Do You Have a Culture of Recognition?

Recognition has always been the heart of employee engagement.  In fact it might even be the soul as well.  Nothing does more for an employee in the short term that recognizing their performance, either formally or informally....with any kind of physical award (either large of small).

The Internet lists the Top Ten  Employee Recognition Systems.  To name just a few, companies with such cute names as Motivosity, Guusto, Fond and Nectar all have the bells and whistles that will be a sure fire way in recognizing your employees to improve their performance and increase their engagement.  And our guess is that they will all work in one way or another.  They all tout a new and better way to improve your culture.  

What they won't do is instill a culture of "Thank You" within your company that comes as natural as breathing.  That has to come from executives above, the managers in the middle and the employees themselves throughout.  We can all feel a company who has this culture.  It permeates all that they do, we feel it when we do business with them.  We keep going back.

Saying "thank you" doesn't come naturally to people, it is something that has to be coached, it has to be repeated over and over again, and something that has to be sincere and be measured.  Employees and managers alike need to know when they are doing it, how well, and when they are not.

Take the test, spend a day watching interactions between your management and your employees and just count the times when a sincere recognition of performance or "thank you" takes place,  At the end of the day you'll know if you do or don't have a culture of recognition and to what degree.

Gift Cards Are Fun Money

 

The 2020 IRF Academic Review offers some interesting peer review research of articles found within the employee engagement industry regarding employee incentives and recognition programs.  Some of the significant points this year that could help inform you on the design and execution of successful programs include: 

• Gift cards have the potential to capture most – and perhaps all – of the well-known benefits of non-cash rewards. Program awardees categorize gift card awards as “fun money.” Many employers find gift cards easy to give and to administer compared to choosing specific tangible gifts or rewards. 
• The greater sense an employee has that a reward they receive is separate from their salary or wages, the greater improvement they showed in their performance. 
• Researchers found that workers classify non-cash, tangible rewards as distinct from monetary compensation, suggesting that delivering non-cash rewards is more likely than cash to result in improved performance.
• Gift cards continue to be widely used as awards, with median gift card amount remaining at $100 
• For many employees, it has become the soft rewards of work such as culture, relationships, trust, and purpose, education and direct management that matter most to them. 
• 94% of executives at top performing firms are strong supporters of incentive programs and consider them a competitive advantage 
• Companies conducting analysis on how programs change behavior increased to 44%, compared to 25% in 2019. 
• While it’s always difficult to establish direct casualty, most organizations measure results based on correlations. Metrics for tangible benefits include decreased staff turnover, increased productivity, sales, revenue, safety, market share, gains in customer satisfaction, and customer acquisition
• Even more difficult to measure, metrics for intangible benefits that include employee satisfaction, collaboration, and impact on company culture 
• Designers are structuring programs with a wider reach, with the goal of each participant receiving recognition or rewards of some kind, rather than exclusively rewarding just top performing program participants.

Do Employee Merchandise Awards Cost So Much More than Gift Cards?

 

Actually that’s sort of a trick question; the actual cost of a merchandise item doesn’t cost more than the actual cost of a gift card.  If you spend $50 on one item and $50 on a gift card, you’ve spent the same amount.  Your budget hasn’t changed.  What is definitely true is that the value of a gift card can change appreciably depending on when and where you use it and be worth more than what you paid for it.  In fact, most of the gift cards given over the Holiday season are used to purchase merchandise items on sale after the holiday season…often when the value can be double or even triple depending on the item.

From a recognition planner’s viewpoint, gift cards will have the effect of increasing your budget, where merchandise can actually decrease it.  Merchandise award companies need to start to develop their list or catalogs of merchandise awards long before clients will ever be buying or redeeming for them.  They will maintain pricing for a certain period, but after that period they have been known to raise them to cover increased costs, and thus increasing budgets.  As merchandise awards are also burdened with shipping and handling to the individual, their pricing is already higher by between 10-15%.

Take advantage of natural market downward price pressure during several times of the year.  When you use gift cards it will have the effect of increasing your budget by 50% or more, without increasing your cost.

Gift Card Usage as Employee Awards

How and why did gift cards become the dominate employee award in corporations today?  First because they are ubiquitous and people of any age group or ethnicity love them, and two because they provide the best value and choice of any other award.  Following are some of the ways they are used and why incentive planners like them so much.

How Are They Used?

• To recognize performance 70.2%
• As sales incentives 48.6%
• As business gifts 29.3%
• As non-sales recognition awards 30.4%
• As spot rewards 30.4%
• As years of service awards 47.6%
• For consumer promotions 14.9%
• As safety awards 9.9% • As dealer incentives 9.4%
• Wellness programs 6.6%
• To start/maintain business relationship (referrals) 6.1%

 Why Do Incentive Planners Like Them?

• Ease of administration
• Broad audience appeal
• Redemption & flexibility
• Perceived value Cost effectiveness
• Lasting appeal
• Backend ROI Tracking

Click here for a one page flyer on our five delivery methods to use gift cards in your company.