Let’s look at the key reasons for an organization to digitize its employee recognition program:


1. Enhances Employee Experience

With Gen Z and millennials constituting a majority of the workforce, a technology-enabled employee recognition program is bound to enhance employee experience. For a generation of employees who are completely comfortable with e-commerce, social media and mobile apps, digitization of the employee recognition program is almost like a no-brainer.

Digitization can enhance the employee experience manifold, leading to greater employee participation and engagement, which in turn can lead to higher motivation, performance and productivity of the workforce.


2. Reduces Administrative Operations and Costs

A digital employee recognition platform can minimize the need for manual processes such as creating Excel spreadsheets, sending emails, and following up with multiple internal teams and external parties. Digitization can enable automation of processes, based on predefined workflows.

The reduction in administrative operations involved in running an employee recognition program can help in freeing up time and resources of the HR Team for other value-added activities. Digitization of the program can also help in minimizing errors and delays, leading to further cost savings.


3. Makes it Easier to Link Recognition to Goals and Performance

A digital employee recognition platform can be easily integrated with other work platforms used in the organization. Through integration with other systems such as CRM, project management, performance management, etc. the recognition process can be closely aligned to the employee performance.

Employee performance at work, measured in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) be easily integrated with the employee recognition platform and can trigger recognition based on predefined criteria. This can help the organization to align the employee recognition program with the actual performance of the employee.

Also read 5 Best Ways to Recognize Top Performers


4. Makes Recognition Instant and Timely

Traditional employee recognition systems are not geared up for instant recognition. Delay in recognizing the achievement of an employee reduces the impact of the recognition itself.

Digitization of the recognition process makes it easier for managers and co-workers to offer instant and spot recognition as and when the employee achieves something significant or exhibits a desirable behavior. Timely recognition increases the effectiveness of the recognition process as compared to a traditional system.

Also read Frequency of Employee Recognition Matters for Organizations


5. Facilitates Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Peer-to-peer recognition has come to be recognized as one of the most significant drivers for enhancing employee engagement and motivation. It can be quite challenging for organizations to implement a peer-to-peer recognition through physical appreciation cards or appreciation boards.

A digital employee recognition platform can make the process of peer-to-peer recognition very simple. Making this process easy for co-workers to appreciate each other,  encourages more employees to participate in the program and helps build a strong culture of appreciation within the organization.

Also read Employee Recognition Program can drive Cultural Change


6. Creates Greater Social Visibility

Having a digital employee recognition platform enables the program to garner greater visibility within and possibly even outside the organization. The platform can integrate with internal collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Currents or Workplace by Facebook. It can also integrate with external social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Employees can congratulate the recipients of recognition on the employee recognition platform itself  by commenting and liking on their posts, giving organization-wide social recognition to the winners. Greater visibility can be obtained through integration with other internal and external platforms.


7. Makes it Accessible for Remotely Working Employees including Field Staff

Recognizing remotely working employees such as field staff is a big challenge for traditional employee recognition programs. The huge shift towards remote working fueled by the pandemic has increased this challenge manifold.

A digital employee recognition platform provides an easy way for remotely working employees to participate in the program. Managers and co-workers would be able to recognize team members, receive recognition, congratulate others and even redeem their rewards digitally. This is one of the most compelling reasons for organizations right now to digitize the employee recognition program.


8. Makes the Process More Transparent and Fair

A digital employee recognition program makes the entire process completely transparent – the criteria, the nominations and the winners. Employee have visibility to the entire process, making it more genuine and trustworthy in their minds.

Limits on the numbers and frequency set in the platform can prevent the same employees from getting nominated multiple times and ensuring a greater level of fairness in the overall system of recognition.


9. Provides Reminders and Nudges to Managers

Automated reminders and nudges to managers can enable timely and regular recognition of team members and help in building an overall culture of appreciation in organization. This is hard to replicate in a traditional recognition system without too much manual efforts and overheads.


10. Enables Single View of the Entire Program

A digital employee recognition program provides the HR Team and the management with a bird’s eye of the program at their fingertips. They can directly track the key program metrics in real-time and take the necessary actions.

Digital employee recognition platforms include dashboards, reports and analytics that let the program managers understand the health of the program at any given point in time. They can take timely actions based on these metrics and trends.


11.  Allows Easier and Faster Changes to the Program

An employee recognition program needs to stand the test of time. It is important that the program is modified and enhanced over time to keep it in sync with the changes in the business objectives of the organization and the expectations of the workforce.

A digital employee recognition program makes it much easier and faster to implement changes such as adding new categories of recognition, changing the existing workflows or criteria for recognition. In traditional recognition systems, making such changes can be quite cumbersome and time-consuming, in comparison.

Also read Employee Recognition: The Devil is in the Execution