This Feels Personal: A Guide To Rewards & Recognition
Employee rewards and recognition. They are the essential pieces in the employee engagement puzzle that go far beyond the seemingly transactional act of appreciating someone’s efforts. Now more than ever, a solid, personalised employee rewards and recognition programme is considered the hallmark of a great place to work. Tailored rewards and recognition not only connect individuals to a common purpose and set of values but appreciate individual contributions in a way that truly boosts people.
Businesses that overlook the value of such a programme risk falling behind – and we’re not just saying that! Over half of employees state that direct recognition from managers plays a pivotal role in maintaining their morale and engagement. People want to feel adequately recognised. They want that special feeling – the boost – of knowing that they’re valued and appreciated at work. And hey – they deserve it! But don’t deserve a one-size-fits-all approach.
In the blog, we’re going to help you take steps to ensure your business recognises and rewards its employees in the right way. We’ll explain why personalised employee recognition and rewards matter, the benefits of introducing a personalised programme and top tips to help you successfully tailor your own.
Let’s go!
Why does a personalised reward and recognition programme matter?
Personalised employee reward and recognition programmes unify your business’ unique goals, purpose and values with your employees’ individual contributions and unique motivators.
This tailored approach to recognising employees means that your business is actively incentivising behaviour and performance that is aligned to your overarching goals. But alongside that, your employees are being recognised in a way that has the biggest impact. The biggest boost, if you will.
Standard, one-sit-fits-all programmes, while still valuable, won’t have the same level of impact because they assume that everyone is motivated by the same things and that your business has the same goals and desires as all the rest.
But that’s not true, is it? People and businesses are wonderfully complex, and your employee reward and recognition programme needs to reflect that. That’s why introducing a personalised programme is beneficial for both your business and people.
How does a tailored programme benefit employees?
Personalisation is top of the priority list for many businesses in all areas of their employee engagement and employee experience activities. And for good reason too! When it comes to personalised reward and recognition programmes, there are plenty of benefits to employees, including:
- Increased job satisfaction:When individuals are regularly recognised for their personal efforts and rewarded in a way that caters to their individual preferences, they’ll genuinely feel more fulfilled by the work they do.
- Boosted motivation and performance: Being recognised in a tailored way is more meaningful and therefore has a lasting impact on how employees feel when they show up to work, giving them more of a drive to hit new targets and exceed expectations.
- Greater sense of belonging: Favouring personalisation at all points in the employee experience naturally leads to employees having a deeper emotional connection to your business and their colleagues because they feel seen as individuals.
- Increased confidence and morale: Rewarding individuals’ unique contributions means they’ll see their value and be more confident to nurture their innovative ideas and push themselves to new heights with optimism.
- Sense of purpose: With a tailored programme, employees are connected to a common goal and set of values, giving them something meaningful to collectively work towards.
- Reduced stress and anxiety: Personalised recognition provides individuals with the reassurance that they’re doing a great job, helping alleviate work-related worries.
- Enhanced employee wellbeing: All of the benefits mentioned contribute to individuals feeling a greater sense of self-worth and happiness, helping them thrive outside of the workplace too.
How does a tailored programme benefit employers?
The benefits don’t stop there, either! In today’s competitive job market and at a time when businesses need to do more to attract, retain and motivate their employees, tailored reward and recognition programmes make a big contribution in tackling these challenges. Benefits of introducing such a programme include:
- Boosted workplace culture: Tailored programmes align employees to a common vision, purpose and set of values that ultimately strengthens your culture.
- Better business performance: By recognising and rewarding achievements aligned with your business’ goals, you’ll help all employees stay true to your vision, work together to innovate and help your business reach new heights.
- Reduce employee churn: When employees feel seen, heard and respected by their employer, they’re less likely to jump ship. A tailored reward and recognition programme helps you achieve that.
- Attract top talent: Programmes that cater to individual needs and genuinely contribute to people’s lives will make your business an attractive employer and stand out from competitors.
- Stronger collaboration and innovation: A recognition programme that connects colleagues to a shared purpose will foster better teamwork and camaraderie, creating more opportunities for innovation.
- Increase employee engagement: Employees that feel genuinely appreciated for their efforts will be more connected to your business, more motivated to perform at their best and more engaged with your overall vision and mission.
8 top tips to personalise a reward and recognition programme
Introducing a personalised reward and recognition programme sounds a bit daunting, right? Well, fear not! With the right guidance and support, you can take some tangible steps towards making employee recognition more tailored to your business and people. Taking the time to do these steps is an important part of giving yourself and your business the best chance of success when it comes to building a programme that satisfies your goals and has a lasting impact on employees. After all, they deserve to feel genuinely appreciated!
Collaborating with a professional employee reward and recognition provider means you’re in safe hands and can give them the ownership of bringing your wants and needs to life. Good providers will be investigatory in their nature and want to understand your current ways of working and challenges. They’ll then be able to provide recommendations on not only how to tailor your strategy to your business but also automate processes to make your initiatives more efficient and effective.
