For businesses that continue to operate amid the crisis, employees are pulling doubles, staying late, and covering shifts – all while trying to navigate uncertainty in their own lives, homes, and families.
So, how do you engage and motivate an overworked team?
Answer: Employee appreciation and social recognition system.
If your company’s reward and recognition program does not boost employee performance as much as you would like, its time you reconsider. In fact, change the approach! Research has shown over and over that the power of gratitude impacts engagement and connection in a profoundly positive way. Done right, reward and recognition programs deliver more than soft benefits – they drive company performance! Did you know that social recognition can improve employee productivity by over 60%?
Let’s look at why social recognition matters. And how investing in a recognition program will help you create a productive, engaged, and happy workplace in this remote work era.
Why social recognition matters?
Recognition is the cornerstone of engagement in any workplace. And social recognition system is an employee reward and recognition methodology. There are specific tools that aim to provide a common platform where workers of every level can come together, share their experiences, and assign rewards to or recognize their peers for their accomplishments.
This can be in the form of financial compensation, workplace benefits, and even a digital badge or a shout-out.
Social recognition offers valuable advantages to organizations in terms of boosting employee morale and spiking the overall productivity.
Let’s look at the benefits it offers:
- Recognition lessens stress. Workers who’ve been thanked in the past 30 days for their efforts experience less stress when compared to their non-recognized peers
- It promotes greater feelings of inclusion and strengthens the sense of belongingness
- It strengthens employer-employee relationships by creating a culture of gratitude. Thereby, boosting retention
- It lifts morale and connectivity. And spikes employee engagement
- Recognition infuses agility into your total rewards strategy. One of the best ways to build the trust and connection needed for agile work is by giving all team members the ability to recognize and reward good work when they see it
- It optimizes reward costs as per available budgets. Some platforms even offer free rewards
- The social recognition system mimics an employee’s personal social network in a professional setting. Thereby, making them feel more involved, engaged, and genuinely curious about their peers’ activities
- It also helps identify employees who may not be recognized often enough. That is, the social recognition system encourages employees to recognize their peers when they achieve a corporate objective. And they make rewards more meaningful by giving recognized employees a choice in the awards they receive
- Last but not least, recognition itself creates unique data that you can use to gain valuable insights into the human connections and employee engagement. In other words, you can draw insights about how work is getting done, and what themes, values, and messages are bringing your workforce together.
Find out why social recognition matters and how it can boost productivity
The benefits of social recognition are undeniable. Research suggests that it can improve individual performance by up to two times, while positively impacting both manager and employee engagement.
Also, social recognition can be more cost-optimized than traditional recognition models. Instead of relying on just compensation, you turn the sense of community and camaraderie in the workplace into a ‘reward.’ This lets employees feel more engaged, interested, and likely to stay on in their present role, reducing retention rates.
Also read: 2020’s Most Popular Remote Work Tools