3 types of recognition to transform your culture.

Most leaders accept that employee recognition is a must have, not a nice to have. One in four companies have recognition programs to demonstrate the value they place on great work. While lots of these programs are delivered with the best intentions - and many hit the mark - many are also missing valuable opportunities to maximise impact.

When recognition is delivered well it’s incredibly powerful. It can build the connective tissue of a company, unifying your team and imparting a sense of connection and belonging. It can help attract amazing new talent and keep your best employees loyal. It can elevate performance, improving financial results. A culture of recognition is a magnetic culture.

However building that culture is not as simple as calling out a single action at a particular time of year. It’s not just handing out a few awards on stage for an extraordinary achievement. It’s not just celebrating a milestone that an employee reached.

Moments worth recognising happen every day, in every team, from the office or home office. Great work is delivered in the storeroom and boardroom. Desired behaviours are exhibited on projects and in person. Actions that fuel the success of the company happen between two people or across a whole team. Recognition can highlight these moments for all to celebrate, showcasing the everyday behaviours and impressive efforts that drive the company forward.

It’s these moments that can easily be missed if you focus only on one type of recognition. Here are the three different kinds of recognition to consider if you are looking to transform your recognition culture.

Company-led recognition.

Company-led recognition is the one that many companies get right – or mostly right. It’s top down, usually handed out by the CEO or MD, often on stage at an annual awards night. It comes with lots of kudos, sometimes a large financial reward and everyone makes a big deal of it. Company-led recognition typically occurs infrequently but comes with a lot of visibility across the organisation.

Company-led recognition is important as it’s typically awarded for significant achievements that either help the company grow and thrive, or help clients achieve their goals. Think ‘Employee of the Year’, ‘The MVP Award’, ‘Sales Star’ or the equivalent big moments of appreciation in your company.

Company-led recognition includes other celebrations like career milestones. Companies often celebrate moments like weeks of onboarding in the first year, or years of service to the company to demonstrate the value leadership place on loyalty and growth within. While milestones are typically celebrated as each employee’s anniversary comes up - so happen all year - for each employee, they are infrequent.

Company-led appreciation can also include one-time recognition for achievements like hitting a stretch target, a one-off reward for a team who finished a project ahead of budget and deadline, a special thanks for winning over a big client.

Whatever the moment, company-led recognition has huge impact and an important part of any comprehensive program.

Manager-led recognition.

Recognition is incredibly meaningful when given by a manager, building connection and belonging with their team. Manager-led recognition – a manager showing their appreciation for an employee’s actions or achievements - is usually given for smaller but important achievements. This type of recognition happens more frequently across the company, often within the manager team.

Manager-led recognition may happen face-to-face or online, and can include a manager calling out the action and affect, rewarding the recipient with something of value like points or a perk, handing over a certificate if in person and may end with a round of applause or lots of likes on the company recognition wall.

Recognition given by managers is powerful in that it builds trust and understanding. Trust that great work will be celebrated, that employees who put effort in will be rewarded. It builds comprehension of the manager’s expectation and when value-based, builds insight into what the values mean in action. Manager-led recognition can transform the words on the wall to meaningful actions that everyone can replicate.

Managers are often given recognition budgets they can use to reward their team members. Using recognition software, this would typically be points they can award, as a recognition is given or added to another recognition when the manager sees someone in their team being celebrated. Points can be banked and redeemed for a reward the employee chooses. More recently companies are moving away from ‘giving more things’ and are now looking at ways managers can give out time and activity based perks. These are more personalised and meaningful and with good recognition software, are transparent and easily managed.

Manager-led recognition builds a sense of loyalty to the manager and a lack of it is often cited as the reason employees quit. It’s a powerful tool in your recognition culture and managers who adopt recognition as a daily habit see improved teamwork, engagement and positivity from their people.
 

Peer-led recognition.

Peer-led, or peer-to-peer recognition is where employees recognise other employees for everyday actions and achievements. These may be things that are small but meaningful to the individual rather than big, visible moments for the business.

Peer-led recognition may be within a team or cross-functionally, given for any little moments of greatness. It might be that an employees contributed great ideas in a meeting, stayed back to finish some client work, helped another employee out of a sticky spot on a project or showed them a new way of doing something. These moments are not momentous in terms of overall company success – but they add up to something special.

Peer-led recognition flows organically around an organisation, building positivity and appreciation. Companies with recognition-rich cultures enjoy a raft of positive outcomes from employees with a greater sense of connection, better alignment to company values to improved financial results.

Over the past five or so years, companies are increasingly giving employees small budgets – micro-budgets – so they can also reward each other. This level of autonomy around rewarding powers-up your recognition culture and really drives up the value in being valued.

Peer-led recognition is at times left out of a program as companies want to keep tight control over what is being posted – but that level of control does more damage than good. The typical objections to peer-led recognition can be easily overcome with recognition software that has considered the common concerns. The ability to manage the company-wide feed, allowing private recognition messages and the ability to take action immediately if something is not right, retains control while allowing employees to dynamically celebrate each other for discretionary effort.

In programs where peer-led recognition is enabled, employees recognise each other way more frequently than either company or manager-led recognition. The peer-to-peer element builds trusting relationships between peers and highlights to managers some of the great moments that they may not be aware of.

There is no form of recognition more important than the other. Company, manager and peer-led recognition are each incredibly powerful in motivating and engaging your people. Each drives performance in a different way and contributes to your overall culture.

If you want to transform your recognition culture, look at how you can include all three forms of recognition in your program. You will be glad you did!

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