Powerful Ways to Use Employee Recognition Platform

Employee recognition is essential for the workplace because it creates a friendly environment and a sense of belongingness and supportiveness within the team.

Recognition is all about offering positive feedback based on an employee’s achievements or performance. This can be done formally by giving out awards, and bonuses or offering a promotion. However, it can also be done more informally such as by giving out a verbal thank you.

Both methods can be meaningful, especially if they’re done in a genuine way. After all,  everyone wants their good work to be applauded and appreciated.

Research from Glassdoor shows that 57% of all workers say perks and benefits are among the top things they consider when accepting a job, which demonstrates the importance of a recognition platform.  Whilst almost 80% of employees say they would prefer new benefits instead of a pay raise.

What is an employee recognition platform?

An employee recognition platform can help you consolidate and optimise your existing reward schemes, or help you launch one if you don’t yet have one. The platform will assist you in celebrating your employee’s achievements.

A simple thank you can go a long way, especially when delivered at the right time. Recognition doesn’t necessarily mean praising, it can simply mean showing respect to one’s employees.

When employees are shown respect, they will give it back in return. Your business should treat employees as valuable assets who are more than capable of making intelligent decisions.

To help your employees truly feel valued, you are going to need an ongoing strategy for employee recognition and engagement. That’s where a recognition platform can come in.

How can an employee recognition platform be used?

First things first, you need to launch your employee recognition platform, ensuring that the platform aligns with your company’s goals.

Offer your employees clear guidelines on how to use the program, including recognition training for managers.

Platforms can be used to have a significant emphasis on employee well-being. If an employee is having problems, it can sometimes be difficult to express. Recognition software will make it as easier to gauge the mood of your employees.

Recognition & interaction between employees

Your recognition platform will allow for messaging and peer-to-peer recognition, offering a toolkit of communications options that will help drive engagement. Your employees will be able to motivate each other, whilst being able to see what they are doing to increase collaboration between different departments.

Offering perks and rewards is the greatest way to instil recognition amongst employees.

Employers can reward employees with gift cards, vouchers or event tickets.  To add to that, employees can be rewarded with a  benefits platform where they can get access to exclusive discounts.

Set goals & track progress

Your recognition platform will allow you to set goals for employees where you can then monitor their progress through the tracking functionality. Furthermore, you can also review the progress of your entire workforce and keep this on record.

By tracking employee engagement and progress over time, you can ensure that your workplace culture is on track.

With this in mind, by measuring employee engagement you can easily identify which programs are working, and where you have the chance to improve your recognition efforts.

Unique rewards

Whilst gift cards and vouchers are great, sometimes it’s better to think outside the box.

Multi-dimensional rewards are especially effective because they demonstrate that you care about your employees’ motivations.  Charity donations, for example, are a unique way of showing that you value your employees’ contributions. Offering rewards like this will make team members feel like they are part of a company that cares and therefore are more likely to stick around for the longer term.

What’s more, employees are more likely to be motivated by rewards which are tailored to their individual interests.

Organisations need to consider a range of different rewards when developing their employee recognition program.

Easily collect feedback

The most effective way to make sure that your employee recognition program is working is to ask your employees their opinion.

An employee recognition platform can help you collect feedback as well as quickly obtain valuable insights from employees. This feedback can be anonymous, allowing you to source honest and more accurate feedback from employees.

The feedback is displayed to you in a user-friendly way making it easy to identify patterns so that you can appropriately remove any common issues for your employees whilst gathering potential suggestions for improvement.

Your employee recognition program should help develop employee morale and motivation. Encourage employees to offer feedback,  and act on any feedback given to ensure that the program is an effective tool in promoting a positive work environment.

Final Thoughts

In order to powerfully use your employee recognition platform, you need to put yourself in your employee’s shoes. How are they going to best benefit from the platform? 

Setting goals and offering rewards is excellent, but make sure you check in with your workforce that the strategies are working, otherwise they will be less likely to engage effectively.