In the 1980’s there was a huge rise in organizations creating service anniversary programs to recognize their employees at certain milestones throughout their career, usually 5, 10, 15, 20+ years of service. This usually focused on some sort of company branded merchandise that might sit on their desk and collect dust for years to come. Don’t get me wrong, your employees certainly like to be recognized and rewarded for their loyalty and commitment to your company, but employees are more interested in contributing and being involved in things from day one, and certainly in years 1, 2 and 3. And while some might appreciate branded merchandise being picked out for them, most would prefer to be able to choose their own rewards.
It’s 2018 and the old work contract has changed! Employees are no longer trading in job security for job loyalty. And if they are not appreciated with ongoing recognition and learning and development opportunities throughout their tenure at your company, many employees will not stay with an organization for 10+ years anymore. Plus, when you don’t recognize and reward employees during the time they are with you they will be unmotivated and unengaged which can lead to lower productivity, higher turnover, and negatively affect your customer service – essentially you’re losing profits!
Read more about why If Your Employees Aren’t Engaged, You’re Losing Profits.
The vast majority of employees want to produce good results, learn skills that will improve their opportunities in the future, and get recognized for producing a good result.
The top companies in the workforce today catch their people doing things right day-to-day, minute-to-minute, all the time with a total recognition program. This is a program where you can recognize and reward your people on the spot, at every touchpoint, and at every milestone in their career.
Firstly, a total recognition program greatly expands the choice of reward options that your employees have to redeem for. They can accumulate points over time and save up to redeem bigger ticket items, or redeem right. With traditional service anniversary programs there is typically a fixed amount that your employees are able to redeem for, and even sometimes the rewards are already chosen for them.
A total recognition program is also great from an administrative perspective because it allows organizations to combine all of their running programs into one platform. For example, safety, service anniversary, learning, wellness programs etc. can all reside under one easy to use platform. This is also much better from the end user’s perspective because there is just one place for them to go. And from an administrative perspective, a total recognition program allows for easy budget tracking and has the ability to report on all metrics that occur within the platform, making it easy to stay on track with your business and employee engagement goals and objectives. A few ways you can engage your workforce with a total recognition program (versus just a service anniversary one) include:
- Peer to peer recognition (both monetary and non-monetary)
- Spot cards
- Leaderboards
- Sales and Service campaigns
- Surveys
- Learning
- Badging
- Birthday recognition/awards
- Health and Wellness Rewards
- Safety and compliance rewards
Read more about What You Need To Know About Building The Best Total Recognition Program. Total recognition programs enable your talent by improving morale and performance through recognizing positive behaviors at every touch point (not just milestone years). This reinforces positive behaviors in your workplace and drives employee engagement and productivity. So that your employees:
- contribute to your company’s growth from day one
- feel energized and engaged
- provide excellent services that makes your customer stay longer, buy more and refer others
- positively impact your bottom line
In fact, our clients across a variety of industries have found that implementing performance recognition programs provide results in the following areas:
- Customer retention and loyalty
- Employee Engagement
- Customer Centricity and Loyalty
- Attendance, Retention, Recruitment
- Employee Turnover
- Shrinkage
- Productivity
- Safety
- Quality
- Wellness
GES’s Total Recognition Programs GES brings together all the elements you need to create a successful employee recognition program, by engaging your leaders, delivering easy-to-use technology, providing awards people want with transparent pricing, and offering all of this at a truly global level with in-language and in-country delivery. Find out more about our programs here or get in touch at [email protected] for a demo.