Providing employee recognition boosts morale and productivity

Employee recognition is the timely, informal or formal acknowledgement of a person’s or a team’s behaviour, effort or business result that supports the organisation’s goals and values, and which has clearly been beyond normal expectations. To be really effective, employers need to understand the psychology of praising others for their good work, to apply the principles of employee recognition and to encourage others to initiate it in their working relationships.

There are two aspects to employee recognition. The first aspect is to actually identify an opportunity to praise someone. If you are not in a receptive frame of mind you can easily pass over many such opportunities. Employee recognition is, of course, the physical act of doing something to acknowledge and praise people for their good work. Secondly, because employee recognition has a huge communication component, recognising people for their good work sends an extremely powerful message to the recipient, their work team and other employees.

Employee recognition is therefore a potent communication technique. However, employee recognition is scarce in organisations due to a combination of several factors. Managers don’t know how to provide employee recognition effectively, so they have had experiences when they do. They assume that one size fits all when they provide employee recognition. Finally, employers think too narrowly about what people will find rewarding and recognising.

Employee recognition can be achieved by spontaneously praising people. To many employees, receiving sincere thanks is more important than receiving something tangible. Employees enjoy recognition through personal, written, electronic and public praise from those they respect at work, given in a timely, specific and sincere way. Recognition is a key success factor even at higher levels of management.

Lawrence Hrebiniak, professor of management in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, states, “What’s absolutely critical … is that the organisation celebrates success. Those who perform must be recognized. “Their behaviour and its results must be reinforced. Managers have emphasised this point to me time and time again, suggesting that, as basic as it is, it is violated often enough to become an execution problem. Give positive feedback to those responsible for execution success and making strategy work.”

Guidelines for effective employee recognition

Decide what you want to achieve through your employee recognition efforts. Many organisations use a scatter approach to employee recognition.
Create goals and action plans for employee recognition. Establish employee recognition opportunities that emphasise and reinforce these sought after qualities and behaviours.
Fairness, clarity, and consistency are important in employee recognition. People need to see that each person who makes the same or a similar contribution has an equal likelihood of receiving recognition for her efforts.
Be as specific as you can in telling the individual exactly why he is receiving the recognition. The work purpose of feedback is to reinforce what you’d like to see the employee do more of; the purpose of employee recognition is the same. In fact, employee recognition is one of the most powerful forms of feedback that you can provide.
When a person performs positively, provide recognition and a thank you immediately.
To conclude, one must remember that employee recognition is situational. Each individual has a preference for what he or she finds rewarding and how that recognition is most effective. Use the myriad opportunities for employee recognition that are available to you. In organisations worldwide, people place too much emphasis on money as the only form of employee recognition.

By: Bongani Coka – CEO of Productivity SA