Want a More Engaged Team? Recognition is the Key to Success
78 percent of employees would work harder if they were better recognized, according to Globoforce. What would that added productivity and engagement mean to your business? Could you achieve more? Could you grow your sales faster than you are today? Would your turnover decrease leaving you with a better trained, more experienced team? The best part is these benefits could all come from very small investment on your part.Recognition is the often talked about, frequently under-executed hero of any business. Recognition is also misunderstood in many ways. Most people assume that others are motivated the same ways as they are. That can lead to many missed opportunities. In the excellent article, 4 Ways to Create an Intrinsically Motivated Workforce, the author shares how different people can be motivated and recognized in different ways. She shares many different ideas that people can be recognized to capture maximum effect - many with little to no cost.What can you do to bring your recognition programs to life? Here are a few ideas to think about when updating your program.
Create an achievement badge process
One of the most additive features for the current generation of games - mobile, online, or console is the idea of achievements. That same principle can be brought to life in your workplace as well. Identify some key areas that you would like people to apply themselves. Define a process and levels for completing certain tasks, training modules, or actual experiences and provide a ‘badge’ for completing the work in those areas. These could be pins for people to wear or they could be stickers to place on a board or their name badge.
Use Visual Tracking
In place of pins or stickers, it could be a stamp on a central board that shows everyone’s achievements in one place. The key piece here is to make the ‘recognition’ visible to everyone. Everyone can see how others are doing, what they are learning or achieving and can offer their congratulations along the way. Keeping it visual allows everyone to participate and shows that the program is alive and well, not some program that only gets updated when the District Manager or Human Resources Partner is visiting.If you are looking for some ideas on what this could look like, I would recommend reading How to level-up your leadership game and boost your team's engagement through recognition. It shares several ideas on how to build good tracking methods for your team.
Share Socially
Social media is another excellent way to provide recognition and to celebrate the successes of the team. Not only does this allow others in the company to see the successes of different team members, it allows the friends and family of those being recognized to share in the celebration as well. Talk about creating intrinsic motivation - one of your associates goes home at the end of day and is greeted by their family with a round of applause for their hard work, “I saw your big success today on Instagram from your Company. Great Job! I am so proud of you.” How special would that be? Do you think they would be excited to come back to work the next day? I bet they would.
Create Connectedness
Finding ways to bring the team together to share in success and celebrations is another great way to create a form of recognition. Sometimes the most important part of celebrating is the ability for the entire team to share in the success together, even if some team members played minor roles in the accomplishment. The idea that they can smile, laugh, and talk together with a common bond will lead to supporting one another in the future. And that will lead to additional successes to celebrate.Ultimately you want to create certain behaviors in your team that will lead to success. Recognition on their terms is the best way to do that. I tend to shy away from contests and extra bonuses as ways to build these types of behaviors. The rewards that come from those types of recognition are more extrinsic and likely only connect to a small portion of your team. Plus, rarely do they lead to lasting behaviors that can be beneficial in the long run.The current business climate is extremely competitive for the workforce. Unemployment is at or below historic lows, so keeping your best talent is critical for your success. Ensuring you are creating an environment where they want to be can be the difference in maintaining or losing your current team members. Engaged associates are more loyal, work harder, and provide better service than average associates who work for the paycheck. Recognition is the best way to motivate your team to those positive outcomes.What intrinsic motivators can you implement to recognize your team? Share your ideas, thoughts, and successes in the comments.Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash