How employee recognition improves social wellbeing.
Employee recognition has many great benefits for both organisations and employees. Improvements in productivity, greater loyalty, increased contribution and a better customer experience can all be achieved through employees recognition. Given July is Social Wellness Month, we take a look at some of the social benefits of recognition and how you can improve employee wellbeing by celebrating everyday moments.
Social wellbeing is that sense of overall happiness we get when things feel right in our life. We are emotionally, physically and mentally satisfied and secure. Given many of us spend a significant amount of time at work, a focus on social wellbeing in the workplace is important to ensure your team are able to positively contribute, are connected and supported, and can deliver on your collective goals.
According to this Heads Up report one in five Australians, or 21%, took a day off over a twelve month period due to feeling anxious, stressed, depressed or mentally unwell.
Compared to employees with poor wellbeing, employees who report their wellbeing as excellent, rate their output as 19% higher. They also rate their teams performance as 20% higher according to this report.
If that is not compelling enough, research by PwC for Beyond Blue shows that for every dollar spent creating a mentally healthy workplace, the average ROI is 2.3.
Our social wellbeing is significantly impacted by the quality of our relationships both at work and at play. Social employee recognition plays a part in improving social wellbeing, by building strong, healthy relationships, promoting positivity and connecting employees to shared team goals.
In some workplaces today, employees work solo or only check into the office infrequently. Compartmentalised or siloed teams can become the norm as your people focus on delivering. Recognition from peers can build a sense of being part of something bigger for these isolated employees and reminds them not only what is being collectively achieved, but the everyday actions that are valued by others.
Empowering managers to recognise their team builds deeper and more meaningful connections between managers and their reports. The transparent nature of social recognition highlights not only the big things that are worth celebrating, but the smaller achievements that often go unnoticed. Managers today are not only managing multiple generations, but often managing teams that work anytime, anywhere.
In a modern workforce, it is easy to only celebrate the big achievement however little actions can have a significant impact and should be equally appreciated.
Recognition also bridges the gap between executives and employees, allowing employees to see what is important to the leaders of the business by seeing what is recognised. Leaders in today’s companies have so much coming at them so quickly, without a social recognition program it can also be hard for executives to see the everyday behaviours that they ideally want to recognise. Not only that, without a social recognition program, by the time a supervisor tells the manager, who relays the message at a weekly meeting to the department head, who in turn tells the CEO at the water cooler two weeks about an employee who did something worthy of recognition, the moment is over – well and truly over.
Recognition needs to be in-the-moment to be most impactful, so recognition given weeks after the action has a significantly diminished effect.
With a social recognition program, the CEO could have seen the initial recognition from another employee, added their own congratulations - at the time – and a meaningful message of appreciation from the top.
Others in the company see this and build an understanding of what is important to the leaders of the business. This aligns all employees around the same goals, bringing the company values to life. It also builds strong and trusted relationships between executives and employees, making employees feel connected to a higher purpose.
Social employee recognition won’t improve social wellness in the workplace in isolation. Face-to-face connectivity, a focus on mindfulness, opportunities to physically move, social activities with team mates, working collaboratively, giving back to meaningful causes and many other things can also help. However, social recognition can be part of an overall social wellness focus and is a valuable preventative tool when it comes to employee wellbeing.
If you are looking for more resources, Heads Up, is a great place to start or you can check this list of fun ways to recognise that can also help improve wellbeing.