Search Engine giant, Google, often talks about the importance of moments.
The time to recognise employee successes is when they’re riding the wave of achievement. A social recognition platform can help to ensure that you’re there to celebrate their moment, but also encourage their peers to do the same. Peer recognition is just as important as a reward or a vote of confidence from management.
Why Thank you Works
Much of the workforce uses social media to engage with their friends, family and even further in their lives outside work. It is a ‘moments’ based social gathering place.
Social recognition apps capitalise on this behavioural trait. We collect likes and shares in our social life, why not at work? Many rewards and incentive schemes alone find it difficult to appeal to each and every employee (although some do a pretty good job of being inclusive, multinational and multicultural friendly.
In any company, there are special moments and achievements that often go unnoticed. Acts of heroic assistance in overall company achievement. Those moments can be quickly forgotten even to those most touched by them. Having a platform that easily allows a recording of such snapshots of success or significance makes sure no good deed goes without reward and recognition.
It’s a sustainable program that is proven to boost morale - social recognition programs improve profitability by 22% through lowered staff churn, which costs UK firms £4bn a year (Gallup, 2013). This demonstrates the power of a thank you.
How to Make It Successful
Launching a social recognition platform within your company without thoroughly researching the right methods and pitfalls to avoid could cause a backfire. It is recommended that you follow these suggestions:
- Reward standout contributions as and when they happen
- Promote employee-to-employee rather than manager-to-staff recognition
- Allow colleagues to show gratitude to good work that management might not be aware of
- Involve everyone, in every department, in every country
- Aspirational (not necessarily high value) rewards tend to perform best
- Use award levels for social recognition, aligned with levels of effort, contribution, time or results
- It sounds obvious, but ensure that each employee knows exactly how the program works
- The easier to use and more aesthetically pleasing the platform, the more engagement you’ll get.
“HR and business leaders utilizing social recognition and reward systems report significant improvement in employee engagement and business outcomes. Social recognition and reward concepts enable HR leaders to re-evaluate traditional approaches to performance management, employee referrals and other talent management systems”
Social Employee Recognition Systems Reward the Business with Results, Yvette Cameron, Research Director at Gartner
What to Avoid
Don’t push employees to recognise each other by rewarding them for the number of times they recognise peers - this negates the point of the exercise.
Awards need to be well-timed and consistent.
Too much management interference will also put staff off. The process must be simple, easy, and appeal to the ‘now’ generation as well.
Conclusion
A well thought out social recognition and awards scheme can help to increase employee satisfaction and employee engagement, but only when certain considerations are made.
Social-enabled technologies support more traditional pay-for-performance strategies, helping you to build and align your company values and culture.
To find out how Encore by Ovation can help you implement a successful employee social recognition program, click here.