In our 5 Recognition Trends for 2015 eBook, we share our employee recognition insights and what your organization can do to see results. This post is the final installment of the five-part blog series that covers each trend and its effect on employee engagement.
Trend No. 5 - The Links Between Recognition, Engagement, and Performance Get Stronger
Is a high-performance workplace a far-fetched idea? The short answer is no. While the workplace continues to change, cultivating high-performance is not out of reach. In fact, it is crucial to business success for organizations to strive toward an engaged workforce that performs at their best.
Every organization wants a staff of high-performing employees, but most only have a few. Getting your average performers to increase their performance levels and keeping your high-performers at their peak can only happen when the right performance management process is in place.
A strategic performance management process is made up of many elements; one being recognition. For organizations in which recognition occurs, employee engagement, productivity and customer service are roughly 14 percent higher than in those without recognition.
1. Recognize people based on specific results and behaviors.
2. Implement peer-to-peer recognition – not top down.
3. Share recognition stories.
4. Make recognition easy and frequent.
5. Tie recognition to your company values or goals.
The purpose of recognition is to inspire, encourage, and engage your workforce to participate and work together toward a common goal. Recognizing employees for what they do right reinforces that their work is valued and appreciated. It also leads to an increase in discretionary effort because they repeat the behaviors they are recognized for and inspired to do more.
A work environment without recognition will eventually lead to employees that lack engagement and productivity. So, it's no secret that organizations are struggling to find the magic formula that keeps their people engaged, so they perform better and produce more.
According to the Hay Groups "Engaging Hearts and Minds" Report:
- Highly engaged and enabled employees are 50 percent more likely than average to outperform their individual performance targets
- The best companies at engaging and enabling their people achieve 4.5 times the revenue growth of those at the other end of the spectrum
- Organizations with highly engaged and enabled workers also exceed industry averages for five-year ROA, ROI, and ROE – by up to 60 percent
- High levels of engagement and enablement can improve staff retention by up to 54 percent
Research already shows that there are strong ties between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and — ultimately — revenue growth. As more research is conducted, it only continues to show that employee recognition pays dividends.
Creating a culture of recognition can set the foundation for employees to thrive and help your organization achieve your business objectives. Companies with highly engaged employees see 22 percent higher profitability and 21 percent higher productivity.
Recognition is simple and has the ability to move the engagement and performance needles off the charts. 2015 affords the opportunity to grow your recognition program to engage more employees, increase employee satisfaction, and drive better results.
