The 7 Step Guide To Creating an Employee Recognition Program
Who doesn’t like to get a pat on the back after working hard on a project?
Everyone likes it, right?
But unfortunately, not many companies still pay attention to creating an employee recognition program to acknowledge their hard-working employees.
If your company is also one of them, you should change that today.
First of all, an employee recognition program doesn’t cost a dime, which is great for small businesses. Secondly, this program allows you to access your employees’ skills and boost their engagement levels.
In fact, a study shows that those who are recognized are 2.7x more engaged. (Source: GreenThumbs)
All in all, setting an employee recognition program allows you to motivate your employees without spending much.
So, let’s not waste any more time and check out easy steps to introduce an employee recognition program in your organization.
5 Steps to Deploy an Employee Recognition Program
According to 83% of HR leaders, employee recognition has benefited companies’ values and culture.
So if you don’t want to stay behind, follow these steps to create a progressive employee recognition program in your organization:
Step 1. Define Your Recognition Program
Foremost, you have to decide when to give rewards to your employees. The timing here plays a crucial factor in determining the success of your recognition program.
As per a survey among 5,000 employers, 85% of employers offer formal recognition to employees who have worked for a certain extent in the organization. On the contrary, 77% of employers create programs to recognize high-quality work. Moreover, 50% of companies say they also give rewards to promote a specific behavior.
So, you should determine what you want more from your employees, like good behavior, better quality work, or something else, and accordingly set your employee recognition program.
Step 2. Decide Your Reward
A reward is the main part of the employee recognition program. Thus, you have to reward them with something that can motivate your employees to improve their skills and performance.
For this, the best thing is to talk to your employees. You should sit together with employees individually to know what they prefer as a reward.
This might sound like a daunting task to interact with your team to find out how they want to be recognized individually. So, here you can use survey tools like Zoomerang, SurveyMonkey, and other SurveyMonkey alternatives to quickly gather intel from your entire team.
Confused what reward to choose for your employee? Check out the ultimate list of corporate gift ideas here.
Step 3. Form a group
The next step is to form a group of people who will manage your recognition program. You can appoint department heads, HR managers, and other senior executives in this group.
The objective of this group is to recognize and present the reward to the people as per your employee recognition program terms.
A well-chosen group can help you in better implementing and improving the program. Your employee recognition program’s success depends upon the managing group; thus, follow these tips while forming a committee to deploy the program:
- Select the people who have good knowledge of the people
- Appoint good leaders
- People who know and believe in your company, etc.
Read more about employee engagement activities in Indian companies
Step 4. Set a recognition program policy
For your committee to work properly, you need to draft an employee recognition program policy. It is basically a document that contains all the information about the program, such as:
1/ When to recognize
Recognition at the right time is very important. That’s because if you wait too long to appreciate your employees, they will lose interest in the program. Therefore, it is considered a good practice to recognize someone immediately after they achieve their goals.
For example, if your salesperson has achieved his or her monthly sales target by the 15th, you should not wait the entire month to appreciate them. In fact, you should reward them instantly so they can perform even better for the rest of the month.
2/ How often to recognize
Recognition is directly linked to motivation. Thus, no matter how many times you recognize your employees, it is less. Ensure that you make recognition a regular process in your company for better results.
3/ How to celebrate the recognition
Recognition gains more value when you celebrate it properly. If your employee has done something great, you can organize a small get-together during lunchtime to appraise the person.
This practice will offer you two benefits. First, it will boost the employee’s morale, and second, it will motivate other employees to work hard to achieve recognition.
4/ Streamline with your company’s values
If your company values matter to you the most, you can align your recognition program with them. For example, if good behavior is vital as per your company’s values, you should appreciate the employees who demonstrate good behavior all around the year.
Step 5. Make Sure of Successful Implementation
This is the last and the most crucial step of an employee recognition program. If your recognition program isn’t deployed properly, it will ruin all your efforts done by far.
Here are a few things that you should consider to implement a successful employee recognition program:
1/ Senior management should lead
If you want more employees to participate in the employee recognition program, senior management should promote it and even help employees to win rewards. The supervisors, managers, and other senior management staff should guide employees to get more appreciation.
2/ Align your program with your company culture
Company culture is vital for 81% of corporate employees today (Source: GreenThumbs).
Thus, if you follow a remote work culture like most companies worldwide, you need to align your recognition program with the remote environment.
You have to use skill assessment, time tracking, and other virtual tools to remotely monitor your employees’ performance and recognize them accordingly.
Final Words
There you go, HR leaders. All it takes is five steps to implement a successful employee recognition program to motivate and engage your employees.
However, remember that you should constantly monitor and revisit your recognition program to maximize its effect.
If you keep on following the same recognition program for years without any change, it will be useless for you.
So, actively improvise and implement your employee recognition program, and shortly, you will see positive results in your organization.
I am Srikanth Acharya, CEO at TheHomeOffice.in & OffiNeeds.com. TheHomeOffice helps professionals work more efficiently from their homes and at Offineeds, we help companies create #BrandAmbassadors through #CorporateGifts.