Employee Rewards, Recognition, Engagement
The above guidelines for developing a recognition program can help an organization extend the program’s validity and usefulness of having a highly engaged workforce over a really long period of time. Changes in the program are required to ensure long -term effectiveness of employee recognition programs.
Constantly monitoring and benchmarking the effectiveness and relevance of the recognition program and the platform being used by them is essential for organizations to know when to change your employee rewards and recognition platform.
Looking for the above-discussed features in an employee recognition platform can help organizations ensure that efficient employee recognition becomes an integral part of their engagement strategy and offers long-term benefits in the form of enhanced employee productivity and retention.
While salary, financial perks and benefits play a vital role in attracting top talent, their retention in the organization depends on the effectiveness of the employee rewards and recognition program to an extent – how their efforts and contribution are recognized and rewarded.
There is a debate among HR practitioners that employee rewards and recognition programs should be targeted only at entry-level employees. However, as mentioned in this article, it is best to adopt a comprehensive employee reward and recognition system across all levels of the organization.
Employee recognition needs to be timely and in the right way to get the desired results in terms of improved performance and higher engagement levels, which is why organizations need to adopt a policy of more effective and spontaneous recognition.
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. And honestly, this is hardly rocket science.
Hence it is our recommendation that awards especially those in the category of spot awards should be given based on the immediate achievements and not the past track record of the employees. Awards should be treated as awards – it absolutely okay to reward underperformers for their achievements if they meet the criteria!
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. The caveat to this is that it might demotivate other employees who are possibly average performers or borderline cases.
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, a trophy, a shopping voucher or a trip to the Bahamas!