Perhaps at no time in recent history has the focus been brighter for organizations on the importance of retaining their employees. A widespread labor shortage has touched every industry, putting pressure on employers to keep their workers happy and on the payroll. The United States is seeing its highest “quit rate” in the two decades since it began tracking the metric. With workers able to choose from a host of job options, the onus has shifted more than ever to employers to retain the talent that they have in house and keep them from wanting to search for greener pastures.
Compensation, including both pay and benefits, will always play a crucial role in keeping your workers, but they still only represent a piece of the pie. Among the core elements to worker job satisfaction is employee recognition, which plays a critical part in ensuring that team members feel that their good work is appreciated. Fryed Egg can help you strengthen your recognition practices to drive retention improvements in a variety of ways.
Valuing contributions
People spend a large chunk of their lives at work, and they want to feel as though it means something. Recognition programs take an important step toward making them feel as though all their efforts are impactful and important. Recognizing employees ultimately is about showing them that their good work matters – and that it is not going unseen and unappreciated. They will feel a stronger connection to their work and to their employer. They will feel motivated to go to work each day and continue to put forward their best effort. An effective employee recognition program will recognize meaningful work in every form – hard work, innovative thinking, cool response to a crisis, creativity, consistent competence, teamwork, supporting colleagues, and longevity, among other efforts.
Variety of efforts
Recognition programs can take on many forms – from the inexpensive and modest to the more substantial and rewarding. A robust recognition program will include an array of approaches across the spectrum. This can include simple verbal or written “shoutouts” complimenting employees, such as during a team meeting or routine teamwide communication, or a designated award, such as an employee of the month type of honor. The more substantial or valued the contribution, the more important it is to include a tangible award, such as a trophy or other emblem or a bonus of some kind. Fryed Egg, for instance, works with clients to develop branded items for employee recognition, such as plaques and pins for service milestones. Recognition efforts that feel unique and distinctive to your particular organization, such as through thoughtful branding of the honor, will feel all the more meaningful. Recognition also can have a public-facing component, such as by featuring standout team members in advertising or media pitches.
Ongoing and integrated
For an employee recognition program to be impactful, it can’t feel haphazard or half-hearted. It has to seem important to the organization and its manager for it to feel important to their team members – for them to trust it. If you don’t believe in it, why should they? Just as you want to be authentic in branding your organization, you want to be authentic in the way you recognize your team members. That means integrating employee recognition into your organization’s culture. Recognition can’t be a one-off, occasional thing that feels as though you’re going through the motions. It needs to be ongoing, concerted and intentional and not something that gets set aside when things get busy. Make sure that there is ownership of the process and that the budget and resources for recognition reflects its importance. Showing your team members that you appreciate them is no place to cut corners.
At Fryed Egg, we can help you build a strategy for a robust employee recognition plan, produce recognition events, and introduce new internal and public-facing ways to recognize employees. We help organizations strengthen their cultures and achieve meaningful results. If you want to see if Fryed Egg is the right agency for your needs, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.