Inventive ways to leverage employee recognition.
Employee recognition is a great way to engage employees in the activities and behaviours you want them doing.
Positive work environments, where employees feel valued and appreciated, are often successful work environments. Employees in these environments are more productive, more effective, generate better ideas, deliver better customer service and better bottom-line results.
There are lots of different ways to deliver recognition and almost every company has their own recognition style. Employee recognition can range from a wall of hand-written messages, to a face-to-face conversation with a manager. It can be delivered online through employee recognition software or at an annual event with the employee being called up on to the stage.
While there is no right way to do recognition (although there are some wrong ways!), we have rounded up some of the out of the box, inventive ways we have seen clients leverage their recognition program.
These clients have looked at the actions they want to encourage more of, from loyalty to personal growth, and found ways to endorse these achievements. Some have looked at where they were falling short, for example, the most common times employees would leave, and put recognition in place to help change the flow.
Everyone needs a little inspiration sometimes so read on for some great ideas to inspire your thinking. As you read through, think about the desired areas of improvement for your company and how clever uses of recognition might help.
Have some great recognition ideas of your own? Let us know how you are using your employee recognition program.
Milestones that come with benefits.
Some of our clever clients are using perks to celebrate milestones and automate the reward process. That’s a win for the HR team as they can stay out of the loop but confident in the knowledge that all the right perks are going out to the right people at the right time.
The only thing HR need to do is jump on and celebrate on the wall with everyone else.
In one program, when an employee has been with the company for a week, they get a perk for a coffee with their manager. This gives the employee the opportunity to talk through their first week and ask questions, in a casual setting.
It also helps to build the managers relationship with the new team member, creating a positive connection from the start. The manager does not have to do anything, except approve the time for coffee. The employee recognition system automates the whole process and means there is one less thing for them to remember.
The employee gets another invitation for coffee at the one month point – again, an opportunity to chat informally and go through any questions. Again, all automated by the employee recognition program.
The feedback from the client has been great. Since these milestone perks have been implemented, employees have stated they feel welcomed and connected from day one and managers are enjoying the automation too. It means they don’t have to keep track of when check-ins are due, just turn up for the coffee as scheduled.
Another client offers employee benefits to all employees once they have completed their three month probationary period. Rather than HR or managers having to keep track of this, they have built it in to their recognition program.
Employees receive a perk at their three month anniversary giving them access to the company benefits program. As you can add custom content to perks, including links to other sites, the employee has all they need in the details of the perk to start enjoying the corporate benefits program. They can click through from the perk to register their account and enjoy the company benefits.
To ensure that this perk is not given out for everyday recognition, it has been limited for use with milestones only. This gives HR full control over when the specific perk is used and comfort that it will be given at the right time. Clever!
Kick off long service early.
While most employees know they start to earn long service pro-rata at seven years, one client has set-up automated milestones to make a bit of a big deal of the occasion.
They noticed that they have a peak in turnover at the 6 – 7 year mark. Rather than waiting for seven years when employees are expecting long service leave to commence, they go a year early with a perk showing employees what is to come if they stay with the company.
At five years, the employee receives a financial reward for their loyalty and does not expect another loyalty reward until 10 years.
To address to turnover issue, employees who reach six years are rewarded with a bonus ‘early long service day’, to be taken anytime within the next year. The perk gives them an extra day off to use as they please and encourages them to stay with the company and start accruing the mandated long service leave. While the company isn’t funding the long service from their recognition budget, they have leveraged the employee recognition program to entice employees to stay for the extra leave they will earn.
The clever additional of one extra day has improved loyalty as it acts as a reminder of the upcoming long service milestone and piggybacks on the mandated leave. Win-win.
Rewards for meeting a personal goal.
In support of employee wellbeing, another of our clients devised a program where employees could state something they wanted to achieve for their health in a three month period. Some employees chose losing weight, some chose running a marathon, others chose building a meditation habit or eating healthily each day.
Once committed, the employees checked in through the company’s collab tool, keeping them accountable. Managers checked in with staff at the weekly meetings, making sure while there was accountability, employees also felt fulling supported. If their commitment to the goal or motivation dropped, managers could talk through it with them and get them back on track.
