How can HR leaders use reward and recognition to engage talent?

Almost half of employees confirmed they’d leave a company that didn’t praise or thank them enough for the work they did, according to recent research.

Reward Gateway’s new study of HR workers, employees and managers in Australia found that 63% of employees would rather work for a company that had a culture where people were praised and thanked regularly for doing good work, than for a company that paid 10% more but offered no praise or thanks.

“Despite agreeing that a recognition and reward program would help to drive business results and positively impact employee retention, many managers are failing to recognise their employees effectively,” said Kylie Green, SVP of Consultancy at Reward Gateway.

Moreover, only 30% of managers strongly agreed that their company praises or thanks employees for the good work they do based on their company’s values, and almost a third agreed that they struggle to find the time to give out thanks and praise.
“With HR leaders knowing there is a gap, recognition and reward programs are on their priority list,” she added.

So does this mean that HR leaders currently aren’t maximising the impact of their recognition and reward programs?

According to Green, it means that it is important to not only implement employee recognition and reward programs, but make sure employees and managers are able to deliver them successfully.

She cited the Reward Gateway research which shows that the top frustrations HR leaders have with their recognition and reward programs are:

• It doesn’t allow for continuous or immediate recognition
• It’s too generic and
• There is too much manual process

Indeed, Green and Reward Gateway’s Content Journalist Joy Adan will be featuring in the upcoming Reward Gateway webinar: How HR leaders attract, engage and retain talent with an innovative recognition and reward strategy.

“In our webinar we’ll be discussing how HR leaders - including Jennifer Bass, Employee Experience Manager at Cuscal who’ll be joining us - are overcoming their challenges and innovating their recognition programs to attract, engage and retain their top talent,” Green told HRD.

“We’ll also explore trends in continuous, multi-directional recognition and its importance for a multi-generational workforce, and the must-have components in continuous, multi-directional recognition and its importance for a multi-generational workforce.”

The Reward Gateway webinar will take place on Tuesday, 30 July at 11:00am. To register, click here.