Organizations want to see tangible benefits of employee rewards and recognition programs to justify their investment. Hence, the HR team needs to continuously demonstrate the programs’ benefits.
At HiFives, we have had long and deep engagement with our clients for their employee rewards and recognition programs.
Based on this, here are a few of the benefits of employee rewards and recognition programs:
1. Employee Performance and Business Impact
2. Alignment with Organizational Values
3. Positive Work Culture
4. Teamwork and Collaboration
Good employee rewards and recognition can motivate employees to perform well.
This would positively impact key business metrics such as revenues, costs, customer satisfaction, etc.
For example, an employee rewarded for good customer service is likely to continue performing at the same or higher level. It might also motivate his peers to demonstrate higher levels of performance.
The same would be true for an employee recognized for cutting costs or driving innovation.
Rewards and recognition programs can drive desired behavior from employees in sync with the organization’s core values.
These core values may include ethics, commitment, customer-centricity, passion, or collaboration.
For example, employee who met a critical deadline might be eligible for an award under the category of commitment.
Another case could be that of an employee who resisted attempts to secure a contract by offering ‘personal incentives’.
The behavior and outcomes should be kept separate in both examples.
Through these recognition programs, the organization can drive specific values such as innovation, process efficiency, punctuality, social awareness, etc.
For example, employees can be incentivized for good suggestions on process improvement.
Another example could be that of recognizing an employee who participated in a important social initiative outside of the organization.
It isn’t easy to incentivize such behaviors through the traditional performance assessment and regular compensation system.
Hence, employee rewards and recognition are potent tools in the HR team’s toolkit for driving such behaviors.
Employee rewards and recognition can help create a positive atmosphere of celebration of achievements within the organization.
It can help foster individual-level motivation and overall team spirit. Open recognition of employee achievements can go a long way in building a great culture of appreciation.
It is important for organizations to track the benefits of their employee rewards and recognition programs and to take action based on the gap between the actual and expected results.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurship experience. In the past, Sagar has worked in leadership roles at companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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