Recognise and Reward your employees for their work and contribution.
In the last year and a half, millions of employees from multiple sectors around the world have joined a mass exodus from the workplace. Many have tried explaining the mass exodus, but reports indicate it may be due to inadequate salaries, limited career advancement, poor work-life balances, general unhappiness with management or the company and numerous other reasons.
This so-called Great Resignation, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, has turned employment into a worker’s market. TikTok users have coined phrases such as “quiet quitting” and “act your wage” as employees find community with others who don’t feel properly valued or appreciated by their workplaces.
As employees decide what’s right for them, employers are having to reconsider what actually makes their company worth working for. If you feel like your business may be at risk of losing top talent, or you have already begun losing your best workers to the Great Resignation, it is probably time to consider some employee retention strategies.
In this series of 15 strategies to improve your business, here is the 5th proven strategy to boost employee job satisfaction and help you hold on to your best workers.
- Recognise and Reward Your Employees for Their Work
Employees who feel appropriately recognised and rewarded by peers and managers are much easier to retain long term, but studies also show those employees will work harder and be more productive.
Unfortunately, over 80% of Australian and American employees say they don’t feel recognised, valued, appreciated, or rewarded for their efforts. A report by the Brandon Hall Group found companies that prioritise recognising their employees multiple times per month are 41% more likely to see increased employee retention and 34% more likely to see increased employee engagement.
There are numerous ways to recognise and reward your employees, but it’s important to make sure you prioritise both social recognition and monetary rewards. It feels good to not only be recognised for our work, but to be publicly recognised, as it helps everyone know when others are appreciated, too.
Financial rewards, whether in the form of straightforward cash, gift cards or even other perks such as paid time off, are among the most important and most successful rewards you can offer an employee, especially in lower paying sectors such as Aged Care and Hospitality.
Consider asking employees open-ended questions about what they’d like in terms of rewards, too.
Make sure you are not only recognising your employees for results, but also for efforts. Sometimes projects are not as successful as we hoped, numbers are not reached, or deals are not closed. While this can be a disappointment, making sure your employees know that, though they didn’t reach the goal, their work is still appreciated.
This can help encourage your employees to try harder the next time and support them when they might otherwise feel hopeless or defeated.
Utilising a recognition platform such as Brownie Points is also worth considering, as real time recognition that is publicised across the organisation, with the ability to automate birthdays and anniversaries, and with leader boards, top awarder charts and manager reports means that administration of all your recognition programs can be easily managed and very cost effective.
Tony Delaney, CEO Brownie Points
