How to make your employees feel valued through reward and recognition

No one likes to feel unappreciated. Whether it’s a simple thanks for a job well done, recognition with an award or something as extravagant as an unforgettable incentive trip, it’s important to make sure your employees feel valued and reward and recognition can be a great way to achieve this. Now that so many of us are working remotely and having to engage with our teams in an entirely new way, letting your team know their work is seen and appreciated is more important than ever.

Most days, recognition comes in the form of a few words of thanks or a shout out among your team. Those things are priceless and can help employees to feel both valued and find a renewed enthusiasm for their work. Recognition can be spontaneous, emotional, unexpected, and is rarely tied to a fixed result. Reward on the other hand, can be more concrete.

Setting up schemes where employees can unlock rewards by reaching set targets or compete for once in a lifetime incentive prizes can be highly motivating for your team. Rewards come in all shapes and sizes and can be dished out in all sorts of ways too. They take recognition up a level and can have a positive impact on your business as well as your employees.

Whether through reward or recognition, making your team feel valued does more than make them feel good about themselves. Recognising talent and achievement where you see can have huge knock-on effects company-wide and, for relatively little investment, businesses can reap many and varied rewards.

6 benefits of rewarding your employees

Engaged employees

No organisation can work effectively without employees who care about the business. And now that so many are working from home, meeting in groups less regularly and simply have less face to face contact with their employers, keeping employees engaged is an absolute must. Recognising and rewarding people in your business is one of the nine key factors which helps to keep employees engaged.

Increased productivity

Happy employees are, on average, 12% more productive than their less cheery colleagues. Employees who are rewarded for their hard work and feel genuinely appreciated at work are more likely to feel happy with their situation too, and that can have a big impact on business outcomes. As the team from University of Warwick who conducted the research said, “Human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings.”

Build trust in company leaders

When your boss is just some distant figure who has no idea of your day to day achievements, it can be hard to feel motivated to meet their targets and even to feel genuine trust in their leadership. But with a little recognition of your own work, that relationship improves exponentially! According to a Globoforce survey, 86% of employees who have received some recognition say they trust their boss. In these trying times, the importance of building that relationship cannot be underestimated.

Increased profitability

Productivity and profitability go hand in hand, so employee engagement and satisfaction can help both to thrive. Every point on this list can pave the way to increased profitability for most businesses as when employees are rewarded for their work, their passion for their employer usually grows. This might mean working harder to win that next contract, looking for new ways to cut costs and supporting innovation on-house. That’s exactly why 56% of managers would consider rewards and recognition programmes an investment rather than an expense.

Great retention rates

Never underestimate the power of saying thank you. Businesses which are known for a culture of recognitions, have been found to have a voluntary turnover rate which is 30% lower than most. Praising employees and building an environment in which they feel appreciated means you can hold on to talented people as they build their career within your business, rather than beyond it.

Positive culture

Reward and recognition programmes are a perfect way to develop, or even build, a strong, positive culture from the inside out. Rewarding employees’ good work will encourage an environment where everyone feels appreciated and shows their appreciation for colleagues too. Build it into your culture for maximum effect.

At Penguins, we know how to make your employees feel valued.  Although the reward is key, we understand the psychology that sits behind ‘winning’ and know just how valuable simply being recognised for you work can be too. This knowledge, together with our expertise in creative, communications and reward and recognition programmes, means we are perfectly placed to craft a programme which will motivate your team.

We believe anything’s possible, so dream big, and reach out today. Get in touch with our expert reward and recognition team to find out how we can help you make your employees feel valued through a powerful reward and recognition scheme. Or find out more about how reward and recognition has changed by reading our in depth report The changing face of reward.