Getting the buy-in you need to launch an effective employee recognition program

Editor's Notes

• #3: Raphael Brief bio CarolI’m Carol Fraser, Subject Matter Expert in Human Resources and Employee Engagement. I’ve been an HR executive for over 20 years, owned my own consulting firm for 12 and I am currently an HR leader for a large healthcare organization in New York. I’ve had the privilege to build HR programs in several public and private organizations throughout the world. As Human Resources and the employee populations have changed over the years, implementing programs for a multi-generational workforce that continues to recognize, reward and retain top talent is crucial to the sustainability and success of any size company. Emily I'm Emily Ciavolino, Director of Sales at Bonusly. I'm someone who enjoys my work. I feel lucky to have found connection and purpose in my career, and my goal is to help more people experience that by helping companies build great workplaces. A lot of what our sales team does is support program champions with the resources they need to get buy-in from other leaders at their company. My experience is that change starts with just one person in an organization who believes people are a good investment and who starts advocating and getting buy-in. Whether a company has no recognition program or an ineffective one, we help people build a case for it. I look forward to sharing what we've learned about getting buy-in and hopefully equip you to be the change-maker in your company.
• #4: Raphael We’re here to talk about the importance of employee engagement, how employee recognition impacts engagement and why it benefits your bottom line. We’ve invited Carol to join us today because of her extensive experience championing employee engagement initiatives, specifically recognition programs, in large organizations. So, why are you here? We’re going to run a quick poll right now to get to know you, our audience, a little better and we’ll do our best to tailor our conversation to your needs.
• #5: Emily Read out the question and answer choices [The HR.com rep managing our webcast will run the poll for about 40 seconds, aiming for about 50% of the live audience] If you’re here for another reason, let us know in the chat! [Poll results come in] Read out poll results Thanks so much, this is great context. Now, let’s get a little more context!
• #7: Raphael A lot of you have probably read or heard about the “future of work”. It’s a bit of a misnomer, because the future of work is already here, in the present. Because of technological, cultural, and economic changes, many things have changed from the 20th century: the social contract between employers and employees, the expectations of employees, the type of work being done, the tools being used to accomplish the work, and even the workplace itself. Combine that with things that *haven’t* changed, like human psychology, and companies are realizing that they really need to change their practices in order to attract, develop, and retain top talent. Carol, how have these changes manifested at your companies? Carol Globalization, Remote Work Environments, Generational influences of more frequent recognition, Social Media of have and have nots Any of these elements of workforce changes drive companies to be more innovative in their approach around culture and engagement.
• #8: Carol The investments we make into employees is costly. To lose those valuable trained employees is a direct impact to the bottom line. Ensuring employees have a positive, quality experience at work is key to retention. Raphael As rote work is automated or outsourced, and knowledge workers are increasingly in demand, the Employee Experience is emerging as a key to business success in the 21st century. Creating a great experience through the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment through termination, is shown to foster an employee population that is safer, healthier, more motivated, and more productive. Which of course drives profit and growth for the company. How do you know if you’ve crafted an excellent employee experience? There is no one way -- you need to combine surveys with exit interviews with turnover measurements, and more. But one measurement is key…
• #9: Raphael Carol, have you measured employee engagement at any of your companies? How?
• #10: Emily Employees that are more engaged are more likely to stick around and be productive. They’re also safer, healthier, more motivated, and take fewer sick days. Organizations that invest most heavily in employee experience are included 11.5 times as often in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work and twice as often in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Raphael Let’s get another baseline, this time specifically about engagement.
• #11: [The HR.com rep managing our webcast will run the poll for about 40 seconds, aiming for about 50% of the live audience] Raphael Read out the question and answer choices
• #12: Emily Engagement is positively correlated with workforce productivity, retention, safety, and more. To set some context, Gallup tracks employee engagement nationally, and finds that only 34% of US workers are engaged. [Poll results come in] Raphael Read out poll results These poll results and stats should help you get a benchmark for your org, but even if your org has higher engagement rates than what you see here, that doesn’t mean you don’t have work to do. If you were to take no more actions to improve engagement, your engagement scores aren’t going to stay at the same level. You need to be nurturing it continuously. When your Gallup Q12 employee engagement survey scores improve, the result is consistently better business outcomes.
