When employees are motivated enough, they feel driven to give their best, thus improving their efficiency and productivity at work. Hence, organizations today need to focus on driving workforce productivity through employee recognition.
Motivation is key to helping employees stay focused and invest their time and effort in doing meaningful work. This is essential for ensuring the consistent growth and success of the organization in the long run.
Before learning about the different ways to improve employee motivation, it is important to understand the science of motivation in the workplace.
Psychologically, motivation can be defined as “the desire of an individual to act and move towards a goal”.
Workplace motivation can be generated in two broad ways:
1. Extrinsic Motivation
2. Intrinsic Motivation
The motivation resulting from external factors like rewards and recognition, incentives and bonuses, and praise, etc. is called extrinsic motivation.
This type of motivation fulfills the psychological satisfaction and security needs of the employees and drives them to perform better.
This type of motivation is more personal and comes from within the employees themselves.
It is driven by factors like the sense of accomplishment, a feeling of love and belonging, and enjoying their work.
It fulfills the desire of employees to stay true to their internal belief systems and their professional goals.
Rewards and recognition help to fulfill both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation needs of the employees.
They help to fulfill the basic human needs of being acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts besides making them feel secure.
On the other hand, recognition fills employees with a sense of satisfaction and enhances their sense of self-worth.
A combination of rewards and recognition thus provides a holistic solution for keeping the employees motivated and improving workforce performance.
Using the right rewards and recognition software can help keep the employees motivated whether they are driven extrinsically or intrinsically.
As mentioned before, employee rewards and recognition software can play an important role in enhancing motivation and boosting productivity.
Here are a few ways in which organizations look at driving workforce productivity through employee recognition software:
1. Offer Instant Recognition
2. Promote Peer-to-Peer Recognition
3. Integrate With Social Media Channels
4. Modify Rewards Policies As Per Changing Needs
5. Seek Regular Feedback And Take Action
6. Integrate Gamification To Retain Employee Interest
Employee rewards and recognition software can offer real-time updates about the good work and achievements of employees across the organization.
Offering instant recognition such as spot awards from managers and supervisors can go a long way in keeping the employees motivated and enhancing their productivity.
Instant recognition assures the employees that their efforts matter and also makes them feel valued.
It fulfills their basic human needs to be appreciated and encourages employees to give their best in every situation.
Peer-to-peer recognition helps in assuring employees about the support and satisfaction of their co-workers.
This fills employees with a sense of belonging and strengthens their workplace bonding and sense of security.
Employee recognition software makes it easier for the members of the workforce to recognize the work and efforts of their co-workers.
Apart from improving transparency, peer-to-peer recognition also makes it easier for employees to appreciate the efforts and achievements of their coworkers and also get inspired by them.
An employee rewards and recognition platform ensures easy integration with various social media channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
This can prove to be a highly effective tool for improving employee motivation and productivity.
Recognizing the good work of the employees on such public platforms fills them with a sense of achievement.
The praise they receive across various social media channels motivates them to keep giving their best.
They feel more confident about their skills and their abilities and this drives them to improve their efficiency even more.
Offering the right monetary and non-monetary rewards goes a long way in making employees feel valued and boosting their productivity.
However, organizations need to modify their employee rewards policies from time to time.
This is essential to meet the unique needs of their constantly changing and evolving workforce.
An employee rewards platform can prove extremely beneficial by offering the best reward options that can maximize employee happiness and satisfaction.
Seeking regular feedback from employees makes it easier for organizations to understand what they are doing right and where they need to improve.
An employee rewards and recognition platform makes it easier for employees to offer their feedback both openly and anonymously.
Organizations can make it possible for employees to share their views and suggestions through the software itself.
Most importantly, the software can help organizations analyze the feedback and implement the changes required.
To enjoy the various benefits of using employee rewards and recognition software to motivate employees, maintaining their interest in the platform is extremely important.
This can be done by implementing gamification techniques to retain employee interest and ensure their long-term participation.
Using gamification elements such as reward points, leaderboards, gift cards, etc. can make the employees feel excited about using the recognition software.
These concepts also help to build a positive work environment besides keeping the employees engaged and motivated.
Most importantly, they tend to have a deeply positive impact on the overall performance and efficiency of the employees.
Employee motivation is one of the biggest driving forces behind improving workforce productivity and ensuring business success. Driving workforce productivity through employee recognition software should be a key focus area for all organizations.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of experience in the corporate world and entrepreneurship. In the past, Sagar has worked with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank, in leadership roles. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
To stay updated on the latest HiFives blogs follow us on Twitter (@MyHiFives)