Employees who achieved their goal, checked off by their manager, were rewarded. Each employee was given a perk for you guessed it….wellness benefits. They could earn class passes, time off to train, wellness equipment, time off to relax and other great rewards.
The best part was, they chose which perk they most wanted to receive up front. This meant managers knew they were rewarding their team with something they really wanted and kept employees motivated. Having not only their health goal, but the reward, in mind, helped many of the team stay on track.
To back up the focus on wellbeing, throughout the quarter the company also had fresh fruit delivered to the office, changed the Friday lunches to a healthier option (out with the tacos and in with the poke bowls) and kept the fridge stocked with healthy snacks.
Employees loved this as it took recognition from being just about actions at work to personal achievements. And while it was personal for the employee, every company wins from having healthier, happier employees.
Perks for coming into the office.
With the move back to the office – in part – one of our clients is using perks to encourage more people to come in to the shared space more often.
They have set-up a suite of perks that restricted to admin use (yes, you can do that!) and are office based. So employees who come into the office are rewarded by program admins, with rewards they can only use in the office.
Perks are things like a coffee from the café downstairs, extra time at lunch to walk in the fresh air, a chance to choose the office tunes and time with a mentor face-to-face.
The feedback from their team has been great. Employees were a bit resistant to coming back in at first – for all sorts of reasons – but the little incentives are helping. The client has exceeded their target for office-based days and the employees are enjoying not only the perks, but the deeper connections they get by being together.
Birthday days off.
In another program, a client is using the new birthday awards to give employees an extra day off. They have set birthdays up so the employee gets the award a week early, giving them time to request the day and plan how to celebrate.
We have also seen birthday perks used to help HR with the cake. Sounds strange? Read on.
One client has a birthday cake perk. Knowing that not everyone likes to be publicly celebrated and not everyone likes cake, they have taken advantage of how perks work to help throw a party that the recipient really wants. The perk is for their choice of cake and when they select it, they choose one of four flavours (yes, apparently some people don’t like chocolate cake?!). they also choose what time they want their cake delivered so it works with their schedule. Part of the perk is designed for those non-public celebrators who can choose to decline a cake and instead have lunch on the company at the local café.
We like this one as it really takes advantage of the features and functionality of perks. HR just set it up once and then not only don’t have to worry about the recognition, they get all the information they need to make the employee’s day a party to remember.
Sharing recognition with non-tech based team.
As recognition is industry agnostic, we have lots of different companies using the recognition program. Some employees are on their laptops and phones all the time, while others don’t have them at work for safety or service reasons.
One client has a workforce who are partially office based and partially front line. The client has invested in iPads to stream recognition as it happens through the in-built ‘TV’ function. The iPads have been mounted around workplaces and show an ongoing feed from the program, highlighting the great work that is happening throughout the day.
Not only does this amplify activity as it happens, it acts as a reminder for those employees to send a few recognitions at the end of their shift. It also brings a sense of equity to the program so it’s not just ‘another thing for the office team’.
Company awards that roll up.
Before working with us, a large client had a challenge with their company award process. There were lots of worthy moments to be celebrated but as the management of them was not integrated into their program, HR were managing it on spreadsheets.
It was a nightmare (their words, not ours!).
Once they integrated them into the recognition program, it not only made it easier for employees but streamlined the process for HR.
Each department now runs a quarterly program with clear guidelines as to who can be nominated and what for. Once nominated, they can be endorsed by others and at the end of the quarter, the winner is determined by the department manager.
Winners earn a financial reward which is automated by the system.
The next part is what has really simplified company awards for the client. Those who achieve in the quarterly program are added to the list for review by a panel. On review, worthy recipients are added to the company-wide annual program and can be voted for by the wider team.
By using company nominations at a local level then rolling up to the company level, employees can clearly see what is required of them, can earn rewards regularly and then have the opportunity be considered for the larger end of year reward.
There are lots of clever ways to use your employee recognition program to move the levers that are important to you. Hopefully this has given you some good ideas as to how you can leverage your program to drive better results for your employees.