Workplaces have changed, and so should the way you recognize your employees' hard work and success.Ensure employees feel happy and engaged.
How meaningful recognition improves employee retention
When productive employees leave your company, they hurt the business. Employee turnover comes with a price tag attached — a CAP Study estimates it costs up to 9 months of an employee's salary to replace them (and even more for senior executives), not to mention the impact on productivity as their new replacement ramps up. It can be challenging to quantify these "soft costs" of hiring and training a new employee, but they can have a significant impact on a business's bottom line.
Furthermore, Employee departures can also have a negative ripple effect on the culture of the teammates who remain. Their engagement may dip as they wonder why a coworker left (and might consider leaving themselves), and are likely to feel overworked as they take on increased workloads until the backfilled employee is hired and fully ramped. This ripple effect can lead to a significant uptick in disengaged employees, who as a whole cost US companies up to $550 billion a year in lost productivity.
Retaining top-performing employees is one of the biggest challenges employers currently face. Having consistent communication with your employees is critical for retention and for making sure they know you value and support them.Annual reviews with team members rarely have the effect you want on employee engagement and productivity--and as the workplace is evolving, with more people working remotely and outside the typical 9-to-5 schedule, we must change the way we recognize employees for their work. The companies that resist change when it comes to employee recognition are the ones that will struggle to retain top talent.
Here are three ways to modernize your recognition strategy to improve morale and employee retention:
1)Plan regular one-on-ones.
Employees crave regular feedback and recognition-- when you lament taking time away from your everyday responsibilities, you miss a significant opportunity. It's common for you to focus on getting through your email and avoid having real conversations with your employees, all in the name of productivity. The yearly cycle of feedback doesn't give employees the recognition and feedback they need to course-correct throughout the year.
2) Enable peer-to-peer recognition.
When peers are allowed to praise one another in an open forum, there's a particular pleasure triggered that has a higher chance of spreading throughout the organization. Peer-to-peer recognition provides a powerful way to reward others and create the culture you want.
3) Celebrate your values.
Some companies have their values branded on their headquarters' walls. Very few companies have created rituals that allow core values to become a part of the everyday experience.
One way you can add a ritual to your culture is taking time in your weekly meetings to share stories of how an employee has demonstrated the company values. It does not have to be a long process; most of the time, it takes less than five minutes to share a few examples of how someone has lived the values. As a leader, you will want to participate in these meetings to tune in on who is joining and entirely buying in.
Modernizing your employee recognition strategies will help your team perform better. Better yet, it will put your employees on a path to make an even more significant impact on your business.
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