1. Partner with professionals
It’s definitely worth taking the time to do your research so you choose a provider that best suits your business’ requirements and budget. That’s why, before you make a decision, it’s important to consider what specific areas you need support with, whether that’s peer-to-peer recognition, personalised rewards or something else!
Also, you want to collaborate with people you feel you’ll genuinely like working with. This is an overlooked but important thing to bear in mind. You need to enjoy the process of managing your reward and recognition programme!
Over half (54%) of employees say that they’re never or rarely consulted on shaping their business’ reward programmes. Let’s change that! To build a reward and recognition programme that is truly personalised, you need to understand the needs, interests and overall makeup of your workforce. This then gives you a foundation of information – coupled with your business’ culture, mission, goals and values – to build upon so you can tailor as much as possible.
2. Understand your workforce
As part of this process, get an in-depth view of the key demographic data of your workforce as well as location and job type. Then it’s time to go deeper and get the viewpoints of employees themselves, whether that’s through a series of focus groups or a business-wide survey. We always recommend opting for multiple touchpoints to give you the best level of detail. More is more!
For you to be able to seamlessly introduce and manage a personalised reward and recognition programme in your business, technology has to play a part. A big part, in fact! Technology should (and if you partner with the right provider, will) be responsible for the bulk of the processes involved in your programme as well as the delivery of rewards and recognition. This will make automation and personalisation easy! It means that things like peer-to-peer recognition, milestone awards and your reward delivery can happen like clockwork. That’s why knowing your workforce and understanding the set-up of different roles is so critical. It’s all well and good relying on technology, but that technology needs to be easily accessible for all, so everyone has the opportunity to feel the benefits.
3. Leverage technology
For your programme to be truly tailored, you need to decide what specific goals, milestones and achievements you want your business to recognise and reward. The aim is to align these with your business’ objectives and workplace culture and then go one step further to make these goals personal – where possible – to employees. Examples include recurring milestones such as birthdays and work anniversaries, performance-based targets or behavioural targets like your company values.
4. Customise to individual and business goals
Recurring milestones can easily be personal to the individual if you have the right data. Performance-based rewards should be as specific as possible, whether it’s a team-based or individual goal. Behavioural-related recognition can be tailored to your values, and all employees can play a part in recognising individuals to further reinforce these ways of operating. This is where our next point comes in!
Empowering employees to recognise their colleagues is an inclusive and effective way to make recognition in your business more personal, authentic and impactful. Employees from across your business witness the big and small moments of brilliance from their colleagues, so are in the best position to highlight them in the moment and ensure those individuals get the recognition they deserve. With a peer-to-peer recognition tool, individuals can send a message of appreciation within minutes and all recognition gets posted to an interactive social wall, visible to all employees. Not only is this inclusive, but when tailored to your company values it also contributes to reinforcing your business’ goals. Win-win!
5. Encourage peer-to-peer recognition
To make your employee rewards as personal as possible, give individuals choice! One-size-fits-all rewards aren’t going to have a lasting impact. People have their own interests and preferences, so they should be rewarded in a way that embraces that. By delivering your rewards through an online platform, you have the ability to choose a provider that offers choice. That way, when an individual gets rewarded, they can select an item or voucher that’ll actually put a smile on their face, whether that’s an Afternoon Tea experience, a new kettle or voucher for their favourite restaurant.
6. Offer reward choice
Employee feedback on your reward and recognition programme is an essential part of keeping your efforts true to what your business and people need. This insight gives you a clear understanding of what’s working well, what isn’t and potential areas you may have overlooked. Without this information, you’re really in the dark as to how effective your programme is and whether it’s truly personalised. Input could be captured through an employee survey, focus groups or you could form a committee of recognition champions – people that represent different areas of your business and are responsible for sharing feedback and shaping the future of the programme.
7. Ask for employee input
All employee engagement initiatives should be treated as an ever-evolving entity. There’s no sticking plaster that fixes everything. Nor is there a single solution that works forever. Your provider should give you access to platform usage data (ideally on demand) to help you understand how employees are interacting with your platform. That, coupled with your employee insights, will give you a valuable picture of success. Then it’s time to work towards any necessary improvements to ensure your programme continues to add value to your business and people.
8. Evaluate and evolve
How can Boostworks help?
Delivering tailored reward and recognition programmes is our bread and butter here at Boostworks. We’ve been doing it for almost 23 years and collaborating with brilliant UK businesses like Costa Coffee, Great Western Railway and RAC. With our mobile app and web platform, you can deliver peer-to-peer recognition, milestone awards and personalised rewards, all tailored to your business’ goals, values and culture. We even tailor it to your team hierarchies, but let’s not get too technical…
Beyond that, we have an experienced team that bring their knowledge and support – people that have been with us for years (decades for some) that truly understand how these programmes work and the best way to leverage our technology to meet your current challenges and requirements.
So, whether you have a programme in place and you’re looking for some recommendations on how we can make it more personalised, you’re considering switching providers or you’re starting from scratch, let’s have a chat! Click below to book a no-commitment conversation with a member of our team.
Book a Demo Today
