3 Types of Employee Recognition Programs to Help You Create Yours

As an HR professional you play an important role in creating your company’s employee recognition program. You hold the information about your employees as well as essential information about the company that can be used for the creation of a flawless program that will benefit both parties.

You already know that setting up employee recognition programs can do wonders for your employees, making the company achieve goals quickly and effectively, and most importantly, keeping people engaged.

Before we jump into some samples of an employee recognition program, let’s have a quick discussion on the definition and importance of employee recognition.

What is employee recognition?

Employee recognition is a positive approach that aims to keep your employees engaged and actively participating in achieving company goals as well as developing their skills within the company. A successful employee recognition program would increase retention rates and keep the employees happy in the company.

Employee recognition can range from telling someone a simple “good job” to it being a full-blown company system. There are many ways to show employee recognition, but whatever program you create, it must show appreciation and trust to your employees.

In recent statistics, 17% of employees are “actively disengaged” and this is not what you want to happen to your company because if your employees are disengaged, they will be dissatisfied and disloyal that can lead to them leaving the company.

So you get it – it’s important to have a flawless employee recognition program to maintain your employees’ level of satisfaction and happiness at work – after all, we spend most of our time at work, meaning it has a big impact on our way of living.

Now, let’s dive into some samples of employee recognition programs that can totally boost your company’s existing ones – or you can create a new program with the help of the list below!

Traditional employee recognition

The traditional employee recognition program is the good ol’ manager to peer interaction. Meaning, only the managers get to recognize the employee who they directly supervise. This program is the conventional one – the recognition is kept within the manager-to-peer bubble.

When it comes to gift-giving, managers show their appreciation for the employees at a standard time such as birthdays and work anniversaries and their gifts are typically generic such as things that can be used by anyone in the office.

This type of program doesn’t usually bat an eye to good performance, instead employees get recognized equally through pre-scheduled events. In this setup, employees are rewarded merely for staying in the company.

As an HR professional, all you have to do in this kind of program is to take note of the employees’ special days through a shared calendar or through a spreadsheet and just track the days needed for the recognition.

Keep in mind that there are more innovative ways to appreciate an employee nowadays.

Basic sample employee recognition

Next is the basic sample employee recognition program, this type of program is commonly used by new and small businesses that might not have sufficient resources or budget to reward an employee, yet they care enough about their employees to find cost-effective, thoughtful, and innovative ways to recognize their staff.

In this program, it recognizes both the managers and the peers through small tokens and thoughtful words of appreciation and encouragement. However, if your allocated budget is not that much, the employees who had excellent performance can be recognized quarterly or in certain months to save on budget.

For the HR team, you manage all the recognition through the use of spreadsheets or the old pen and paper for specific reports. However, (not to toot our own horn or anything) if you want things easier, you can try our own Hezum services that are made to make your life easier in storing essential information.

All-In employee recognition

This employee recognition system is all-in – this should be the program that companies strive for since it is efficient, effective, and strengthens company culture in just a short amount of time.

With the use of this program, it helps the company attain great heights in the long run.

This employee recognition program recognizes all employees – peer-to-peer, manager-to-peer, and even peer-to-manager. This is the program that allows every employee to use the power of recognition and positive reinforcement to anyone who displays exemplary behavior.

Aside from the pre-scheduled rewards as well as the performance-based ones, another way to show appreciation in this program is to create a points system where the employees can use the points to redeem something for themselves.

So, even if the employee didn’t get to meet the quota for the month, he/she will still have redeemable points to use from her past achievements. In this setup, everyone is celebrated and the rewards are personalized depending on what the person needs at the moment.

The all-in employee recognition program includes the traditional form, the basic form, and additional innovative ways to show appreciation to your employees. With this program, your company shows that it values past employee performance (while knowing that recognizing employees does wonders for the company.)

This is the program that many modern companies should base their employee recognition program on – with this, employees will hopefully stay with your company for a long time and do their best since they know that you see their achievements.

3 Types of employee recognition programs: conclusion

Now that you’ve read about the three kinds of employee recognition programs, are you ready to form your own? With simple tweaks here and there, we are sure that you can create your own program that will benefit you and your employees.

Remember that employee recognition programs are not a burden to your team but a huge help in increasing your employees’ productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. We’ve shared three types of programs with you – the traditional, the basic, and the all-in – but at the end, it is in your hands as the leader to know what will benefit your employees the most.

Our advice? Create a program which everyone will benefit from – and sooner rather than later, your company will see an increase in your productivity levels and a decrease in your company’s attrition rate.