to increase the levels of the feel-good hormone oxytocin, leading to happiness and high spirits, says a research by Bersin by Deloitte. Recognition is thus, intricately linked to employee engagement through a positive correlation.
A recognition program does not typically involve much costs, but the outcome is significant. Some of the advantages are:
- Increases the repetition of desired behaviors, thereby aligning people with the desired organizational goals
- Better employee job satisfaction
- Enhances team spirit
- Lowers employee turnover by acting as a retention tool.
- Lowers incidences of negative behavior, reduces absenteeism, increases productivity, and decreases stress on the job.
- Maintains a strong employer brand
- Acts as an allied HR process for meeting learning goals
HR leaders who design recognition programs must keep in mind the intricacies of designing an effective and efficient program. Especially with new work groups dominating the workplace (such as millennials), the specific needs of these special groups must be taken into consideration. For example, millennials derive more inspiration from peers, than veterans do, so peer to peer may be more effective for them. For veterans, traditional recognition such as a company announcement may work better. Following are the points to be considered in the design and deployment of a recognition program:
1. Align desired outcomes: First and foremost, it is important to design the program to extract the desired organizational behaviors. This includes linking it with the values of the organization. According to the Globoforce/SHRM Employee Recognition Survey, 2016, 60% of those organizations which have a recognition program have tied it into the core values.
2. Select the intervention: The right HR processes must be created to create opportunities to shower praise. This can be done by designing a digital recognition portal, as well as a physical offline process. Some of the common recognition modes are thank you cards, pings by the manager, peer to peer recognition, bay announcements, lunch with the boss, special learning interventions, additional time off, etc.
3. Review and Revisit: HR leaders must measure program effectiveness on an ongoing basis, by calculating the ROI in terms of engagement scores, retention metrics, productivity, and other business metrics. They must keep recognition fresh and consistent, so as to build a process that employees look forward to.
Over and above this, recognition must be timely and be perceived as valuable.
Recognition will emerge as a strong employee engagement, development, and retention tool of the future. Already, many organizations have adopted it in a big way. The Globoforce/SHRM Employee Recognition Survey, 2016 states that overall 81% of organizations have some kind of a recognition program in place. It will only become more popular from here on, as a diverse workforce knows the importance of different ways of being valued by the employer.
