Research shows that recognition
of employee good acts may be more important than ever in retaining top
employees and keeping pace with competitors. Today’s employee-recognition
vendor platforms can, at a minimum:

• Facilitate rapid peer-to-peer feedback.
• Create social media “walls” that amplify recognition by allowing more workers to celebrate their colleagues’ accomplishments publicly.
• Provide analytics that help leaders better understand the impact of recognition on employee engagement and business results.
• Allow employees to recognize peers quickly and easily within the flow of daily work.
• Offer a variety of custom rewards.
• Help organizations model good behavior for the entire workforce with social recognition features.

Recognition Key to Retention and Results

About half (47 percent) of HR
professionals cited employee retention/turnover as their top workforce
management challenge this year. Recognition is one way to ensure employees feel
valued and become less likely to look for greener pastures. It’s also an
integral component of successful companies. High-performing companies were more
likely than low-performing companies to have a rewards philosophy that included
frequent recognition as a key part of their business strategies.

Evaluating Platform Vendors

According to Brian Kropp, group
vice president of the HR practice at research and advisory firm Gartner, there
are three top recognition vendors.

The first recognition factor is
that the best providers understand that peer-to-peer recognition matters more
to employees than manager recognition. “Platforms should have a simple way
to enable peer-to-peer recognition,” Kropp said.

The second differentiating factor
is speed. “Every day that passes between when a positive employee behavior
happens and when the recognition is given, the value of that recognition
declines,” Kropp said.

The third differentiating factor
is social recognition, or the ability for the wider workforce to see who is
being recognized for what specific actions. Kropp said the best programs model
the recognized behavior for the rest of the company.

“Our research has found that
the biggest value recognition can have is the standard that organizations set
for what great work looks like that the whole company can see,” he said.

Importance of Modern Technology

Intuitive interfaces and ease-of-use are necessary attributes.

“Top providers have technologies that make it easy for
peers to quickly recognize others and also integrate with other communication
platforms to make the recognition process seamless and to broaden its
impact,” said Gary Beckstrand, vice president of the O.C Tanner Institute.

Automated tools also can help busy managers remember to
recognize people amid the rush of daily tasks. Some platforms have features
like automated e-mail with report cards showing how many times a manager has
recognized others in certain periods.

Experts say recognition systems should allow employees to choose
from a wide variety of rewards. But we are starting to see more unique
recognition options around choice of experiences, learning opportunities,
making charitable donations on employees’ behalf and organization-specific
rewards that tap into people’s emotions.

Platform Analytics Evolve

More platforms now feature analytics tools that can help HR
leaders identify the impact of recognition activities. They can track the cost
of recognition, distribution of awards—whether one person or group is being
recognized disproportionately over others—and correlate recognition data with
other business metrics.

Analytics should help leaders understand who is being recognized
from which parts of the company for what specific actions, as well as how
recognition investments impact key performance indicators, Beckstrand said.
“That allows you to measure the impact of recognition programs over time
with an ability to correlate recognition data with things like employee
retention or customer satisfaction.”

Employee recognition leads to increased productivity, which
leads to increased profitability. Converge can help you evaluate and implement
these programs. To learn more about Converge please visit our website at www.convergehrsolutions.com or
contact us by phone at 610-296-8550 or by email at info@convergehrsolutions.com. 

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