Today’s workforce is digital doers who have traded the traditional 9-5 desk jobs for evolving professional roles that transcend time zones and physical presence.
As teams collaborate across the world, young professionals are reinventing the workplace and their expectations from it – with Gen Z particularly craving validation and recognition for their contributions.
Every employee applies their unique brand, personality, and skill set to the work they perform. Personalized rewards and recognition programs are the way to go to make their uniqueness feel seen and appreciated!
Consider this statement made by a top performing employee during one of our feedback sessions:
“My five-year journey here has been a productive and successful experience. The company culture is positive but not personalized. I am not sure how many people know of my contribution or achievements. While I have received monetary rewards which I am grateful for, a simple ‘thank you,’ or recognition from my peers would give me a better sense of achievement and pride in the value that I bring through my work.”
Happy employees make happier workplaces
How employees are valued for their work makes them want to stay at their current workplace and keep doing better.
In Deloitte’s 2018 report on Global Human Capital Trends, it states that while companies recognize a shift in employee expectation, only eight percent report that their company rewards programs are effective in providing a personalized solution.
To get the desired result from your employee recognition programs, it’s essential to meet employees where they’re at and in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Treat your superstars like Rockstars
Younger employees are socially conscious individuals, who want to do good beyond the workplace. Let’s go above material recognition and empower them to make a change through social initiative.
There are unique employee rewards and recognition ideas you could implement. It could be a simple note of appreciation, peer recognition, or celebrating an employee or team, virtually. You could also implement novel, yet impactful employee rewards, such as on-campus massages, a trip to wine country, a spa visit with a spouse/partner, fitness and wellness sessions, or VIP parking spots for a month.
Mapping your employees’ needs is one of the best ways you can create personalized employee recognition programs that truly appreciate their rockstar performance! In the example above, had the work of the top performing employee been recognized by her peers, maybe she would have had a better sense of achievement for the work delivered.
How automation helps to ease administrative challenges
Diversity brings the best out of the workplace, and also makes it very challenging to create personalized employee programs. Platform automation provides user-friendly dashboards to visualize data and analytics makes to help HR understand their employees better. You can use this data to streamline recognition and rewards programs that fit distributed teams and are custom-made to fit employee performance.
Make everyone a stakeholder of building a better workplace culture
From Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) and talent management professionals to HR professionals – let’s get them involved.
Thriving company culture is built when the stakeholders are actively invested in creating rewards and recognition strategy. With analytics built in, it is simpler for various stakeholders to determine if your rewards and recognition programs are succeeding and if you’re moving the needle on both employee engagement and company culture. By adopting an approach of continuous experimentation, you can also identify creative ways to achieve better alignment between reward strategies, employee preferences, and your company’s overall business goals.
HR thrives in employee success and satisfaction. Automating rewards and recognition programs relieves administrative burdens HR faces so they can focus on areas that matter to making a diverse and positive company culture.
Espresa is the first global culture benefits platform that elevates HR and people teams while engaging and igniting employee experience. Learn more about how Espresa can transform your rewards and recognition programs, today.
