Do These Things For Better Employee Recognition Programs

We have been associated with the HR industry for years and years, interact with HR professionals daily, and been involved in countless planning sessions for employee recognition with HR teams. We see every day what’s working in the workplace and what’s not, especially from the standpoint of employee recognition, improvement and performance.  We offer the following five practices you should consider stopping now so you can focus your energy and resources elsewhere and have a better employee recognition solution. These all boil down to essentially stop over-complicating things.

Eliminate Difficult to Operate Programs:  You design and implement programs that you want employees to love and want to use, it shows you care about them.  Don’t ake it so difficult to use them that they perceive it as punitive. 

Stop Adding Apps on Apps:  Different technologies come across your desk daily. From our standpoint, we see the “new” and “best” and “most featured” employee recognition platforms introduced all the time.  Every supplier is vying for a piece of the recognition budget and will develop the ‘end all and be all’ of recognition platforms to get yours. Stop cobbling them together putting one on top of the other.  In recognition, the simplest is usually the best.  Truth be known, probably only about 10% of the available features built into all recognition platforms are ever used. 

Shun Superficial Recognition:  It’s time to get rid of recognition awards that most employees don’t want. Train supervisors to find out what they do want and give them of choice of things that they consider important to them.  Garage sales are loaded with the trinkets and trash of the past.  What may have motivated their parents and grandparents don’t motivate the employees of today. 

Throw Away Employee Surveys:  Ask quick and short questions and listen more frequently and then implement steps or technologies that drive the action.

Blow Up Silos:  With the proliferation of digital technologies it is expected and necessary for all systems to interact.  Recognition across departments and peer to peer recognition are excellent ways to help decrease the problems with silos. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Make Employee Change Personal

In 2018 McKinsey developed a leader’s guide to help companies “Make Work Meaningful.” Its simple premise was that people who find meaning at their work are happier, more productive and more engaged.  Without a rehash of the entire guide, the outline shows four straightforward practices that can help create  an environment where organizational change is personal.  These four practices are:

Reduce Anonymity

Make sure employees know who their customers are (either internally or externally) and encourage them to connect with one.  Build face to face interactions into existing processes encouraging employees to know who is most affected by their work.  Studies show that just this interaction alone can boost customer satisfaction by as much as 14%

Help Employees Understand the Impact of Their Work

Invite customers who have had the best and the worst experiences with your products to talk with employees in person so your team can see how their work affects customers.

Notice, Recognize and Reward Good Work

Create systems where colleagues and customers alike can communicate satisfaction with a task.  Everyone wants to know that their work is noticed and valued. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive, but it does have to happen. “Thank you we appreciate your efforts” are simple words but they can be powerful when spoken with sincerity.

Connect Daily Work to a Higher Goal

Push people to think about their work in a high-level way by asking employees a series of “why” questions about 3 to 5 of their most important daily tasks.

As stated in the Leader’s Guide…

“it’s well understood that people who believe their job has meaning and a broader purpose are more likely to work harder, take on challenging or unpopular tasks, and collaborate effectively. Research repeatedly shows that people deliver their best effort and ideas when they feel they are part of something larger than the pursuit of a paycheck.”

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net