• #13: Emily You might have been wondering when we were going to talk about recognition. Share as many of these stats as/if you see fit: Employees who do not feel adequately recognized are twice as likely as those who do feel adequately recognized to say they'll quit in the next year. 58% of professionals feel that leaders could do more to improve engagement through giving recognition 83% of respondents in a study featured in Psychology Today stated that being recognized for their contributions was more fulfilling than monetary rewards alone Workers who reported receiving meaningful recognition in the past 7 days are more than twice as engaged [per Gallup] Raphael Carol, is there anything you would add about the relationship between recognition and engagement? Carol Engagement can sometimes be fickle. Consistent and constant communications is a lever to maintaining and growing engagement. Engagement and communications, in my experiences, go hand in hand. Whether virtual or "in real life", leaders need to find the time to 'shout out' and recognize. In some surveys, communications is a very strong lever to recognition.
• #14: Emily Your program also has to have active employee participation. If only 5% of your company is participating in your program, or they’re getting non-specific recognition, like “good job, Carol”, then it’s not an effective recognition program. Raphael To clarify, effective recognition is timely, visible, specific, inclusive, frequent, and values-oriented.
• #15: Emily We mentioned “effective recognition”, let’s define what we mean by that. Effective recognition will make your recognition program meaningful, which is one of the key qualifiers of an effective program. It’s also important that your program be easy and fun for everyone to participate in -- keyword *everyone* -- employees at every level of your organization, including leaders.
• #16: Raphael Getting buy-in from your leadership team can be really tough. Carol, you’ve driven the evaluation, adoption, and deployment of a new recognition program multiple times. How have you generated buy-in from leadership to adopt a new recognition program? What objections have you had to handle? Carol Response
• #17: Raphael or Emily Connect these essential steps to what Carol covers on previous slide and in the intro to this section. Now, let’s talk a little bit more about these last two and how you can show your leaders why your recognition program will be effective (i.e., because it facilitates timely, visible, etc., recognition and because people will participate)
• #18: Emily Many forms of service anniversary bonuses, annual bonuses, and top-down recognition do not actually improve employee engagement. If your org uses any of these forms of recognition, it may be easier to convince your leadership team to re-allocate money from underperforming programs than to allocate new money. Carol, what less-effective recognition programs have you witnessed at your companies? Carol Response
• #19: Emily Just looking at one of the benefits of recognition -- reduced turnover -- shows that effective recognition can be enormously ROI positive. We created a free tool that you can use to calculate your cost of turnover that we’ll the link to at the end of this presentation.
• #20: Emily You need employee buy-in in order for your recognition program to be effective and successful. You don’t have a program if no one’s using it. Carol, what have you seen work for getting employees excited to participate in additional programs?
• #21: Raphael Carol, what was key to driving adoption of the program by your employees?
• #22: Emily We started this presentation talking about the importance of the employee experience. Keep that top of mind, because your recognition program is a benefit for employees -- it’s entirely for them, they’re the reason you’re doing it. Remember also that effective recognition programs are fun and easy to participate in. Carol, do you have anything to add? Carol Response Emily When you’re seeking employee buy-in, you’ll need your leadership team to know that they’re critical to the success of your recognition program. It can also be easier to get people excited about a company initiatives if their peers are already bought in: people might drag their feet into another HR top-down initiative but if you have program champions, your program can be employee-led. Here’s what program champions can do for you: Build anticipation for your program launch Announce the program in your all-hands meetings Send emails to staff Hang posters in your break rooms Share announcements in Slack or create a separate Slack channel Serve as a resource for the goals and details of the program Lead the way in giving recognition and actively participating in the program
• #23: Carol Share your examples Emily InVision is an entirely remote company, and they’ve had a lot of success with their recognition program by integrating it with Slack. Chobani has a diverse workforce in offices, retail locations, and factories. They’ve got kiosks set up in their break rooms to give factory workers who can’t have their phones on them quick and easy access to their recognition platform. To encourage 100% participation, Trendalytics has been highlighting employees who participate on Instagram and offering them additional rewards.
• #24: What we want to accomplish with this slide Summarize and reiterate the key points
• #25: Emily Recognition contributes to engagement, which supports business success
• #26: Raphael Recognition programs need meaningful participation to be effective Emily Remember that effective recognition is timely, frequent, visible, specific, inclusive, and values-oriented
• #27: Carol Convince leadership by building your case
• #28: Emily Your recognition program’s launch can ensure adoption and success
• #30: Raphael You’ll also be receiving a survey request from HR.com. Your feedback means a lot to us, so we’d really appreciate it if you’d take it!