According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, creating a ‘recognition-rich culture’ is the simplest way to improve morale, which in turn increases employee retention and productivity. Now that’s something worth investing in. Employee recognition should not just be based on seniority or years-served. It should happen much more frequently. It should also reward performance and actions that support company goals and initiatives.
Continue reading to find out how you can improve employee recognition programs in your business.
Easy & frequent employee recognition with 360º feedback
Many of our customers were asking how they could easily integrate a dedicated employee recognition program into their intranets. We absolutely understood the need to make employee recognition as simple as sending a ‘thank you’ email for a job well done.
At IC, we make it easy for everyone to give social kudos from peer-to-peer, manager-to-peer, peer-to-manager, and even customer-to-employee.
Peer-to-peer recognition
The most common way we do this is at our morning huddle, a quick meeting we start every day with where we ask 3 questions about work and personal life. One question that’s often asked is to give kudos to a colleague who’s either helped you with a task or just done an outstanding job recently. We keep these displayed on the wall, and at the end of each month, everyone gets their kudos.
Manager-to-peer recognition
Each month, employees are publicly recognized at our town hall, where their manager will say a few nice words about their hard work and contributions. They’ll also receive a small gift as a reward.
Customer to Employee Recognition
Our customer Orrstown Bank has an ‘I Spy a Wow’ program on their intranet. It is completely employee driven and encourages employees to submit entries to the program. Whenever employees do something exceptional to “wow” a customer (internal or external) they can click on the “I Spy a Wow” online form and fill it out, explaining who did what to deliver that ‘wow’ level of service. Once completed, their Training staff is alerted to new entries and can review and manage the responses via the intranet.
“Each week, the entire company starts off Monday morning with Warm-Up meetings where we focus on one of the facets of our service commitments to our customers,” says Kurry Swigert, Product & Research Officer of Orrstown Bank. “A part of this meeting is dedicated to an employee who has been selected from all of the WOW submissions – and the entire bank gets to recognize that individual.”
By empowering their employees and letting them voice and positive impressions of co-workers, Orrstown has managed to create a fun and easy way to share goodwill.
By utilizing Intranet Connections to promote a WOW level of service, both employee and customer benefit and are a part of the Bank’s legacy to exceptional customer service.
We use a similar method, except our online form is called a ‘Moment’s of Magic’. We share it with the whole team on our Company News page.
Kudos on Your Intranet
The Employee Recognition Application allows peers and supervisors to recognize fellow employees for outstanding work in the select areas of recognition by simply completing an employee recognition nomination form.
Kudos in Action
Long-time IC Thrive customer, First National Bank, uses their ‘Gr8ness Employee Recognition Program lead by Vice President and Marketing Director, Laura Pomerene:
“Since we have rolled out our ‘Gr8ness Employee Recognition Program’ using Intranet Connections’ application builder, employees have been actively interacting with the program yielding the average use of nearly one recognition nomination a day in the program’s infancy. Our cross-functional employee committee, who created the program, wanted to make the program as simple and accessible as possible so that everyone could easily nominate and receive nominations. The Employee Recognition Application has done just that by allowing nominators to simply fill out a form with the required information. As soon as the form is complete, the employee name along with a nomination summary appears on the homepage through an application feed widget and the complete recognition nomination appears on the ‘Gr8ness’ program page. In addition, the employee’s supervisor is sent an email after the form is submitted, so if the supervisor isn’t the one nominating, they are instantly aware of their employee’s accomplishment.”
Employee Recognition Rewards
For First National Bank, the Employee Recognition Application is just the beginning of what they have planned.
“We’ve considered taking all the ‘Gr8ness Employee Recognition’ nominations and providing them to our executives so that each employee may be individually recognized by top management for their contributions to the bank. We’ve also discussed polling our employees to find out what type of recognition and rewards incentives motivates them, in essence, their motivational currency.”
Rolling Out The Recognition
Employee recognition is a powerful motivator. Simply recognizing an employee for a job well-done has the power to better engage and retain employees. There are a number of ways you, as an executive, leader or colleague, can recognize employees. Follow the lead of First National Bank. Start the roll out your recognition program with a simple peer-to-peer nomination platform. What other applications or platforms are you using for employee recognition? How would you like to be recognized by your company as an employee? I’d love to hear about it. Please comment below.
Moreover, to get even better ideas for employee recognition through your intranet, book a FREE DEMO with us now! Not quite ready for a demo? You may also take our complimentary internal communications assessment to see how your efforts stack up!
