The Benefits Of Starting Employee Recognition Programs

If you’ve been running a business for any length of time, you quickly recognize the value of engaged employees. In order to continue to encourage this enthusiasm, you have to do a lot more than pay your employees well. While money, of course, is an important incentive, it’s not the only thing that motivates employees.

People also work hard for the sheer joy of being recognized for their accomplishments. While there is some personal satisfaction in a job well done, this feeling of making progress is amplified when others also notice. It’s gratifying for an employee to have others see what they have managed to accomplish. For this, and other reasons, you need to find formal ways of initiating employee recognition programs.

Let’s take a closer look at how to recognize employees who go the extra mile to benefit your company, at why employee recognition is important, and at what the results you might expect  if you simply take your employees efforts for granted:

How to recognize employee’s accomplishments.

While a few words of recognition by a manager will probably make your employee’s day, you will achieve far more if you create an award-giving night during which time you recognize employee’s exemplary accomplishments before the entire company. Custom awards, like handing out plaques or trophies as the audience claps, puts the finishing touch to your presentation, a way to immortalize the wonderful evening for prize-winning employees and their family and friends.

Another way of recognizing employee accomplishments is by tying it in with goal setting. So, for example, if you want to achieve a certain sales figure by the end of the year, you can create a contest for your sales team. Perhaps, you could reward the top five performers with a week-long family vacation to a five-star hotel in Hawaii.

Then, of course, you could always recognize employee achievements through cash rewards like spiffs, bonuses, and other forms of compensation well above their regular paychecks.

Naturally, you don’t have to have just one form of employee recognition. You can have multiple programs running at the same time. There is no reason, for instance, why you can’t have an awards night, a contest that awards special performance with a wonderful grand prize, and offer many financial incentives during the course of the year.

Why employee recognition is important.

When you create formal employee recognition program, you set off a chain reaction of wonderful events. A positive spiral, if you will, of positive benefits. Here are a few things that might happen:

• You might notice that employees start to increase productivity. Not only those who won awards, but also those who aspire to get ahead in the company. Positive reinforcement in the workplace is a way of encouraging excellence, and it creates a desire among top employee to produce even more exemplary behavior.  Here’s how:
• Stimulates greater companywide awareness of what role models do to perform well enough to achieve outstanding results.
• Increases general levels of employee satisfaction because employees begin to feel that they are working for a company that cares for them. You might even find employees who are now actually enjoying their work more.
• The level of complaining drops in all departments and more time is spent in staying focused on work.
• You might see both individuals and teams ask for feedback to better understand how well they are doing.
• Customers, too, notice that company employees are more helpful in finding ways to serve them better. As a result, customer satisfaction and loyalty will improve over time.

What to expect if you simply take your employees efforts for granted.

If you don’t do anything different to make employees feel special, then they will not bother to ask for any feedback on whether or not they are doing a good job. There will also be no noticeable difference in productivity, nor in customer satisfaction. And teamwork among employees will continue to be uncoordinated and unremarkable.

However, if things deteriorate below mediocrity, then you can expect it to be more difficult to retain quality employees and there will be a generally higher level of employee turnover. Safety records may fall below standards, with more accidents on the job. And you might notice a correlation between an increase in overall negativity, more stress on the job, and higher rates of absenteeism.

In conclusion, the difference between going out of your way to make employees feel good about their work to not giving them any special attention, or even in making your company a gloomy place, is something that you will be able to measure. Happy employees will improve the bottom line while discontented employees will help increase costs and decrease profits.