Employee pride doesn’t start with a formal employee recognition program, it starts with you. Here are 4 easy steps to begin to improve your skills.
- Make a list of all the important groups of people in your work life.
- Write down the name of every important person in each group.
- Twice a week, review the list of names and ask, “Did someone on this page do something that I should recognize?”
- If the answer is yes, give quick recognition, either by phone, e-mail, voice mail or a note. If the answer is no, do nothing.
Within a year, your reputation for providing positive recognition can improve from poor to excellent.
A Baker’s Dozen of Facts and Stats to Consider…
Looking for some great statistics that illustrate the power of recognizing others? Here are a few that Darcy Jacobson gathered which might come in handy for you too.
- “Nearly 75% of organizations have a recognition program (despite the fact that only 58% of employees think that their organizations have recognition programs).” (Bersin by Deloitte, The State of Employee Recognition, 2012)
- Career opportunities, recognition, and organization reputation are consistently top engagement drivers. (Aon Hewitt, 2012 Trends in Global Employee Engagement)
- “The number-one reason most Americans leave their jobs is that they don’t feel appreciated. In fact, 65% of people surveyed said they got no recognition for good work last year” (Gallup, Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life, 2001)
- “Organizations with recognition programs which are highly effective at enabling employee engagement had 31% lower voluntary turnover than organizations with ineffective recognition programs.” (Bersin by Deloitte, The State of Employee Recognition, 2012)
- “60% of Best-in-Class organizations stated that employee recognition is extremely valuable in driving individual performance.” (Aberdeen Group, The Power of Employee Recognition, 2013)
- 41% of companies that use peer-to-peer recognition have seen marked positive increases in customer satisfaction. (SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 2012)
- Companies with strategic recognition reported a mean employee turnover rate that is 23.4% lower than retention at companies without any recognition program. (SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 2012)
- In these environments, [where opportunity and well-being are part of the culture) strong manager performance in recognizing employee performance increases engagement by almost 60%. (Towers Watson, Turbocharging Employee Engagement: The Power of Recognition From Managers)
- Peer-to-peer is 35.7% more likely to have a positive impact on financial results than manager-only recognition. (SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 2012)
- Praise and commendation from managers was rated the top motivator for performance, beating out other noncash and financial incentives, by a majority of workers (67%) (McKinsey Motivating People, Getting Beyond Money)
- When companies spend 1% or more of payroll on recognition, 85% see a positive impact on engagement. (SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 2012)
- Recognition is an important psychological need. Employees who know that they will receive recognition for acting on the brand promise will have a strong incentive to do so. (Gallup, 2013 State of the American Workplace)
- When asked what leaders could do more of to improve engagement, 58% of respondents replied “Give recognition.” (Psychometrics, A Study of Employee Engagement in the Canadian Workplace 2010)
