Celebrating Employee Appreciation Day provides a great opportunity for managers, business leaders, and HR in organizations to reinforce the importance of appreciating their employees.

Understanding the key employee rewards and recognition trends in 2021 and beyond can help organizations put in place the right policies, processes, and systems to develop a highly motivated and committed workforce going forward.

Organizations need to clearly understand the importance of employee recognition for their business success.
They need to develop effective programs that are aligned with their business objectives and the needs of their workforce.

Organizations need to invest time and effort to come up with innovative names for employee recognition programs as one of the first steps towards developing an effective employee recognition program.
A unique, innovative, and relevant program name is likely to generate more interest and engagement in the program from the employees.

Recognizing customer service representatives should be high on every organization’s agenda.
They form a critical part of the workforce that can make or break the customer experience, which in turn can play a key role in the growth and success of the business.

This is one dilemma that many Line Managers and HR Partners face - whether to reward underperformers for significant achievements, as part of the employee rewards and recognition program.

The key trends in HR in 2021 will be driven largely by the happenings in 2020.
These have accelerated the long-term changes in HR that were already underway for the last several years.
Organizations that are able to understand and leverage these changes quickly can gain a significant competitive advantage over their industry peers and demonstrate higher business growth.

These are just a few of the top reasons why employee rewards and recognition programs fail.
Leaders and HR must avoid these pitfalls to keep the programs alive and kicking, to keep employees motivate and productive at the workplace.

Organizations have tried everything for employee rewards over the years - from trophies, company branded merchandize, durables, electronics, holiday packages, gift vouchers, and even cash.
What is the best form of employee rewards?

Whether the winner takes all phenomenon is fair or not is the question to be asked.
It seems only logical that the highest performing employees would end up getting the maximum recognition and rewards.

Organizations can develop employee recognition programs that are aligned to their business objectives, organizational culture and workforce profile; and drive the desired results.

Traditionally, regarded as a ‘no-brainer’ form of reward, cash rewards are falling out of favor of employees, reducing their impact on employee motivation. It is time for organizations to move away from the tradition of cash rewards and consider other options.

These creative and impactful ideas for startups to recognize their employees should help them energize and drive them to even higher levels of performance.
This, despite the challenging, unstructured and often chaotic work environments.

Organizations can need to take implement these measures to make employees feel valued. They can build a highly engaged, self-motivated, and completely dedicated workforce to drive business growth and profitability.

Organizations faced with the dilemma of whether to reward employee performance or behavior.
They need to balance between achieving business goals and creating a more positive work environment.

The various examples of employee rewards programs provide a generalized framework for organizations to design programs suited to their industry type and maximize the outcomes of such programs.
Obviously, individual organizations need to tweak these guidelines to match their business objectives and employee expectations.

All said and done, recognition plays an integral part in employee engagement no matter how it is executed.
At the end of the day, employees feeling happy is what matters most whether is a pat on the back, or a trip to the Bahamas!

Employee rewards and recognition can play a pivotal role in initiating a change in the organization's culture.
Organizations should include behavior or value-based recognition in their employee programs in addition to the general outcome based recognition.

This guide to festival gifting for employees can help organizations manage the process smoothly with minimum administrative overheads and operational hiccups.

Adopting creative and low-cost ways to reward employees helps in creating a highly motivated workforce committed towards ensuring organizational growth and success with minimal budgets.