Employee recognition has never been so simple.

Has employee recognition been on your list for months, but you’re not sure where to start? You’re not alone.

HR teams have never been more under pressure than today. Dealing with the human fall-out of the pandemic, finding ways to support mental health, managing the exodus and influx of employees. The urgent deliverables to support daily operation are real.

Traditionally, employee recognition programs have required a large upfront investment to launch. They have also required a dedicated on-going resource to keep momentum going. Someone has to manage adoption, keep employees engaged, make sense of heavy data reports - right?

Modern employee recognition software combats the need for huge resources. By design, it simplifies all aspects of recognition, making it quick to launch and easy to manage.

With priorities defined, you can realistically launch a program within days and manage within hours each month.

So what should you identify before starting so your program will drive the right results?

Align your recognition goals and company values.

Why are you launching an employee recognition program? What are the behaviours that will help the company reach its goals?

Recognition encourages specific behaviours. Once recognised, employees will subconsciously repeat the behaviour to receive more recognition.

An effective recognition program will align behaviours around achievement of the company goals. When behaviours and goals align and employees exhibit the actions that drive success on repeat, you will hit your targets.

Define your recognition audience.

With workforces so diversified, consider who will be part of the recognition program? Will you include temp staff, contractors and giggers? What about those contractors who have been with you for years and are actually more committed than some of your FTE’s?

Consider who to include alongside your goals and how you will achieve them? Will you be more likely to reach your goals with all all employees aligned? Or can you still be successful on the back of just some departments or employee types?

Once you have decided who to include, what can they give and receive? Will they get service awards like the full-timers? Can they earn rewards or will you limit them to recognition only?

Determine suitable recognition formats.

Whoever you include in your employee recognition program, allow peer-to-peer recognition - rather than exclusively top down.

Employees revel in recognition from their managers so it’s important to create an opportunity to share manager-led recognition. The addition of peer-to-peer recognition though does a couple of things.

Peer-to-peer recognition increases the volume of engagements with the program. It limits the reliance on managers to be generating a constant stream of contributions. It also builds trust between team as they call out the things that are important to them by recognising behaviours.

Peer-to-peer recognition also highlights actions that managers may not be aware of. Employees and managers often don't share the same space. They may not even be in the same state. Peer-to-peer recognition creates opportunities to alert managers to great work as it happens.

Empower frequent, transparent recognition.

The defining factor of a successful recognition is it being timely and authentic.

Recognition given long after the moment loses impact and clarity around what happened. The details will be missed by the giver and not only will the effect be dimmed for the receiver, they will be less likely to repeat the behaviour.

This is where disparate, offline programs can lose impact. It is important to empower employees to give recognition as it happens for the best results.

Frequency of recognition also plays a big part when it comes to engagement.

Gallup research suggests recognising employees at least once a week has a positive effect on engagement. The best way to create a program where employees can recognise each other frequently, authentically and transparently is with employee recognition software.

Be specific to be meaningful.

Encourage employees to be specific about why they are recognising. While it’s easy to say ‘well done’ it’s not as meaningful as calling out a specific action and detailing the impact it had.

Recognising specific actions and achievements demonstrates deeper value to the receiver. It makes them feel seen and appreciated. When socialised, recognition highlights the actions that make the company successful.

Great recognition calls out the big wins but it is more than that.

Companies with magnetic recognition culture amplify and celebrate the little wins. They naturally drive higher adoption of the program as employees know all great work is valued – not just work with high visibility.

Read more: All the stats you need on why recognition is so important.

Look for simplicity and accessibility.

Employees will form great recognition habits if recognition is easy to access and simple to give.

Leading software will encourage employees to give recognition through it’s intuitive design and simple interface. It will engage employees in celebrating moments with others and help build your recognition culture.

But it’s not only how your employee recognition software works. It's also important to consider accessibility.

Simple access through a Single Sign On, a mobilised site and integrations into social tools also increase effectiveness of a program. While you don’t have to have all these things, the easier it is to login and give recognition, the more frequently employees will do it.