You Need an Employee Recognition Program

If your business doesn’t already have an employee recognition program, you could be throwing money out the window in the form of high turnover, low engagement, and poor performance. Employee and peer recognition programs keep employees happy, motivated and engaged, so they’ll stay with the company and do better work.

Employee recognition makes employees feel valued and appreciated, and who doesn’t want some gratitude for their hard work? Recognize employees for their achievements, their loyalty, their career progress, and their reliability, and they’ll pay you back in the form of better performance, higher morale, more loyalty, and more positive buzz about your company. Here’s what employee recognition programs can do for your company.

Boost Performance and Morale

What happens when you work hard at someone and no one seems to notice your efforts? That’s right – you start to lose the motivation to keep delivering the same high level of performance. If no one takes the time to recognize your great work, then it’s easy to start feeling like your efforts aren’t noticed. If your efforts aren’t noticed, then why work so hard in the first place? That’s how your employees are feeling if you aren’t giving them any sort of recognition to reward them for their efforts.

Employee recognition programs that emphasize peer recognition as well as interaction with and praise from supervisors are a powerful tool to make employees feel more appreciated and valued in the workplace. You don’t need to call in the higher-ups to give employees the recognition they crave. Most employees want recognition, praise, and feedback from their immediate supervisors, not from the CEO.

Recognizing your employees’ achievements and virtues can also boost company morale. Seventy percent of workers say that receiving recognition from peers and supervisors in the workplace makes them feel more connected with their colleagues on an emotional level. That means workers who receive the appreciation they deserve will be happier in the workplace, and maybe even at home.

Keep Employees Longer

Companies with strong employee recognition programs experience lower rates of turnover, because recognizing employees for their great work makes them feel more committed to the company. Money isn’t the only thing that keeps employees motivated, and it certainly isn’t the only thing that keeps a specific employee in a certain job. Sure, salary is an important consideration – everyone has their own idea of what amount of pay would make a specific job worth it. Benefits are important, too – an employee might stay in a job that pays less because it offers great healthcare, lots of paid time off, and other desirable benefits.

But most of what really keeps employees in their jobs is psychological. Employees want to feel appreciated. They want to have connections with people at work and feel like they can trust their supervisors and teammates. Employee recognition programs can foster those kinds of feelings.

Generate Positive Buzz for Your Company

It may have never occurred to you, but a pretty big slice of your workforce uses social media – and they’re probably talking about work online. It’s one thing to adopt a social media use policy that prohibits employees from saying bad things or complaining about the company online. That can serve as damage control, but simply preventing damage isn’t nearly as good as encouraging improvement.

Implementing effective employee recognition programs in your organization can encourage your employees to say nice things about your organization on their social media, and that can improve your company’s reputation and draw in more desirable job candidates. The more motivated and engaged your workforce is, the more likely they are to make positive social media posts talking up your company, and that can generate a lot of positive buzz online.

Create a Culture of Self-Improvement

When your employees are committed to improving themselves professionally and personally, your company will benefit. You’ll get a workforce with more skills, and you won’t even have to go through the trouble of hiring a bunch of new people to get them. Your existing employees will simply add to their own skill sets.

That’s because employees who are engaged at work seek out chances to learn new skills and advance in their careers. You can boost the effectiveness of training and development plans when you use an employee engagement program to build a solid foundation of employee engagement to encourage a culture of self-improvement in your organization.

Your company needs an employee recognition program. It can boost engagement, reduce turnover, and do so much more for your organization. Start showing your appreciation of your employees today, and watch your business thrive in ways you never imagined possible.