Why recognising top employees will help your company bottom line


Ways to nurture and retain star performers

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Earlier this year, we spoke to some business leaders and managers who were concerned about how to manage performance remotely — their main concern being how to ensure employees maintained productivity even though they were no longer working in their traditional (probably supervised) environment.

It is clear that being forced into remote working or high-pressure frontline work environments has been challenging for leaders who have traditionally relied on extrinsic, carrot-or-stick motivators to keep their employees productive.

But employees who are fuelled by intrinsic motivation are more likely to thrive in an unsupervised and uncertain environment. Business leaders and managers who have been willing to embrace a different approach and use this time to cultivate freedom and trust will reap the returns long-term.

" Instead of increasing supervision, business leaders and managers can improve visibility by increasing and enhancing communication and encouraging recognition of individual and team contributions. "


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Tapping into the power of frequent, social, peer-to-peer employee recognition can create a work culture where employees are not only more connected and more motivated, but also more productive, regardless of facing challenges that are beyond their control.

Here are some of the ways you can raise and retain top performers across your organisation:

 

Use recognition to drive innovation and growth

The right recognition tools can connect employees to thousands of behaviours that drive growth for your business all through the year and also provides business leaders with visibility of what and who is driving that success.

While your immediate priority might be focussing on making sure people are safe at work, tapping into the power of recognition might be the advantage your teams need to boost morale, improve culture and re-ignite innovation.

While celebrating employee milestones or annual awards are a good start, adding tools that help employees recognise each other for their work, greatly improves employee engagement, productivity and loyalty.

And we know, in this climate, the meaningful work leaders should want to recognise includes the behaviours and achievements that will help support our business to thrive. Which means, more than ever, we want to shine a spotlight on the values and behaviours we want to see repeated.There are countless things to recognise employees for. Consider employees who are:

Working extremely hard to keep their work environment sanitised and safe
Providing excellent quality of care and service to patients, customers and their colleagues
Doing everything they can to increase connection even as we socially distance ourselves from others
Innovating and helping to keep the business viable
Maintaining productivity among their teams or as an individual

Using technology  to recognise employees who are working in dispersed environments provides connection between your people, and provides your team with data you can act on.

Create a ripple effect: Amplify the moments that motivate your people

Giving employees the opportunity to recognise and reward each other at any time, from anywhere, is a powerful way of increasing the positive touchpoints they have with each other at work.

A recent study shows that peer-to-peer recognition from co-workers boosts the benefits of being recognised by leaders in the business. To help generate that ‘ripple effect,’ you can also use technology to amplify those nitty-gritty moments of success that would otherwise be forgotten. In the example below you will see that employee achievements are put in the spotlight with an employee-facing social wall. When employees interact with the social-feed through comments and “likes” it further increases the visibility of achievements within your organisation, to reinforce a culture of appreciation.
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Recognition boosts employee motivation in real-time, creating the environment to set your people up for growth.

As we want to encourage individuals to connect, innovate and bring their best to the table, a little bit of recognition can go a very long way. Now is the time to strengthen and improve how you thank your people for how they contribute to your success as a business — and this may be the very thing that keeps them contributing well into the future. Ready to thank, support and motivate your employees?  

Sign up for a 1-month free trial of Reward Gateway for Small Business and we’ll show you how you can recognise and reward employees with affordable benefits.

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