How to Foster Team Culture with the Right Employee Recognition Programs
Creating an appropriate team culture is essential for any business to succeed. The culture directs how employees should work and behave at a subconscious level. If you want to create a team culture that works around recognition, you need to adopt a proven employee recognition program from providers like https://www.inspirus.com/.
These programs are designed to promote recognizing the effort and contribution of every employee within the organization. This article explains how you can use such a program for your business.
The Role of Employee Recognition in Team Culture
Team culture is defined as a culture where employees work collaboratively as a team rather than individual members. A team comes first for every employee in every scenario. Such a culture is essential to any company since it defines the company’s internal and external identity. When used correctly in a relevant manner, it can impact your organization’s bottom line.
If you’re creating a team culture, then it’s important to value employee recognition. It’s also important to point out the difference between employee recognition and employee appreciation.
Appreciation is the perceived feeling of value for the contribution, attitude, or talent. In contrast, recognition is the act of showing appreciation. In other words, it’s the process of recognizing the contribution.
When employees feel that they are being valued, they are more engaged and productive in their work. It is also known to improve employee performance.
How to Select an Employee Recognition Program?
If you’re looking to adopt an employee recognition program for your company, there are a few things you need to check. This would ensure that you’re investing at the right place and will most likely get the right results.
Start with Employees Needs
You’re creating the program for your employees. So it’s worth learning about their needs and necessities. Do they need more monetary incentives? Or do they want to go on vacation? Is spending time with their family on their priority list? You should get as many details as possible.
Align with Company’s Objectives
The most successful employee recognition programs are tied to the company’s goals. The goal can be either to improve productivity or to increase sales and revenue. Therefore, you need to set up KPIs or Key Performance Indicators that will inform you on whether or not you’ve created a relevant recognition program for your company.
Determine Eligibility Criteria
While a recognition program is meant for the company, not everyone should be part of it, at least in the same program. It’s best to create multiple programs that are independent of each other. And for each program, you need to set some eligibility criteria. So interns will have a separate program for themselves, and team leaders will have their recognition system.
Monetary vs. non-Monetary Rewards
Recognition doesn’t always have to be monetary. It can be as simple as something like appreciating someone for delivering a task before the deadline or sending a virtual gift for completing a service anniversary. Monetary rewards can be either cash bonuses on achieving a specific target or gift coupons used at retail outlets. It would help if you defined the rewards and the frequency.
Reporting and Analytics
Last but not least, the program should have reporting and analytics features. You can delve into it and see how many rewards were distributed and who received them. You can analyze these reports to derive meaningful data.
To get the most benefit out of employee recognition programs, you can let your employees organize and run the program. Especially in a newly-established startup or team, this would help the members get to know each other better. But it can do equally good for existing companies.
Creating a team culture is an ongoing process – and an evolving one. It would help if you changed the culture as per the company’s requirements. That means you’d have to tweak the employee recognition program as well.
