January 20, 2015
Recognizing the Need for Recognition
First and foremost, it’s important to realize that rewards and recognition are not one and the same. Rewards tend to have a cost associated with them, whereas recognition is typically free or of minimal cost. A great definition of employee recognition by Kim Harrison is “the timely, informal or formal acknowledgement of a person’s or team’s behavior, effort, or business result that supports the organization’s goals and values, and which has clearly been beyond normal expectations.”
Recognition is an essential part of driving employee engagement, yet for some reason, it’s an area that most organizations struggle with the most. There tends to be many reasons for why recognition falls off: time, budget, forgetfulness, and embarrassment. There are more reasons to invest in recognition than not to, especially since the vast majority of employees want to be recognized, in fact, 78% of employees said being recognized motivates them in their job.
Building a Best Practice Recognition Program
- Be aligned – Your recognition program should be aligned with your business goals and objectives – this helps you to recognize the appropriate behaviors.
- Communicate the guidelines and criteria of your program to your employees so they understand what behaviors will be recognized.
- Be consistent – Consistency in providing recognition will help your employees feel that recognition is fair.
- Be specific– Recognizing a specific job on closing a deal or dealing with a difficult client goes a lot further than saying “great job today.”
- Be timely – Recognize someone in the moment when they go above and beyond
- Be personal – With an overwhelming amount of technology in our lives, recognition from a person is valued higher than when from an automated system.
Creating a Culture of Recognition
“Companies that scored in the top 20% for building a ‘recognition-rich culture’ actually had 31% lower voluntary turnover rates.” That’s a really important statistic to think about. Good people are staying because they are being recognized because the organization has developed a culture that embraces recognition. For a program that has a minimal cost, it’s has a costly effective if not embraced.
Recognition isn’t only the responsibility of the managers – recognition can and should come from everyone. Managers can schedule reminders and make sure they recognize someone for going above and beyond once a week, then once a day, and soon managers should be getting in the habit of consistent recognition. This will help foster a recognition-rich culture. Carving out time in department meetings to recognize high-performance is another great way to get in the routine of recognizing employees.
As previously mentioned, recognition shouldn’t only come from managers, and it can be argued that recognition is more effect when it comes from peers. When a peer recognizes a peer it tends to have more impact because that peer actually knows what goes into the day-to-day work and understands the role more intimately, whereas coming from a manager could feel political or insincere. Peer-to-peer recognition is not only a fantastic way to build a strong program but also develop a culture of recognition.
Since we know employees want and need recognition in the workplace, we have to ask ourselves: can we afford not to recognize?
-Kaitlyn Carr, Organizational Development Specialist @emplyengagement @kacarr789
