The benefits of frequent employee recognition

Recognising an employee for the work they’ve done can have a positive effect on their engagement.

“An incredibly important way for managers to ensure that their team remain engaged is through recognition,” Matt Seadon, managing director APAC and EMEA at Achievers told HRD Australia. “That simple act of saying ‘thank you’, the simple act of recognising the work that the team is doing, is incredibly important.”

And with the rise of businesses embracing a hybrid or remote workforce, recognition can play a crucial role in helping employees feel connected.

“Employee recognition creates a sense of connection and a sense of purpose, particularly when you're remote or hybrid, where you may not be having that face-to-face interaction on the shop floor or around the watercooler,” he added.

Research from Achievers found that, for a lot of the time, organisations considered recognition and reward to be linked, Seadon said. And that to recognise someone means giving them a monetary or non-monetary reward such as a voucher or a cash bonus.

“But the really effective programs our research has demonstrated is the act of recognition,” he said. “It's the story that's told by that leader, by that manager about the work the individual is doing.”

And when it comes to recognition, one-off events or initiatives aren’t enough.

Frequent recognition

Companies that practice higher frequency recognition can see benefits across engagement and productivity.

“We talk about frequent recognition being at least monthly,” Seadon said. “It has a strong and positive correlation on employee engagement, productivity, and importantly commitment as well – the likelihood that someone's going to stay with an organisation. If you’re recognised once a year, for example, it quickly loses impact.”

According to Achievers’ 2023 State of Recognition: The Gratitude Gap report, employees recognised monthly are 36% more likely than those recognised quarterly to say they are engaged and productive and are 22% more likely to have high job commitment.

“What gets recognised gets repeated”, Seadon said.

“Recognition leads to repeat behaviours,” he said. “We know that those behaviours that are repeated, that's going to have a positive impact on those metrics that matter for the organisation.”

Seadon went on to say that because some companies tie recognition to a reward, they believe that doing it on a weekly or monthly basis can be really expensive.

“So they don't do it,” he said. “And it ends up being an annual or biannual cadence for celebration. Our approach is, if you take the reward out of the conversation, there's nothing to stop managers and peers from recognising each other on a daily basis and reinforcing those behaviours that have impact.”

Peer recognition

It’s not just up to managers to recognise employees — peer recognition can go a long way as well.

“The best programs include everyone in the program, and they let recognition flow every which way in the organisation, not just top down,” Seadon said. “Top down historically has come from the length of service, the big formal awards where a CEO or senior leader will bestow an award on someone once a year. That's not the power of recognition – those things are still important, they still have a role a role to play – but that positive feedback that you're getting from your peers can be incredibly powerful.”

Peer recognition can also have a stronger impact as leaders can’t always see everything that an employee does.  

“Your peers know the work that you do, they know the challenges that you're facing on a day-to-day basis, they know the obstacles that exist in the role potentially so they can have a deeper understanding,” Seadon said.