implementing an employee recognition programme

Dan Kelly,Sales Director, Corporate Rewards

6 STEPS

Why is Employee Recognition Important?

Employee recognition is a key way of demonstrating appreciation to employees for all their hard work, which in turn promotes goodwill and leads to high levels of staff satisfaction and loyalty.

Employee recognition should grow organically and become reciprocal, encouraging staff to recognise, respect and support each other’s hard work too.

So how do you go about integrating an employee recognition programme as a staff incentive for your business?

Find an employee reward and recognition specialist

It’s worth first pointing out that you don’t have to set up an employee recognition programme alone. There are experts available to advise and support your introduction to employee recognition.

Corporate Rewards is an employee recognition and incentives specialist with vast experience in the sector.

Here’s our 6 step-by-step approach, which will help you to integrate an employee recognition programme into your business.

Appoint a project leader

They will be the main point of contact for your recognition provider

They will drive the project on your behalf.

The project leader will need to make strategic decisions, approve the awards and activities made available to employees, and communicate the scheme to your workforce.

Identify a champion to lead the employee recognition project from within your company.

Identify your goalsBefore you start the project you need to have a clear idea of why you’re doing it, what you want to achieve and when. For example, are you looking to improve staff retention or boost morale?

Run an employee engagement survey and find out what your workforce likes, versus what they’d like to improve. Once set, consider benchmarking your employee rewards scheme against these KPIs to ensure it has the desired effect.

Design your programmeHow your staff recognition scheme will look and how you want it to function, will depend on your objectives and what you want to achieve.

You may want to include:

Peer-to-peer – this allows staff to nominate colleagues, empowering them to proactively encourage one another.

Instant recognition – this might be an announcement of thanks or a tangible gift. The important thing is it provides recognition when it’s deserved, rather than having to wait for a designated time (and risk being forgotten).

Long-service award – this is a great way of recognising and rewarding loyalty and supporting staff retention.

e-thank you – this is a quick and easy way to demonstrate appreciation. These can be highly motivational as they are easy to share, widely promoting good work across an organisation.

Select your staff rewardsWith a growing millennial workforce and the dynamic nature of today’s marketplace, rewards should be personal and desirable.

Cash tends to be easily frittered away and lost in an employee’s daily outgoings. Businesses are now shifting away from giving out money and moving towards offering more personalised, tangible, or leisure-oriented awards.

Personal and tangible rewards, like a set of golf clubs for the sports fan in your business, or a trip to London’s West End for the company theatre lover, are more likely to be genuinely enjoyed and appreciated than money.

The pleasure of winning such an award can also create that all-important feel-good factor, as well as bring gratitude and loyalty towards your company.

Set an approvals process for your rewards scheme

Programme settings can include two-way visibility, which allows staff and management to check up on status and tracking.

Different levels of access within the user friendly interface and permissions can be given within the management team, so they can approved claims or nominations before rewards are issued.

An online system can make reporting simple, with instant access to data, performance, budgets and ROI accountability.

Launch your employee recognition programme

Hold a launch event – celebrate and communicate the positive change you’re making for your staff.

Run training sessions - so that everyone is comfortable with the new system and are able to get involved as soon as possible.

Maintain momentum – circulate regular comms like a monthly newsletter to keep your employee recognition programme front of mind, so that your staff don’t forget about it.

Given that a new employee programme will impact on your company culture, and that people are naturally resistant to change, it’s important to introduce everyone to the system in a positive and exciting way.

About Corporate RewardsCorporate Rewards inspire success.

Our innovative platforms and events engage people and improve performance. We help companies grow by rewarding best behaviours from the people most valuable to their business – employees, customers and partners. In creating award winning recognition, incentive and event programmes,

we inspire people to do more.

To find out more about our ideas for employee recognition and get the most from your employees, get in touch.

Visit us: www.corporaterewards.co.uk

Call us: 0370 405 2020

Email us: enquiries@corporaterewards.co.uk

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