How to plan an employee rewards program that lasts

There’s nothing quite like that sense of joy from being recognized for a job well done. Most of us get that first recognition in kindergarten with a gold star on an art project or an A on a spelling test. We take that love of being recognized with us through school and into our careers. 

Recognition in the workplace has always been an essential part of a company’s culture, but recognizing employees for their outstanding work can be more difficult with the move to remote work.

An employee recognition program is one way to recognize your employees and inspire them to recognize each other. In this post, we’re going to break down what it takes to start an employee recognition program that lasts, including:

• What questions to ask before you begin your employee recognition program?

• What are the different types of recognition?

• How to design your employee recognition program.

• What you can do to make your employee recognition program last.

What questions to ask before you begin your employee recognition program?

Being intentional with your employee recognition program is crucial to making it successful. These are the questions you and your team need to answer before you start to look at tools and platforms.

Who owns your employee recognition program?

Before you book a meeting room or set up a Zoom, your first step is to define the team who will own your program from creation through day-to-day operation. Employee recognition programs without ownership and accountability are the ones that end up as something your employees kind of remember happening — or worse — remember as another culture program that was forgotten about.

Your employee recognition program should have a dedicated team that will help define your objectives, choose the tool or platform that will be used, and guide the program through its lifetime.

Why are you launching your program?

Recognition programs can help you with a variety of HR and culture objectives. These programs are used to improve retention, amplify employer branding and recruiting efforts, and help form stronger bonds between employees regardless of whether they’re working in the office, from home, or remotely.

Defining your objectives for the program sets it up for success since now you’ll be able to determine what your success metrics are for the program. If your objective is to increase retention, you can set your baseline with your current retention rate and measure retention as your program runs. Understanding where you were, where you are, and where you want to be is crucial to making your employee recognition program last.

Who is your program for?

This one might seem straightforward, but it’s also essential to define who will participate in the program. We will look at the different types of recognition programs you can run later, but here’s a quick example. If your program is a peer-to-peer employee recognition program, will you include your leadership team also? If you have contractors in your organization, will they be eligible to participate too?

What are your employee recognition objectives?

• Retain employees - engaged and recognized employees see the value of your organization and the opportunities to grow there.

• Build and scale culture - with the move to work from home, more leaders are learning that the superficial parts of culture — ping pong tables, beer fridges — don’t create a culture that lasts. Employee recognition programs are great ways to build culture across the office or the globe.

• Employer branding - employee recognition programs are opportunities for your employees to share on their social networks. It’s a great way to showcase what makes working at your organization unique.

What type of recognition do you want to give?

Now that you know who you’re building your program for and how you’ll measure success, the next step is to choose the type of employee recognition program you want to run.

Monetary

Monetary recognition programs are primarily used as motivators to reach a goal or milestone. Those goals can be a sales target, deliverable for an asset such as a marketing campaign or new version of a product, or other data-driven milestones. End-of-year or holiday bonuses are also examples of monetary recognition but aren’t typically considered part of an employee recognition program.

Swag

Many companies use branded swag for recognition gifts — but before you do, ask yourself if your employees want a new company water bottle or hoodie. Branded clothing and other items are great for trade shows or conferences, but personalized gifts are worth their weight in gold for employee recognition programs.

Social and peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer recognition programs are compelling ways to recognize employees for their work and build strong relationships between your employees. Culture-as-a-Service platforms like Achievers, Assembly, Qarrot, and Bonus.ly offer easy to deploy solutions for peer-to-peer engagement. 

Peer-to-peer recognition programs work by enabling your employees to recognize their colleagues for going above and beyond what’s expected of them. Top-down recognition programs from your leadership team often fail to identify situations that your employees see on the ground. Through peer-to-peer programs, your employees can give credit for helping out on a task that may go unnoticed by a manager.

5 tips to make your employee recognition program last

Get management buy-in

Your employee recognition program won’t work if you don’t have buy-in from your leadership team. Even with peer-to-peer recognition programs, you need your leaders to believe in the program, understand its objectives, and participate where they can.

Get employees engaged

With everything going — from daily work to the challenges of working from home — a new program can sometimes seem like extra work. The launch of your employee recognition program is an opportunity to set expectations for how often you want your employees to engage in the program, what the program’s objectives are, and how to communicate feedback to the program team.

Match to culture and values

Designing your employee recognition program means taking your culture and values into consideration. Create examples of potential recognition that match your company values so your employees understand what types of recognition can look like. It’s essential to use these as starting places. Excellent employee recognition programs grow as employees recognize 

each other for actions or situations that managers never see.

Timely and frequent 

Recognition programs often fall into a Goldilocks trap. Are there many moments being recognized? Too little? Or is it just the right amount of recognition? Instead of setting a minimum number of recognitions to be made, use the launch of your program as an opportunity to talk about the types of activities that can be recognized. There’s no minimum — but you want to avoid a situation where points are given for being five minutes early to a meeting.

Reinforce behaviour

As the team running your employee recognition program, it’s up to you to find ways to reinforce the behaviours you want to see recognized. You’re also responsible for monitoring recognition and finding opportunities to spur action when there’s a lull in recognition being made.

Chocolate Soup

We love point-based employee recognition programs, but they’re just a part of a holistic employee recognition system. Keeping your employees feeling valued is essential.

One way to do this is by recognizing people for more than their work anniversaries and company milestones. Employees care about their lives outside of work and want to share birthdays, new pets, new homes, and more with their colleagues. It’s those moments where strong connections are built. These connections are the cultural base for strong teams that work better together to deliver on company objectives.

Contact us today to learn more about how Chocolate Soup can help you with your employee recognition plans.