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What if just one change to your workplace culture could foster employee engagement, boost productivity, strengthen teams, and positively impact your company’s bottom line? Does this sound too good to be true? Case studies prove otherwise. Employee recognition is already known to improve worker satisfaction and boost retention rates, but it’s the spiral effect of frequent appreciation that makes a huge impact on business outcomes. Here’s a look at just some of the ways frequent employee appreciation throughout the workplace can cause a spiral effect.
Reinforces key behaviors
One of the most obvious spiral effects of frequent employee appreciation is its ability to help reinforce the company’s core values and key behaviors needed to drive business success. There is scientific evidence behind the notion that “what gets recognized, gets repeated.” According to the Achievers Engagement and Retention Report, 92 percent of employees agree when they’re recognized for a specific action, they’re more likely to take that action again in the future.
Creating an engaging employee recognition program that encourages employees across teams to celebrate both small and big wins enables employers to direct which key behaviors to emphasize. This type of transparency when it comes to appreciating others in the workplace for a job well done will result in repetition of these key behaviors. By using frequent, if not daily, employee appreciation and recognition to celebrate accomplishments, employees will start amplifying their key behaviors.
A great example of how this works is a case study done with Discover. With the goals of finding a solution that is highly customizable and works for a global population, Discover partnered with Achievers, an Employee Success Platform, to develop a company-wide employee recognition and rewards program. As a result, Joanna Kalantzis, Senior Manager of Internal Communications and Engagement at Discover, shared, “sales have increased, customer satisfaction has improved, and voluntary attrition has decreased since the time of launching the Achievers platform.” Watch the video below to learn more about Discover’s success story:
Discover + Achievers: Employee Engagement Partners
Strengthens relationships across teams
Employee appreciation also directly impacts your organization at the team level. As you already know, strong teams are one of the intricate parts of business success. In fact, some business leaders, such as Marcus Buckingham, suggests corporate culture doesn’t exist and that an overwhelming majority of the employee experience happens at the team level. It’s at the team level where employee engagement and workers’ satisfaction strengthen. The right team leader is critical to the success of any team. It was reported that team members who said they trusted their team leader were 12 times more likely to engage fully at work. Frequent employee appreciation thrives most when it comes from all directions, from top down as well as from peer to peer.
When people feel regularly recognized by their team members, there’s not only a significant uplift in performance, but the teams have higher levels of perceived trust and engagement.
Empowers managers and leaders
Managers are often the glue that holds the business together. They not only oversee the day-to-day operations of their staff, but they work as a liaison between the company and the employees. It’s up to your managers to foster engagement, promote company values and objectives, and reinforce the company culture with the team.
According to studies, 50 percent of those surveyed believe that frequent recognition helps to build trust with business leaders and strengthen the worker-manager relationship. Also, 58 percent of employees said their manager relationship would improve with more recognition. Giving your managers and leaders a tool that enables them to get visibility on all the daily wins happening across their team allows them to build trust, foster alignment, and be more effective leaders by incorporating strengths-based coaching. Leaders actively participating in their company’s recognition program can also pinpoint which behaviors they want to see more from their team and encourage more of it.
One company that is successfully encouraging frequent employee appreciation and recognition from their managers and leaders is General Motors (GM). GM partnered with Achievers to launch the GM Recognition Program, which included a Boost one-click recognition feature that makes it easy for any employee, including leadership, to recognize others. GM achieved a 97 percent activation rate and, more importantly, people leaders at the company send an average of four recognitions per month and eight out of ten managers send recognitions monthly.
Recognition Culture: The MVP of Employee Experience
Improves employee engagement
One of the spiral effects of employee appreciation that we never lose sight of is improved employee engagement. There is little doubt that employee appreciation and employee engagement go hand-in-hand. After all, employee recognition is the leading driver of engagement. Why is employee engagement valuable? Gallup said it best: “Simply put, engaged employees produce better business outcomes than other employees do — across industries, company sizes and nationalities, and in good economic times and bad.” Having a highly engaged workforce can lead to better retention, increased productivity, improved customer service, less absenteeism, and a more positive workplace culture.
In many cases, engagement levels increase as recognition levels rise. For example, The Very Group (previously known as Shop Direct) shows an incredible 17 percent increase in engagement after launching its Shine employee recognition program with Achievers. While Shop Direct already had a high engagement level of 67 percent, it was able to achieve an 84 percent engagement rate. Consider using an employee recognition tool to drive similar results and boost engagement within your organization.
Discover the Power of Employee Appreciation: A Guide to Making Recognition a Core Part of Business Strategy
Make employee appreciation a priority
It’s important to realize the full impact frequent employee appreciation has in the workplace. As you can see, it goes well beyond improved retention and workplace satisfaction. Rather, it has a direct impact on business outcomes and team engagement. The best thing is that bolstering employee appreciation in the workplace is not as difficult as you may think. Having an impactful employee recognition program in place is the foundation when it comes to creating a culture of appreciation. Are you ready to take employee appreciation to the next level at your organization? Get started by accessing our webinar recording, “Recognition that Works: Driving Amazing Engagement and Boosting ROI.”
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