In multiple instances, we tend to appreciate an employee or a group of employees by saying “thank you.” But is thank you enough always? We never know the number of efforts that have been put in for the tasks to be executed nor can we measure the sacrifice that an employee might have prioritized to reach this impact. Is there any better way to recognize and reward them for their efforts better than saying thank you?
Why Employee Recognition Programs Hold Weight?
As per research conducted by Achievers, 51% of the employees are not satisfied with their present organization and that constitutes a serious concern for the business growth. Also, as per Gallup, 87% of the workforce are not at all engaged as much as they should be at work due to diversified reasons, resulting in poor productivity rate and operational outcome. In a comparative study conducted by Business2Community, employees who have a high engagement rate towards their work in an organization tend to perform better than the employees who have a low engagement rate towards their work by 202%.
Is there any solution to increase employee’s productivity?
Yes, there is. MDM solution is bundled with features containing mission-critical tools that can instill security of corporate assets and increase in productivity of the workforce. No matter how many devices you want to deploy, with the wide range of features and tools available in the MDM dashboard, IT admins can initiate over-the-air enrollment with pre-determined frameworks and policies with ease.
The lower engagement rates direct towards a negative work environment and that is a concern needing attention. There is always a better way to mitigate the situation by making the employees feel a sense of belonging by appreciating them for their hard work with either wisdom or reward. Also, Harvard Business Review has reported that employee recognition and rewards are one of the best and effective drivers to improve engagement and productivity.
Let’s dive in to learn about the 5 most effective reasons for conducting a recognition program for employees.
1. Is recognition reciprocal to happiness?
Employees never take the organization’s workload to their home at the end of the day after leaving their office premises. It is an old saying and still a verity in most cases. But there is one thing that every employee takes home, it’s the emotions and feelings that we might have felt while spending our day at work, at meetings, or even small achievements at work. So, it can be stated that the recognition of employee’s inputs instills good vibes and that is the emotion they take away home to.
Any organization that spares time to demonstrate the efforts of employees and the impact it has made in the organization, allows the employees to psychologically feel the sense of belonging and adopt good vibes to take back home each day.
Want to know a secret? Happy employees in an organization contribute 12% more productively than their less-happy counterparts in other organizations. That sounds like a reason to plan and conduct an employee engagement program.
2. Appreciate today, reap tomorrow, and henceforth
Making a foundation of trust with other peers in the organization is crucial. If we ask an employee to note down why building trust is important while working professionally, it might be a never-ending draft. So, the golden rule passed down through generations reminds us that trusting one another is one of the most valuable commodities we possess and it is important in many aspects professionally.
Will the trust factor be built and acknowledged if a certain extraordinary input from a certain employee is invested as its leap of faith and self-recognition? The answer is “No.” You can only cement one brick at a time to build your palace of paradigm and that pesky trust commences with coordination, collaboration, and communication.
The only way to measure who is liable for appreciation is to not think about building a trust factor at all. Rather, if we make the employee feel important and a valuable asset to the team, they will be ready to burn their fuel without even accumulating their thoughts of expectations. This foundation of acknowledgment and appreciation for being a part of this amazing team fosters a healthy environment. Receiving acknowledgment makes them believe that their inputs are being noticed by the thought leadership personnel.
Another secret? Almost 90% of the employees within an organization who have been appreciated by their managers in the previous month believe to have a solid foundation whereas 48% of the employees who don’t receive any appreciation from their managers despite their efforts fail to look up to their thought leaders as a factor of motivation.
3. Increased chances of retention
Until and unless the employees are recognized as valuable assets to the organization, there can’t be a defense mechanism as to why the employee shouldn’t switch to a better place. Let’s understand the routine of onboarding a new employee as an example. An employee has been hired by the HR department on behalf of the organization. Now, the company will have to incur onboarding costs till the time the employee becomes a veteran at work and start delivering desirable outputs.
What if the poor training and inefficient efforts of the onboarding process create a negative loophole in the mind of an employee? It sounds expensive before it started, right? No doubt, it is. As per miscellaneous estimates, onboarding and welcoming a new employee can tag along with a direct or indirect cost of $3500 just during the process of preliminary scrutiny and offer consideration pre-boarding. Also, it can cost as much as $1200 for knowledge transfer from subject matter experts each year. So, any employee who feels that their role in the organization is becoming monotonous, are not receiving the respect at the table for the designation they deserve and are not able to channelize their talent and skills – they will not intend to stick around for a long time. Sounds like a reason to appreciate your present employee for their inputs? You should!
4. Making company’s culture friendly
Conducting an employee recognition program in an organization has the potential to improve the mental health of an employee, motivate, as well as make them feel content. A company’s culture plays a significant role in multitudes of factors when it comes to employee recognition and successful business operations. Those components include engagement at work, satisfaction with work, motivation to do the work, and having a collaborative team on the same page which sums up the best cultural place to work in.
As per research by Hero & Mercer, if a manager is able to recognize the mental health of the employee and work towards making it more healthy, 91% of the employees feel more content and healthier in comparison to the organizations that don’t consider mental health as a parameter at all. Also, 85% of the HR panel finds employee recognition programs as a positive development in an organization’s work culture. So fostering the company’s culture can not only make the employees feel more productive towards work but also positive towards the overall workstation.
5. Don’t forget to reward employees personally!
You should never make an employee feel like they are just a well-oiled machine responsible to churn out their operational inputs in the office premises. This monotonous routine in any workplace squashes and squeezes the left-over creativity within your employees and leaves them with no spirits to stay high. This is why employee recognition conduction can make the difference and bridge the gap towards a centered approach.
Treating your employees with recognized gestures such as having lunch together, surprising them with a meal-out, hi5 for celebrating minimalistic milestones can make the workplace feel more humanized. This will also eliminate the craving for completing the 9 to 5 routine anyhow and repeat each day without any format of motivation. Making the employees feel their worth can instill in them a direction to do something out of the box and invite creative ideas with innovation to break the chronological grind.
Closing lines…
To date, employee recognition programs are still considered vague and unimportant in diversified domains across the globe. Not making it a priority has demotivated employees to a great extent and the lack of recognition has reflected the negative outcome that a thriving workplace could offer.
To drive the employee’s productivity and direct them towards healthy recognization, MDM can be the best solution for you. With the Application Management feature, the IT admins can deploy mission-critical applications over the air and ensure that the flow of productivity is unhindered.
Now that you know the secret of driving employee engagement and the importance of conducting one, it’s time to pat on your employee’s back.
Ayush Maskara is a Content Writer at Scalefusion EMM Solution. A media science graduate, a photographer, a fiction author, a storyteller, a fiction manuscript editor, and an avid self-help reader, Ayush has been penning the creative wisdom for six years and have stepped into the IT domain for further exploration and staying awake with technological trends across the globe.