Employee Rewards, Recognition, Engagement
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.
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!
Employee rewards in modern-day organizations have been evolving over the years – it has become more of an art than a science.Organizations have tried everything 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. The caveat to this is that it might demotivate other employees who are possibly average performers or borderline cases.
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 adopting more diverse forms of non-monetary rewards that are likely to be more effective in driving employee motivation.
These creative and impactful ideas for startups to recognize their employees should help them energize and drive them to even higher levels of performance despite the challenging, unstructured and often chaotic work environments.
Organizations faced with the dilemma of whether to reward employee performance or behaviour need to take a more balanced approach of rewarding the contributions of the employees towards achieving business goals as well as towards creating a more positive work environment.
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!
In fact, our view is that employee rewards and recognition can play a pivotal role in initiating a change in the organization’s culture. It is really basic human nature to gravitate towards behaviours than giving them the maximum benefits. Organizations should include behaviour or value-based recognition in their employee programs in addition to the general outcome based recognition – that’s our recommendation.