Studies have found that employee recognition is one of the most important things a business can do for its employees.
The core of almost every organization is its employees – without them, a company is nothing. As such, it’s important for organizations to show their employees that they recognize their value and appreciate the work that they do. One of the best ways to achieve this is through employee recognition.
So what is employee recognition, and how can you go about it? Keep reading to find out.
What Is Employee Recognition?
Employee recognition is a practice that organizations can implement with their employees. It’s a way of showing your workers that they’re appreciated. There are many ways a company can do this, and it can help improve things for employees and businesses.
There are various things that a company might recognize employees for, such as:
- Achievements
- Exceeding expectations
- Reaching milestones
- Exhibiting desired behaviors
Some companies don’t make an effort to recognize employees, but by not doing this, they could be missing out on several potential benefits.
Why Employee Recognition Is Important
Recognition isn’t just something that people look for at work. Everyone seeks it at some point in their life, be it from parents, teachers, friends, or elsewhere. It develops in us over our lifetime to the point where people often even perceive no reaction as a negative one.
By encouraging employee recognition within your organization, you will quickly notice various improvements such as better employee retention, smoother employee onboarding, and an increase in productivity.
Employees often feel that they’re not properly recognized for the hard work that they do, so if you’re able to do this, people will see your organization as one that’s much more desirable to work for. This is actually considered the most valued thing a company can do for its employees. It’s followed by things like inspiration and autonomy.
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is crucial among employees. If people are happy at work, it will reflect on how productive they are, how much extra effort they are willing to put in, and how likely they are to want to stay with the company.
Recognizing employees will show that you care for them. This way, they won’t think you see them as just another cog in the system, but that you value their contributions to the business. All of this helps to foster a better working environment, increasing the job satisfaction of all of your workers.
Employee Retention
Employee retention is crucial. Any business should try to maintain the staff that they have, rather than constantly bringing new employees on board. There’s a range of ways you can improve employee retention, with recognition being one of them.
Whenever you take on a new employee, they require onboarding and training, and you won’t really know how good they are at their job until they’re working. Maintaining workers that you already have keeps all of this to a minimum. This is especially crucial when there’s a lot of competition among employers.
Creating Bonds
Company culture is something that’s often overlooked by employers. This is because it generally doesn’t link directly to an employee’s job. It does, however, link to the results that people produce.
Employee recognition helps promote a culture of recognition throughout a company. At all levels, your workers will be more likely to recognize the accomplishments of those around them. Doing so will help build bonds between different levels of the company, creating a workplace where people are happier to be.
How to Improve Employee Recognition
Knowing that employee recognition is important is the first step. You also need to know how you can implement and improve it throughout your organization, and there are several ways you can do this.
Be Specific and Relevant
Recognition is more meaningful if you can highlight what it is specifically that someone is being praised for. It helps employees to relate their behavior to the approval they are getting. Doing this will help encourage similar behavior in the future.
Be Timely
Try to give employees the recognition they deserve as soon as possible after the event. This shows that it’s an authentic appreciation of what they’ve done. Waiting for weeks or months to provide this recognition will make it seem like it’s less of a priority and something that’s been done simply when you’ve gotten around to it.
There Are Various Forms of Recognition
The easiest way to show recognition to employees is with cash bonuses. While this can be effective, it’s not the only method, and as you already pay them a salary, something more creative is often ideal.
Corporate gifting is a good example. Like client gifting, it shows that you care and have gone out of your way to reward someone. This can be made incredibly easy using Givenly’s platform.
Another common option is to provide meals at work, or even outside of work. This is suitable for individuals, as well as entire teams.
Employee Recognition at Your Company
There’s a range of ways to begin with employee recognition and you can choose whatever approach best suits your company. One of the most popular is through corporate gifting – but many businesses don’t know where to start with this.
Givenly is a Corporate Gifting and Swag Management Platform that can help you manage corporate gifting throughout your organization. Our platform can streamline and control all of your gift-giving programs through a single system.
To find out more about our services, click here to contact us today.