The ultimate A-Z guide of employee recognition.

Social recognition is already being used by many of the world’s top companies to engage their employees and align them with the company values. It is a powerful tool that amplifies everyday actions and exceptional achievement, building a thank-you economy across an organisation. Social recognition increases frequency and reach of moments that are celebrated, elevating the importance of appreciation across the business.

While traditional recognition holds a place within a well-designed recognition strategy, companies can benefit from harnessing social power to build a culture of recognition. Social recognition focusses on giving not getting, with all employees able to comment and like recognitions as they happen. This endorsement of behaviours and achievements builds strong bonds between employees, managers and leaders, ultimately leading to more focused and successful business outcomes.

If you are considering a social recognition program, or just looking for more information, here is the ultimate A-Z guide of all things social recognition.

A is for appreciation.

Social recognition is all about showing your appreciation for the little everyday actions that drive the business as well as the big achievements. Authentic appreciation for effort rates highly on many employee surveys and is often cited as something companies could do more of to improve the employee experience. Showing appreciation on the daily will help to build a culture of gratitude and strengthen bonds within your team. Find out how.
 

B is for behaviours.

Social employee recognition allows all employees to see the behaviours that are celebrated within teams and by leaders. This sets the benchmark, highlighting what is expected. We are hardwired to respond positively to recognition, subconsciously doing more of what we did in the hope we will be recognised again. Recognising moments where employees display desired behaviours will lead to those behaviours being repeated.

C is for communication.

Successful employee recognition programs have a couple of things in common and one of them is a well thought out communication plan. As with the roll-out of any new initiative, there will be some of your employees who are early adopters and some who need a little more encouragement. A communication plan that goes from build-up to beyond will help to ensure your program is a success and your employees are on board.

D is for data.

The big ‘d’ is not as scary as you may think and a good recognition platform will make it simple. While there is some work that needs to be done up front, with automated integration of data, updating employee profiles in your recognition program is so simple that you don’t even have to think about it. And if you don’t automate your data from your HRM, once you have the format sorted, employee updates should be a simple load and go process with a simple and intuitive admin interface. If not, look for a system that offers this.
 

E is for engagement.

Employee recognition is all about building employee engagement. Companies who rank well when it comes to engagement stats also deliver on other success indicators like profit, return to shareholder, NPS, employee loyalty, innovation, productivity and safety. Social recognition is a fast track to engagement, building stronger relationships between employees and managers, increasing trust of leadership, creating transparency and building a culture of positivity.

F is for flexibility.

Employee recognition is not a static thing, and neither if your business. Flexibility and scalability of your program are important so that social recognition can grow with your employees and your business. The best programs have in-built flexibility and put you in control to make changes to the features as and when it suits you – and without hitting you with a fee for doing so.

G is for genuine.

Genuine moments of appreciation are the most impactful. In fact, giving out thanks without heart or meaning is just a waste of your time and the person you are thanking. Employees see through messages that are not delivered with authenticity so build a culture around genuine moments of recognition that everyone can celebrate.

H is for happiness.

While there are lots of elements that lead to employee happiness (more on that here), and many out of your control, a collaborative and inclusive culture where the everyday and the exceptional are celebrated will help with workplace happiness. Employees that are aligned around a common goal, feel like they are delivering value and being valued are more likely to have that happiness vibe.

I is for integrations.

A key step to recognition success it to integrate your program with the tools your team already use on a daily basis. Instead of asking employees to remember yet another user name and password, use a Single Sign On from your intranet to make it easy to access. A good recognition program should also have options to integrate with your collaboration channels like Slack, Yammer and Chatter, creating a seamless recognition experience and increasing the socialisation of moments of gratitude.

J is for budget justification.

Like every program you run, you need to be able to justify the spend on your recognition program. Built in reports on every metric across the program are key to understanding the impact of your social recognition program – but are useless if they are just data. A good recognition platform should include dashboard style reports that are consumable and don’t require a degree in mathematics to understand.

K is for knowledge.

Knowledge really is power and empowering your people will ensure your program hits that mark. In-built communication tools can help to build knowledge about the program and should be accessible to specific audiences. You will likely want managers to have a different understanding to employees, leaders different again. Make sure information is available to the right audience and build knowledge and insight with your team.

L is for line managers.

Line managers are key to program success. They have the greatest impact on their team so engaging them with the recognition program from day one is vital. Demonstrate to them how they can use the program to achieve their own goals, building stronger bonds with their team and letting their group know just what they expect.

M is for milestone awards.

There are many milestones in an employees life and we think the big and small ones should be celebrated. From the big service anniversaries to the smaller achievements, automated recognition means you will never miss recognising one of these moments. Whether you want to give rewards, or perk that you have created just for that moment, or just send a message that celebrates the achievement, building milestones into your recognition program will encourage everyone to celebrate these moments. And the best thing is, once you have set them up, all that is left to do is add your appreciation on the social wall on the milestone day.

