6 benefits of peer-to-peer recognition for your company (even in a small business)

Most organisations understand the importance of employee recognition, but certain forms of recognition are more impactful than others when it comes to driving lasting change in the business. So why are peer-to-peer reward and recognition tools so powerful? Used intentionally, they can improve your culture, increase employee loyalty and build company-wide connections – all of which fuel productivity, growth and innovation!

Here’s how:

1. One act of recognition creates three times the goodness domino effect

When an employee is recognised, they are 3x more likely to recognise someone else, creating a ripple or domino effect of good being shared across your business. People who feel recognised and appreciated are more likely to recognise the good work of others. This is a fact of human nature (what social scientists call 'positive reciprocity'). Recognition makes you feel good, both when you receive recognition and when you acknowledge someone else.

As more people get on board with making recognition a habit, the ripple effect spreads throughout the organisation until it becomes ingrained in your work culture.

2. Being recognised builds company-wide confidence company-wide confidence and connection

Having progress and contribution publicly recognised and rewarded helps boost inner confidence as well as team-wide trust in the capabilities and competence of their peers. Public recognition is especially effective in building trust and confidence across the organisation because it connects the action being recognised back to the business.

The best recognition is when you show appreciation for a success that helped improve the employee or customer experience and can be tied to your company’s values, purpose or objectives. So when employees are using this type of recognition and this recognition is displayed for others to see, everyone can understand how the company's mission is being lived and feel confident that their peers are working towards the same goal.

3. Your company learns to live and breathe your values

Promoting company values through your peer-to-peer recognition tools helps build understanding and awareness of what they look like in action, and the behaviour associated with success.

HomeServe is a great example of an organisation that uses its employee recognition to communicate company values and embed them in the HomeServe culture. While HomeServe always had a hybrid workforce, keeping employees connected during the pandemic became challenging, so the team turned to their employee engagement platform to bring its virtual culture to life.

PeopleServe features a tiered approach to reward and recognition, and eCards have become a big part of the company's virtual culture. The social recognition wall displays more than 95,900 eCards sent through the platform!

Roshine Bulpitt, Head of Engagement and Talent Development at HomeServe, says:

“Everyone knows what our values are – they live and breathe them because they believe in them. The recognition is there to reinforce those behaviours, and the eCards are linked to them. It’s also helped us stand out as a top employer.”

4. It gives everyone a productivity boost

77% of employees say they would work harder if they felt better recognised. The simple solution to this is to recognise more, but the type of recognition still matters as employees don't always notice recognition when it happens. Reward Gateway has found that 80% of senior leaders believe recognition happens regularly, but only 17% of employees feel they work in a recognition-rich environment.

In order for employees to feel the recognition, it needs to be meaningful and specific. Instead of a simple 'Thank you,' try saying 'Thank you for helping me with ____, it really helped me to achieve ____ and I appreciate how you always ____.' Employees will not only understand what they are being recognised for, but also the impact their work had on a project.

"We know what gets recognised gets repeated, so keep recognising progress as it happens and you’ll see it skyrocket as a result!"

5. Every employee becomes responsible for your culture
happy employees

Instead of relying on a top-down, manager-only approach, encouraging employees to recognise coworkers makes individuals accountable for sharing the wins and telling the stories that eventually become legend. While eCards are a great, simple way for colleagues to say 'thank you,' 'congratulations,' 'well done' and much more, you can make your peer-to-peer recognition culture-driven by showing your team how to tie them in with your company values.

"When employees send values-based recognition, it allows other employees to see company values in action and helps everyone to understand why the values are important and what it means to live them at the company."

6. Social recognition promotes transparency, connection and collaboration

One glance at your recognition programme trends gives you visibility of key contributors, whether (or which) teams are collaborating and sharing success together, who’s getting left behind, and opportunities to strengthen culture. At Reward Gateway, senior leaders and employees alike frequently visit our 'Wow Wall' – a social recognition feed that displays all eCards sent at RG – to see wins happening across the business. Through comments, reactions and likes, employees are able to engage with other employees' moments of recognition.

"This not only amplifies the moment of recognition to drive a greater feeling of appreciation, but also helps boost connections across teams and departments and allows everyone to see the great work that is happening across the business."