Building an employee recognition strategy from scratch

by Simon Hopes Author

Employee recognition is an invaluable motivational tool in a mangers’ management toolbox to motivate entire teams, build lasting company-wide partnerships and improve overall business performance through enhanced productivity and output.

But with the power of recognition so well studied and widely understood, many companies are yet to get started building their own recognition model.

There are a few reasons for this. First, smaller firms may lack the in-house expertise or experience to create and really drive such a program forward - although many start-ups in the tech world in particular include recognition and culture as a core of their employer and consumer brand. Also, older firms with old-school bosses may still be of the mind that employees should clock in, work, clock out and their payslip at the end of the month alone is recognition enough of their achievements.

But for companies that recognise that recognition can really enhance their working environment, boost team morale and output, the struggle can be thinking - where do we start? How do we go about creating an employee recognition strategy that’s measurable, employees will want to engage with and is actually likely to work?

Here are 10 simple steps to starting your own recognition program:

Understand what you want to get out of the program as a business

The first step is to really establish exactly what business benefit you want to achieve from the implementation of a recognition strategy. Is it reducing employee turnover? Increasing productivity? Simply boosting the morale of a long-standing team?

Use these as the foundations of the entire strategy and let them guide the processes to be put in place and rewards on offer.

Create a team to help create and deliver the program

One of the many advantages of a recognition program is that is fosters an environment of collaboration, so creating a collaborative team to implement such a strategy is a bit of a no brainer.

Gather key business leaders across departments to have their say in what’s required, the desired outcomes and how each can help deliver the program.

Set the criteria for recognition

A stumbling block for some recognition programs is that rewards are incorrectly rewarded, or handed out at the wrong time.

Your new recognition team needs to establish exactly when these rewards should be offered, based on the overriding business objective. For example, if reducing staff turnover is a major objective, then introduce rewards based on company loyalty at regular annual intervals, ever increasing in reward worth.

Set the rewards on offer

Next you need to agree what rewards are to be offered. The most common recognition rewards tend to be monetary or discount vouchers for shops and outlets which the employee can themselves choose.

However, don’t forget the power of perks. Not all employees, especially younger staff, are primarily motivated by money. Look to see if perks based on improving work-life balance can be created, such as additional days holiday or early finishes on a Friday.

Ask staff what’s most valuable to them

This step will also help inform what it really is your staff want. If it’s money or monetary-related rewards, then that’s fine. If they’re looking for more holistic benefits then you can make sure your recognition program really does motivate them by offering rewards and perks that they would really value.

Confirm a process for recognition and rewards

Rewards and perks confirmed, you and your recognition program team need to establish a process for recognition to take place and rewards to be allocated. For example, would you implement a weekly or monthly rewards scheme and notice of recognition? Or are you wanting to play the long game and recognise many at less frequent intervals? Operationally, the latter may be easier to implement and uphold. However, recognition works best when it’s frequent and timely based on just-happened achievements.

Advertise & launch the program

Everything in place, it’s time to launch your recognition program! The most important step is making sure all your employees are on board with the scheme and the process. Take time out to explain and showcase the scheme, explain its benefits and really get your employees behind it.

It is for them, after all (albeit your business will massively benefit too).

Assess, approve and progress

Once your recognition program has been released into the wild of the workforce, your job doesn’t end there. Take the first six months in particular to really assess how it’s working, what employee participation levels in the scheme are and start to measure beneficial outcomes.

Fine tune, assess, approve and progress on a regular basis.

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Created on Sep 1st 2018 01:29. Viewed 380 times.

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