What to look for when choosing a recognition program.

Many organisations know that in today’s competitive employee market, just offering free tea and biscuits and an annual performance review are not enough to keep employees engaged. Even if you upgrade the snacks to include gratis tacos on Friday from the local food truck, chances are this will still not be enough - far from it.

From pinball tables to free gym membership, dog-walking to days off for charity, companies are finding new and innovative ways to keep their employees happy and reduce turnover. But there is one thing that successful companies have in common. A company-wide recognition program that drives long-term engagement.

In fact, 94% of the world’s most successful companies believe that it is their high level of employee engagement that underpins their success and creates a competitive edge for their brand.

So how do you pick the right employee recognition program for your company? One that fits with your organisational goals and suits your employees? A recognition program that you can adapt to fit the dynamic nature of your business?

Points to consider when evaluating an employee recognition program.

#1.  How will the program help to drive company culture?

Company culture is more than just words on the wall of a meeting room. It is the everyday behaviours of every employee that determine what your culture is.

Your recognition program is a great way to align those small – and big - things your team do every day with the company values. Using your values as the underpinning measure by which employees are recognised brings the values to life and showcases company-wide, what those values mean. Over time, if you recognise employees against your values, they will strive to embody them – no matter what their job spec is. 

Choose a program that allows you to use your company values for recognition, add images to suit, and encourages employees to add their own personal meaning to each value. After all, it is your people who will drive your culture.
 

#2.  Is the program as social as your Millennials?

We may not all be snap-happy, Insta, hash-tagging experts, but many of your employees probably are. Choose a program that socialises recognition and allows everyone in the company to not only see recognition activity, but like and comment too.

Social employee recognition programs have higher levels of engagement, shine a spotlight on the great things your employees are doing and involve everyone in recognition, not just those handing out the high-fives.

#3.  Can you adapt the program to suit your recognition style?

Some companies have had recognition running for years. others are new at the recognition game. Wherever your company is on the way to recognition heroism, you want a program to fit as well as a superhero’s skin-tights.

Look for a program that you can configure to suit your recognition status. There are so many elements to a program, it is important for engagement - and your budget – that you are not forced into including things that just don’t make sense for you. Want to run a recognition only program with no rewards? You should be able to do that. Want to allow employees to recognise any one, from any department, for any of your values? You should be able to do that too. Want to personalise perks that managers can give to their teams, giving them fun rewards like time out for a new ‘do, free coffees for a week, face-time with senior execs? That should be included too.
 

#4.  How will the program grow with your business?

You will likely put a lot of time and effort into the buying decision, and into getting the program set-up and running so make sure the recognition can grow as your business does. You don’t want to get a year into the program and find that you can’t ‘turn on’ certain functionality without being hit with a big bill from your provider for the privilege, or that adding more employees just doesn’t add up financially.

Look for a program that offers you the option to choose which functions you want to use on day one, but allows you to add service awards, rewards, manager perks, single sign on from your new intranet, integration into your fancy upgraded HR management system – when the time is right for you. No additional cost for doing so.
 

#5.  Who will manage the program – and at what cost?

As with many programs, your recognition program will not be a ‘set and forget’ initiative. You will probably want to make employee updates, issue new company messages, add more budget for your managers to reward their people with, change the on-boarding recognitions, issue company-down awards and more.

So, who will do this and how big will the invoice be? Look for a program that gives you full administration control but is simple and easy to use. By doing so you will not only retain control of timing, you will keep administration costs down. More money to put towards the elements that are really rewarding!
 

#6.  Speaking of rewarding, are the rewards on offer - if you choose to have them - good value?

Ideally, if you want to include rewards now or in the future, you will find a recognition partner who can offer the full service. You don’t want to have to extract spreadsheets yourself, place orders, manage them with a supplier or even worse, go out and purchase rewards in person.

When looking at the reward offering, choose a partner who has a selection of rewards that suit your audience. No point offering metro-based experiences if you have a nationwide team. You will just create a divide between your city and rural based employees. Similarly, if the merchandise selection is just electronics, chances are some of your team will find it a disincentive, rather than a reward.

Look for a partner who offers a range of brand name rewards – and importantly – at a good price. Many providers will include shipping and service in the cost of the reward which means you will not need to pay for these items separately. You want them to include these services as it creates a hassle-free, streamlined reward experience for your employees.

But some will also include a hefty margin which means more of your reward budget in their pocket, and less for your employees.
 

#7.  Is it all about marked-up merchandise or are there innovative and personalised perks that are separate to rewards?

Many providers can offer merchandise and experiential rewards and there are significant benefits in doing so. But what if your budget just doesn’t stretch that far?

Look for a program where you can offer perks instead of physical items, that come at a much lower cost and are far more personalised. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to engage your team and sometimes, personalised perks that show employees their managers really know them and understand their personal goals, will have a greater impact that spending up big.
 

#8.  Can the program be integrated into your current business tools?

One of the best ways to put recognition in the spotlight, and make it habitual, is to integrate your program with business tools that employees already use on the daily. If you have an intranet site, you may want a single sign-on (SSO) so that your employees don’t need to remember yet another user name and password for the recognition system. If you use communication tools like Yammer and Chatter, you may want to integrate real-time recognitions to those feeds.

When evaluating potential providers, make sure they offer these integrations, if they are important to you. And make sure you know what the cost will be. Many providers can do this, but are they pre-built so you can link the tools in minutes, included in the price of the program?
 

#9.  How will the data be managed?

Employee data can be complex, and can change often as people join, change roles, move teams or leave your organisation. You don’t want these complexities – or the accompanying spreadsheets - to add to your workload.

If you have complex data, or even if you have simple data but you and Excel are not friends, look for a program that can automatically pull data from your HR management system. An API will do a one-way transfer of employee data so you change it once in your HR system and it is automatically updated in the recognition program.

Of course, if you don’t have a HR management system, this is no help. So, look for a program where the manual process and Excel sheets, are simple and user friendly. And make sure you can load them as and when needed without relying on the agency to do this for you. 
 

#10.  Lastly, but arguably, most important, how will you know the program is working?

Success of a program is more than just looking at logins per month or how many times recognitions have been sent in total. So how will you justify recognition expenditure to your senior execs? How will you know the program is driving the right behaviours and tweak it if it’s not?

The best way to determine how your recognition program is tracking is to review comprehensive and easy to interpret reports, delivered real-time. With so many of us time poor, look for reports that cover all the metrics that are important to you, delivered dashboard style. If there are director’s reports available too, well there is your prep for the monthly leadership meeting done – in the push of a button.
 

Finally - and yes, this is an eleventh point but an important one - choose a partner who offers a secure, fully managed software solution so you know your employee data is safe and protected. Choosing a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) recognition solution, you will benefit from a secure, fully-hosted environment without the hassle of certification, product development, testing, data security, code issues, server maintenance or what kind of snacks keep the developers in peak condition.