N is for nomination.

Companies use rewards differently and it is not always about giving more and more. If you don’t want to have reward budgets sit at the lower levels of the organisation, set your program up so team leaders or supervisors can nominate actions and achievements that they think are deserving of rewards. Senior managers can then make the decision on how rewards are issued, giving either a reward for the recognition or just recognising again to endorse the achievement.

O is for on-boarding.

Immersing your new hires in the company culture from day one is important. On-boarding them through your recognition program is the ideal way to let them know that the company is all about showing gratitude where it is due and celebrating achievements. Choose to on-board with simple messages of encouragement, add on-boarding perks or choose to add rewards at any of the mini-milestones within the first year.

P is for perks.

We have already been over budgets at the top end of the list and whether you have lots or a little, it is not always about handing out material rewards. Perks allow you to give more meaningful and personalised ‘perks’ that can be low or no-cost to the business. Perks that give employees a few hours off or a long lunch break, fresh smoothies for a week or the CEO parking spot are a great way to create some fun and engagement without having to face-off with the CFO.

Q is for quality rewards.

While not all programs have to have rewards, if you do have them, make sure your employees can redeem rewards that are actually rewarding. The best rewards are hedonic, luxurious and sociable. That is, they should be pleasurable, something the employee may not usually buy for themselves and something that they can talk about with friends. This is where cash as a reward fails as while it feels good at first to receive an envelope of fifties, the reward soon gets spent on everyday expenses. And it’s not really socially acceptable to brag about the wad of cash you were rewarded with but talking about the new BBQ in the backyard is a different story.

R is for reporting.

Simple to use and easy to interpret reporting is vital to managing your program. Reports should be easy to access, real-time and insightful – and not just at an admin level. It is important that all employees can see relevant stats so they know how they are tracking personally when it comes to recognition. Public profiles that show recognition activity, team performance reports, leadership reports and straight-up data are all important features of program reporting that will help you to not only analyse the program on an ongoing basis, but ensure you retain company-wide support for the initiative.

S is for security.

Data security is fundamental so you can rest assured your company data is protected employee identities are safe and secure. Make sure your recognition software meets the strictest security standards and is continually putting the system to the test as the software security landscape changes. Understand the sovereignty around your data, who accesses it and processes to keep it secure.
 

T is for timeliness.

For recognition to be powerful it needs to be authentic and ‘in the moment’. Recognition that is given three weeks after the action or achievement occurred loses impact as the employee will have moved on from the moment, potentially thinking that whatever they did was not worthy of recognition. Encourage your team to be timely for best impact.

U is for updates.

One of the many benefits of working with a SaaS provider is that you don’t have to worry about any of the updates to the software platform. Whether it is the latest security patches or updates to features, or even the product development plan – the software provider does all of the updates for you. You just sit back and keep handing out the recognitions.
 

V is for values.

When recognition moments are tagged with company values, your employees will align around these shared company goals. Managers can share which values are important to them through these moments and messages. Leaders can set the expectation on behaviours that align with the values. When the vision is shared and everyone is working towards it, success will follow.

W is for the social wall.

The recognition wall is where it all happens in a social recognition program, with every moment being posted to the wall and tagged with one of the company values. Everyone can see recognition as it happens and get involved by liking and commenting. Just in case there are some sensitivities within the business, look for a wall that gives you control over posts.

X is for….

Okay, this is a hard one and x-ray just doesn’t quite fit so we are going with executive participation. Programs that are successful typically have a high level of executive interaction with the recognition program. This means execs log in frequently and not only set the benchmark for behaviour by what they recognise, but scroll through the moments on the wall commenting and liking those that have meaning for them. Today’s employees want leaders to be human and showing authentic appreciation of great moments helps to show employees who the leaders are.

Y is for your employees.

While the program needs to work for the company, it should also meet your employee expectations. If you are just starting out with recognition, employee expectations will be different than if you have been giving out recognition for a while. You know your audience better than anyone so design it so that your team embrace recognition and make it their own. This may include starting simple and adding recognition features as the program gains momentum, customising rewards that suit your people or using personalised perks that you know your team will love. Whatever it is, make sure your employees connect with the program from day one.

Z is for zero rewards budget.

May feel like an obstacle but it’s not if you work with the right recognition provider. A recognition-first approach will allow you to deliver employee recognition even if you have no rewards budget. Many companies have minimum spends when it comes to rewards however progressive recognition providers know it is not all about what employees earn in the program, but the moments that are celebrated.

Hopefully this A-Z list has helped to identify the features and benefits of social employee recognition and give you some ideas on how you can use social recognition to engage your employees.