According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number one reason people leave their job is lack of appreciation. James Williams, influential philosopher and psychologist, stated that appreciation is the deepest human need. It is no wonder social employee recognition programs are gaining in popularity.
Some of the advantages of peer-to-peer social recognition include: instant or real-time recognition, increased employee involvement, cost-savings, and talent identification. To be successful, it is important to design a program that fits the organization’s culture and maps to company values and goals. Once that is accomplished be sure to include these fundamentals.
- Offer a collaborative environment. This allows employees to extend and contribute to recognition by adding comments and validating recognition.
- Allow recognition to be delivered from various viewpoints. This ensures appreciation is not limited to only top-down acknowledgement, or confined to departments, or the formal corporate structure.
- Ensure recognition can be searched and browsed. This functionality makes it easier to identify and find people who have contributed during certain milestones, maintains a historical database of activity by name and position, and helps find unidentified talent.
- Offer public recognition and visibility. By sharing stories about co-workers within social media, the employee recognition becomes personal, social, and highly interactive.This is then valued by the recipient, and appreciated by the community. When mapped to the organizational culture and with proper structure and guidelines, public recognition can maximize recognition efforts.
- Create customized reporting that meets your organization’s culture and data requirements. The insights gained by these reports will be essential for optimizing the program and communicating the benefits.
It is time to go social with your employee recognition. The benefits are clear, and with the fundamentals in place, it is sure to be a success. If you would like to speak to one of our recognition professionals visit us at www.marketinginnovators.com or call us at 800.543.7373.
