As someone who runs a successful business, do you find yourself suffering massive amounts of employee attrition or dissatisfaction among your employees? If you do, you’re not alone. General dissatisfaction with working and being employed by less than savory companies has left an indelible mark on job candidates everywhere. With the great resignation fully underway and employees jumping ship regularly, companies really need to take things up a notch.
One key area where employers can rebuild the trust and rapport with their employees is through the process of employee recognition. Employee recognition is exactly what it says on the tin: a process by which both employers and other employees recognize the accomplishments of others while expressing gratitude toward them for their achievements. Are you using it at your business? If not, you should. Recognition improves all aspects of the workplace from managing things to finishing projects with the team. Here are five benefits of using recognition at your office.
Making Employees Feel Valued
Improving relationships with your employees—and making them feel more valued—comes down to communicating effectively with them. You must communicate with your employees regularly. You should communicate with all of your employees, even if they are not directly involved in the projects you’re currently working on. Just take the time to see how they’re doing, solicit feedback, encourage them, and get to know them a little better. Try to involve them in the design of technology that impacts their work. For example, if you’re designing a new point-of-sale system or program, have employees experiment with it. Ask them for feedback and how well it will work for them. Anything employees are expected to work with regularly should get their seal of approval! In this manner, using an employee recognition program can positively contribute to individual and team success throughout the organization. Maintaining a culture of feedback and gratitude is essential these days, so utilizing employee recognition to its fullest strengths is necessary to thrive as an organization.
Strengthening Company Culture
Employees respond to leadership that shows genuine appreciation. But appreciation doesn’t stop with employees alone. Company culture also applies to how you treat your customers and clients. Without them, your organization likely wouldn’t have a chance at all! You can attain and facilitate a positive company culture by showing genuine recognition and appreciation for others. This can strengthen your relationships, improve communication, build trust, and ultimately boost morale to create the best possible working conditions for everyone. And what’s better than happy, productive employees in a positive office culture / environment? Not much at all.
Boosting Productivity
In addition to improving job satisfaction, recognition also significantly improved employee engagement. When you recognize an employee for a job well done, you are increasing their motivation to do good work and continue doing so. Recognizing employees shows them that the work they do is valued in the workplace and that it makes a difference to the company’s bottom line. While this may seem like common sense, many companies neglect to recognize their employees properly. Other times, they don’t recognize them at all! This actually hurts the company. By not showing your employees that their hard work is valued and appreciated, productivity decreases. There’s also higher levels of turnover. Moreover, when your employees feel unappreciated or undervalued, they start looking to jump ship. That’s not good for employees or organizations, and you’ll need to take care of them so they can take care of business.
Improved Employee Retention
Replacing departing employees is expensive. It can often cost up to 1.5 times the exiting employee’s salary. So increasing retention can help you save money by reducing turnover costs. When employees feel undervalued or not recognized for their hard work, they’re much more likely to leave. Instead of staying with your organization, they’ll just go somewhere that will show them appreciation for their efforts. If you want to retain top talent, first recognize your employees’ hard work. Then be sure to do it often and with enthusiasm. If they know they’re a valuable asset to the company, they’ll be much more likely to stick around for a while and provide high-quality work well into the future.
Better Work-life Balance
Recognition also helps improve work-life balance. Make sure you put work-life balance first so that everyone has time outside of work to participate in activities that bring them joy and let them recharge. Whether it’s playing with their kids or taking care of their parents, employees should never feel like they have to choose between family and their jobs. If they do choose work over home life, that should be their decision entirely. The biggest problem workers face is having quality work life balance. In a 2018 survey, 67% of male respondents and 78% of female respondents pointed to work life balance as being one of the most important variables they consider when applying for a new job (or staying on an existing one).
IntelligentHQ Your New Business Network.
IntelligentHQ is a Business network and an expert source for finance, capital markets and intelligence for thousands of global business professionals, startups, and companies.
We exist at the point of intersection between technology, social media, finance and innovation.
IntelligentHQ leverages innovation and scale of social digital technology, analytics, news and distribution to create an unparalleled, full digital medium and social business network spectrum.
IntelligentHQ is working hard, to become a trusted, and indispensable source of business news and analytics, within financial services and its associated supply chains and ecosystems.
