Employee Recognition: How Can It Help Counteract The Effects Of A Crisis?
A simple "thank you" can make employees feel more appreciated and help boost retention rates. If your employees aren't recognized for their work, they'll take it somewhere else.
In this article, we'll explore what The Great Resignation is and ways you can mitigate its impact on your workforce through meaningful employee rewards & recognition programs.
The idea of employee engagement—which includes work engagement, cognitive engagement, and emotional engagement—came about as a result of organizations' desire to keep workers content and engaged at work in order to prevent attrition.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is not a recent fad. Rather, Dr. William Khan, known as the father of employee engagement, developed the idea in the 1990s.
According to Dr. Khan Williams, Employee Engagement is defined as:
The harnessing of organization membersʹ selves to their work roles. When engaged, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.
The phrase "Employee Engagement" frequently appears in today's highly interconnected and modernized global economy. Employee Engagement is currently transforming dramatically toward customized employee needs with a multigenerational workforce approach.
What Is Employee Recognition?
Employee recognition encompasses all of the ways an organization expresses gratitude for its employees' contributions. It can take many forms and may or may not be monetary in nature. Employee appreciation is associated with increased job satisfaction.
Workplace recognition motivates and gives employees a sense of accomplishment, making them feel valued for their efforts. Recognition is intended to increase not only individual employee engagement but also productivity and commitment to the organization, resulting in higher retention.
Employee Recognition During Times of Crisis
Employee recognition has undergone significant change in the digital age. The time calls for cultures with a high level of recognition.
The most crucial step in creating a rewards and recognition program is choosing the values the organization wants to honor, after which convenient ways for employees to uphold these values must be developed.
Thankfully, these issues are being addressed with modern tools and business models.
1. Emphasize Workplace Flexibility
Workplace flexibility is a viable alternative to traditional workplace models that allow employees to work when, where, and how they want.
Maintaining this new level of flexibility is likely to improve recruitment and retention efforts, as well as overall employee engagement.
The majority of organizations began to use the Hybrid Work model as part of one of their recruitment strategies and to control the Great Resignation.
2. Reimagine the employee experience
Employee experiences assist in aligning employees with the company's purpose, brand, and culture, resulting in increased employee commitment and improved company performance.
However, we must reconsider the employee journey because there are now many new factors influencing employee morale.
The majority of organizations would have likely shared their vision for an employee experience that is focused on wellbeing, work/life balance, collaborative office culture, and luxury work perks such as gym memberships or learning and development stipends.
3. Bring compassion to every conversation
Today's high-performing leaders are empathetic, concerned with people and society, and truly listen.
The pandemic was an excellent opportunity for leaders to foster more meaningful relationships with their people.
These relationships contribute to the speed at which your business recovers because they help create more resilient workforces, increase employee engagement, and prevent burnout.
4. Leverage employee strengths to drive engagement:
It's critical to comprehend the areas where an employee's role influences actions that have a direct bearing on performance.
People become motivated and engaged when their personal values and work responsibilities are in line. Encourage employees to identify their professional strengths through analysis so they can use them to advance their careers and be successful in their current positions.
Evolving Trends in Employee Recognition
1. Prioritize Employee Experience as Customer experience
Customer and employee experiences are directly related to the revenue and growth of the organization.
When staff members are given respect, take pride in their work, and find great meaning and satisfaction in how their roles contribute to a larger purpose, they go above and beyond the call of duty to convey that feeling to customers.
Empathy in the workplace is an important component of Emotional Intelligence and organizational leadership effectiveness. It will improve human interaction in general, resulting in positive workplace outcomes.
2. Catch up on the context of appreciation
Appreciation is not one-size-fits-all. Individuals' perspectives on recognition differ depending on the Multigenerational Workforce discovered.
Consider context when creating moments that matter. Simply highlight an employee's accomplishment via the company's newsfeed or a social network.
Appreciation isn't always about giving or receiving gifts. It is about taking into account the employee's past experiences and interests. Some seek public acclaim, while others seek private acclaim; some seek financial advancement, while others seek career advancement.
3. Encourage peer recognition and appreciation:
Increased levels of peer recognition lead to higher levels of employee satisfaction. To foster a positive atmosphere, strive for teamwork and peer support while motivating individual teammates.
Employees who get along better with one another are more likely to be willing to participate in team projects and finish tasks on time. Increase coworker trust by empowering them to recognize and appreciate one another's efforts.
To encourage spot recognition for excellent performance, create an "Anytime" employee recognition program that can be either virtual or onsite-based.
4. Tailor made Employee Recognition Practices
Employee recognition has long been a cornerstone of effective management. Creating a customized recognition program is a good start, but maintaining the freshness of appreciation is a real challenge.
So, constant re-evaluation of best practices and methods of rewarding employees can help to create a never-boring reward policy. Leaders need to reconsider how they add value to employee recognition programs.
Employees are the most crucial parts of any organization, so managers must treat them with more compassion to avoid confusing their interest in their work and frantically trying to recruit top talent.
