Employee recognition is the bread and butter of modern industry. It’s such an integral part of what makes companies tick that it deserves a lot more credit than it receives. Empoyres, generally speaking, like to be recognized and appreciated for their efforts. Recognition leads to motivation, higher morale, and more business success. Your staff will be more likely to grow, develop, and accomplish goals when they have high morale holding them up. Recognition shows employees that you value their contributions and encourages them to continue working hard toward their goals. It motivates them and strengthens relationships among team members—which is something you want to cultivate at your organization. Here are five ways using employee recognition can help your team thrive well into the future.
Communication
Communication is perhaps the most essential quality to possess at an organization. Good communication leads to understanding, collaboration, and more productivity. Poor communication leads to misunderstanding and myriad other problems. Therefore, creating an environment where communication is open, clear, and transparent is a good goal for any organization. Employee recognition platforms and procedures can make communication much more smooth at any company. Because recognition requires regular interaction and discussion among employees, it opens a channel for communication that might have previously been unavailable. Furthermore, Communication in this manner can be prompt which lends itself well to the recognition process. Ultimately, establishing more rapport and interaction between employees is critical to better productivity and morale—and opening communication is the first step to making those values stick.
Retention
Employee retention can be a significant problem for some organizations. Usually, there’s a reason why people tend to leave organizations at certain points. More often than not, it will be because they don’t get along with their team or they feel like they’re not being appreciated. Sometimes they’re offered a better job elsewhere. On other occasions, it’s due to low morale, lousy pay, or other environmental factors. Unhappy workers won’t just leave your company; they might also leave poor reviews or harbor some discontent toward the company on social media platforms. That’s not going to be good for your reputation. So how do you retain employees and make them happy? Through recognition. By recognizing anniversaries, accomplishments, and other important milestones it’s easier to keep employees engaged and with your company for a long time to come. Keeping employees is only part of the equation. You need to be able to attract and retain talent as well. So using the right tools and strategies will ultimately be beneficial in your employee retention/recruiting initiatives.
Performance
If you want to help your workers become high performers, you need to recognize them when they’re doing exceptionally well and provide quality feedback based on their performance. Using a performance management and recognition platform like the Workhuman cloud can help increase performance significantly (at least 32%!). With an array of available services and platforms, you can help employees improve their performance with ease. Platforms for social recognition, mood tracking, celebration of anniversaries, milestone accomplishment, and check-ins can help the entire team thrive. Having the right tools—and knowing how to use them—will help your team perform optimally by recognizing their contributions to the company through useful software solutions.
Engagement
Another key area where recognition can help your team get ahead is engagement. Engagement is a hot topic these days. Every organization should try to find ways to engage their employees, simply because it can have a meaningful impact on the entire organization. Engaged employees tend to be more positive and content at work, so it’s well worth finding ways to increase engagement at your company. Positivity leads to more commitment to company goals and makes everything run smoother in the long-term. A little bit of recognition can boost engagement significantly, leading to a happier—and stronger—team.
Morale
When you stop to think about it, it seems like employee recognition can be a powerful tool for significant positive change at the office. It is certainly a critical way to improve morale at the office. By making employees feel appreciated for their work, they’re much happier. Happier employees can do better work, be more productive, and tend to stick around longer in a positive environment. Even if it’s just a little bit of praise, it can go a long way. Most research is showing right now that recognition programs are able to boost morale up to 50% or more. So if you’re looking for a way to improve your team morale, an employer recognition program will give you positive results. And at the end of the day, a more positive atmosphere leads to success for everyone.