The Importance of Recognizing Employees
When done well, recognition of your employees will boost engagement. Engagement has consistently been shown to provide major benefits – from stronger sales, productivity, and profits, to underlying performance improvements like less injuries, fewer avoidable errors, and a huge reduction in absenteeism and employee turnover. Engagement generates momentum to better, and better results. Like a snowball rolling down hill, and picking up more and more speed and mass, engagement as a force becomes bigger and bigger in its impact.
To be fair, recognition is just one of the elements that needs to be done well to unlock this momentum, but it is a critical element! According to a study by Deloitte in 2022, recognition is highly correlated with improving employee engagement, which in turn improves job performance. In fact, employee engagement, productivity, and performance are 14% higher in organizations with recognition programs than those without.
What to Recognize
Leaders generally focus their recognition efforts in three areas;
Motivating effort towards the group Goal (eg: We will celebrate with X when we accomplish Y.)
Reinforce Employee Behavior in Line with Values (eg: Thank you for teaching Jim the correct procedure…)
Celebrating attainment of goals (eg: Last month we achieved a new high Quality Score…)
All of these have merit and will generate accretive results. Often, organizations will implement more than one type of recognition program, tailoring each to one of the items above.
Recognition can be through formal programmatic means, or very informal. Both are powerful. You don’t need to be giving away an automobile or bags of cash – often a simple ‘thank-you’ acknowledgement is just as motivational (and easier to administrate!).
The magnitude or value of the recognition can range and ideally should be matched to the difficulty or impact of the accomplishment. Generally, programs with higher value prizes should be more formal, with defined ground-rules to establish clear expectations, and should be used to motivate a team towards a goal. Higher value programs are also commonly administered and awarded by management.
There is clear value in peer-to-peer recognition programs as well. This type of positive reinforcement is best for reinforcing behavior as it increases the opportunity to ‘catch someone doing something right.’ Supervisors and Managers are often stuck in their offices doing administrative tasks, so increasing the number of eyeballs looking for positive behavior allows more catches, but it also promotes a feeling of ‘we trust you to know what is worthy of recognition.’ This type of trust will reinforce employee engagement.
How to Recognize
It is relatively easy to do recognition correctly! To be effective, recognition should be;
Sincere, meaningful, and specific – just saying ‘good job’ is nearly meaningless unless it is accompanied by specifics of what was done well. Specifics allow the awardee to feel the sincerity of the awarder. It also clearly identifies what the recipient should continue to do in the future.
Timely to the act or goal being celebrated – delay will result in less impact in reinforcing behavior, and it may also cause confusion or misinformation to flourish during the time-gap. This is an area where informal, or very simple programs, will have an advantage. The goal of positively reinforcing the ‘right behaviors,’ is best met when you are able to practically catch the employee in the act of displaying role model behavior.
Frequent. A steady influx of positive reinforcement for the team will counteract the ever-present sources of negativity. It cost nothing to say a sincere and specific ‘thank you,’ so don’t be stingy – look for things to acknowledge!
Unexpected. A ‘pleasant surprise’ provides a mood boost and also reinforces the feeling that ‘people noticed!’ If you are running a multishift operation, when was the last time you showed up on the night-shift to give some positive reinforcement to specific actions, results, or behaviors? Night shifters don’t expect you to be there all the time, but what a pleasant surprise to have the boss show up and acknowledge something that they thought no-one noticed or cared about (better yet, stick around and talk to them about their ideas to improve the operation!).
Some Watch-Outs
The most important rule in recognition is to understand that different people prefer different types of recognition. You want to make sure that being recognized is a positive experience. Some people like recognition to be called out publicly in front of their peers whereas others prefer a much more low-key approach. Being considerate of people’s preferences will ensure the recognition is received in the spirit it is offered and will support higher engagement. Clearly there is more to be gained as an organization if the recognition can be public, as that avoids the rumor mill issue and also clearly demonstrates what others can do to be recognized. If the prize has significant perceived value, then the recognition should be publicly announced and as transparent as possible.
Another key is to ensure that we recognize things that are in-line with what we are trying to accomplish. Recognizable behaviors should be in-line with the organizations vision, values, and priorities. Beware of recognizing the uninvolved, or failing to recognize everyone who was involved.
Where most recognition initiatives fail is when managers and supervisors lose focus when some crisis du jour distracts them, and the recognitions become less and less frequent. Any good program needs to have a feature baked into the design to give yourself a reminder to ensure consistency. Every leader needs to understand that ‘recognition is important and they must do it!’
Conclusion
Recognition is a key element to boosting employee engagement and employee engagement is frequently shown to be directly correlated to positive results of all sorts. To be effective, recognition need not be overly complicated, expensive, or formal – but it does need to be sincere, specific, timely, and frequent. Designing a recognition program is a great opportunity to implement some creative ideas!
Contact me if you want an experienced executive to assist you in designing and implementing your next recognition program.