In 2022, there may be greater use of informal or fun awards, with the goal of creating a positive, informal, and fun-filled work environment. Most employee engagement activities will include rewards and recognition.
Great Recognition Vs. Great Resignation
According to a survey conducted by Quess in 2021, the "Great Resignation" is an endless talent surge that has disrupted the demand-supply equilibrium and forced businesses to concentrate simultaneously on talent acquisition and retention.
The Great Resignation amply demonstrates the employee's dissatisfaction and desire for a modification of the corporate culture and policies. Therefore, in order to transition into the Great Reimagination phase, the entire workspace and its operations must be re-evaluated.
Employees need to have their accomplishments properly acknowledged, have positive relationships with their managers, and, most importantly, be continuously engaged.
According to the Michael Page report, even if they are offered a higher salary, more than 86% of employees are prepared to quit this year. This unequivocally demonstrates that employees expect a lot more from their employers than just higher pay.
According to international surveys, low pay, a lack of flexibility, and burnout are the main factors contributing to elevated attrition rates.
Here are some actions that any company can take to boost employee retention rates.
1. Employee recognition As A Company Core Value
To establish a helpful and welcoming culture and increase recognition at all organizational levels. Senior leaders should serve as role models for valuing employees as part of the company culture. It should be a top-down approach in the organization.
Every organization should follow the steps outlined below when fostering employee recognition as part of the company culture:
When employees demonstrate alignment with organizational goals, they demonstrate the behavior that the company wishes to encourage.
When the desired behavior is shown, it must be noticed and recognized on time.
Once recognized, it must be rewarded in order to provide a positive sense of accomplishment and encouragement to the employee. Rewards always don't need to be monetary or be a part of holistic employee recognition.
2. Effective Use of Stay Interviews
A stay interview is a valuable tool for understanding why your employees choose to stay with your company rather than change jobs or industries.
It's a method of gathering informal feedback from your employees about their roles and skills, as well as whether they align with their long-term goals.
Stay interviews can occur any time during an employee's tenure with your company, allowing you to be proactive in keeping your employees motivated. Managers conduct them informally and can help identify areas where your retention strategy needs strengthening.
Gathering employee feedback regularly through stay interviews can assist HR teams in collaborating with managers to identify underlying employee issues.
Stay interviews can provide HR with an up-to-date view on issues within the business and allow them to address them proactively, from workload to fulfillment, job satisfaction, mental health and wellbeing, and larger issues like culture.
3. Investing in Employee Career Growth & Upskilling
Investing in employees' professional development will help them advance their careers and develop as leaders.
Employees would prefer to work in organizations that continuously upskill their employees and focus on their growth and development.
This is a mutually beneficial relationship because effective learning and development programs benefit both the organization and the employee.
According to a Teamstage survey:
- 68% of workers consider training and development opportunities an organization's most important policy.
- 94% of employees would stick with an organization longer if it invested in their training.
- Employee retention rate grows by 30–50% at companies with a potent training program.
According to McKinsey's research on attrition, it's said that employees crave investment in the human aspects of work. Employees are exhausted and grieving and want a renewed sense of purpose in their work.
Adopt a few of the below new age policies to turn Great Resignation into Great Attraction:
- Employee-friendly policy designed to increase employee satisfaction
- Customized employee benefit plans
- Holistic wellness practices for employees (Physical, Financial, Mental wellness)
- Investing in Employee career growth and upskilling
Interesting Employee Recognition Statistics
- According to a new report,
- Employee Recognition program can reduce the turnover rate by upto 31%
- 91% of HRs agreed that rewards and recognition positively affect employee retention
- 69% of employees say they'd work harder if they were better appreciated
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Harvard Business Review reports that when a program was implemented in which workers' strengths were recognized by managers, it resulted in happier workers and a 14% to 29% increase in profits.
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According to Gartner, peer feedback can enhance performance by as much as 14%.
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A Gallup study shows that highly engaged workplaces saw 41% lower absenteeism.
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According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 79% of employees work harder due to recognition in the workplace.
Conclusion
Most recent research findings indicate that increasing employee job satisfaction, establishing work-life balance, developing a holistic wellness program, empowering employees, and defining an employee reward and recognition program will help to mitigate Great Resignation in an organization.
A strong organizational culture is based on the values of building trust, appreciation, connection, and flexibility. However, they also play a crucial role in keeping talented employees. Organizations must redesign their employee recognition programs to include incentives that actually improve employee performance.
This article is written by Pandi Alagu Raja Mahamuni, AGM-HR at SEGULA Technologies. He is a competent professional with extensive experience in diverse areas of Human Resource Management such as Strategic Planning, Business Partnering, HR Policies and Procedures, Employee Relations, Employee Engagement, Corporate Communication, Lateral Hiring, Performance Management, Rewards and Recognition, Training and Development. He has an impressive record of streamlining HR operations, processes and procedures, developing and applying overall human resources expertise for the accomplishment of strategic goals. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com
