5 Best Practices for Employee Recognition Programs

1. Have a clear objective

Be specific with your employee recognition program’s objectives.  

• Why does your organisation want to implement an employee recognition program?  
• What are some meaningful ways you want to recognise employees?  
• Which benchmarks do you want to improve with your program? Retention, employee engagement, productivity, and/or your bottom-line are all great metrics to track.

Having solid answers to these questions will give your team a much stronger foundation on which to build and support a recognition program. And it can lead to impressive results.

ICF, a leading consulting firm, wanted to better connect employees to ICF’s mission of helping the world solve some of the most complex challenges. The ICF team knew a peer recognition program would help employees spotlight and reward teammates for embodying ICF’s mission and values.

With this clear objective in mind, ICF launched its You Matter recognition program, powered by Culture Cloud, to its 9,000-employee base. “The You Matter program helps to reinforce [ICF’s] mission and culture by recognising our people for their collaborative efforts,” shares the VP of Talent.

ICF’s program has seen incredible results, with recognition predicting employee turnover 91% of the time. Employees are consistently recognised for “living in line with ICF values,” which is directly tied to ICF’s initial recognition goal.  

Employee recognition at ICF has also doubled the likelihood an employee would stay with the company long-term.  

ICF’s employee recognition program predicts employee turnover 91% of the time.

2. Keep recognition personal and timely

Personalised recognition will always be more meaningful than something generic. When your organisation sets up its recognition program, encourage leaders to learn and understand their employees’ recognition preferences. This will allow leaders, and your HR team, to help tailor recognition to something employees actually want to receive.  

It is also important for recognition to be shared and given in a timely manner. When positive behaviours are acknowledged while they are still fresh, it reinforces those behaviours and ensures employees know exactly what they are being recognised for.  

There are many opportunities to recognise employees in a personal and timely way. Here’s a few ideas to start you on the right track:  

Employment milestones

• New hires ‍
• Promotions ‍
• Work anniversaries ‍
• Retirement

Learn how to celebrate every employee milestone, from hire to retire.

Company milestones

• Product launches ‍
• Company anniversary
• Meeting company goals ‍
• Mergers or acquisitions

Culture Cloud by O.C. Tanner makes it easy to acknowledge employees’ collective efforts whenever your company reaches a milestone.

Life events

• Birthdays
• Graduation
• Marriage
• Birth or adoption of a child

Culture Cloud by O.C. Tanner supports recognition solutions for achievements and milestones that happen outside office hours.

Meaningful moments

• A job well done
• Achieving a goal
• Driving positive change
• A big client win ‍
• Employee Appreciation Day ‍
• National Boss’s Day
• Industry holidays (Manufacturing Day, Nurses and Hospital Week, etc.)  

Looking for more inspiration? Check out our guide for when (and how) to give recognition to employees.

3. Ask your employees for input

Gathering employee feedback about your employee recognition program is crucial for its continuous improvement and effectiveness.  

By soliciting input from employees, you can gain valuable insights into what employees are looking for in a recognition program. Or, if you have an existing program, you can see what is working well and which areas need enhancement.  

This feedback can be collected through surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one interviews, ensuring a diverse range of perspectives. Regularly reviewing and acting on this feedback shows your employees that their opinions are valued and that your organisation is committed to creating a recognition program that truly meets their needs and preferences.

Employee input in action

AAA—The Auto Club Group (ACG) had a long-standing employee recognition program, but it needed a refresh. “We’ve been doing recognition for over 40 years. We’ve seen tremendous growth. Our world has changed, our population has changed, our products and services have changed,” explains ACG’s AVP of HR Optimization.

ACG’s recognition team knew the first step they needed to take in reinventing and launching a new recognition program was gathering employee feedback. Through surveys, the recognition team discovered two main concerns: inclusivity and accessibility for ACG’s 9,000 online and offline employee workforce.

The new program includes physical and digital awards, access to the program via mobile devices, and integrations with common tools like Microsoft Outlook and Teams.  

These improvements in recognition inclusivity and accessibility, based on employee feedback, resulted in 97% of employees receiving recognition, and helped ACG receive Top Workplace awards 4 years in a row.

Hear all of the lessons learned from 40 years of employee recognition at AAA—The Auto Club Group.  

4. Choose an employee recognition partner

It’s easy to implement, or improve, an employee recognition program when you have the right recognition partner at your side. With the help of an experienced employee recognition partner, your organisation can:

• Test a pilot program before opening it up to widespread use. ‍
• Customise the platform to suit your company culture.
• Communicate the purpose of the program.
• Train users on how (and when) to use the platform.
• Get the ball rolling by giving out incentives to recognise others.
• Regularly encourage program use by publicly publishing achievements. ‍
• Help managers by setting certain goals and tracking usage of the platform.
• Track and report on program progress and successes.
• Recommend best practices and advice to enact at your organisation.

5. Measure your recognition program’s effectiveness

Without proper measurement, you’ll never really know if your employee recognition program is meeting its objectives.  

There are many ways to measure your employee recognition program’s effectiveness, or return on investment (ROI):

• Employee experience impact: How does recognition affect your employees’ day-to-day experience with your company? ‍
• Company culture impact: How does recognition affect workplace culture? ‍
• Business impact: How does recognition affect key business metrics?

Remember to think back to your original recognition objectives and keep track of them. Is your program improving the benchmarks you initially outlined? Are your employees using the program? Are you implementing the feedback employees have shared with you?

Culture Cloud by O.C. Tanner provides employee recognition reporting to measure program effectiveness, including the Flight Risk Dashboard: a view of employees at risk of leaving your organisation based on their recognition history.

Consider Culture Cloud Recognition by O.C. Tanner

The results of an effective recognition program are impressive—78% of employees are highly engaged when they receive recognition from their organisation (compared to 34% who get weak recognition).

Culture Cloud is O.C. Tanner’s powerful employee recognition program. This platform is inclusive to all employees, no matter where and when they work. Here’s what you can do with Culture Cloud Recognition:

• Spark participation with nudges and tips
• See great work go viral with social recognition
• Celebrate company milestones with group point deposits and custom awards
• Set team initiatives and accomplish them with aligned effort
• Celebrate life’s big events and meaningful moments
• Reward healthy habits using wellbeing incentives
• Foster face-to-face connections and co-creations that encourage ongoing progress
• Empower employees to give with a self-service budget tool
• Gather feedback to help benchmark, track, and adapt to employee sentiment

Keep great employees longer and help your culture thrive. Get started on implementing these employee recognition program best practices and request a Culture Cloud demo today.