Employee recognition - tips to motivate and engage your employees

For any organization to be highly successful, it is important that it has talented employees who are motivated enough to achieve the desired results, and are highly engaged with a clear vision of short and long-term goals. However, generating workplace engagement is not an easy task. According to the Towers Perrin study conducted recently, it was found out that there are hardly one-fifth of employees who truly engage in their work, and "go the extra mile" to achieve results. The rest are ranged from disengaged (38%) to indifferent (41%). This feeling of detachment from the company has usually been seen as a large factor in why employees leave their jobs.

However, there are a variety of ways by which you can keep your employees motivated and engaged to their workplace. The two most common, and effective methods are- Rewards and Recognition. A recently conducted research indicates that companies, which rewards and recognizes their high performing employees, have significantly higher employee engagement that consequently leads to greater employee efficiency. However, organizations often struggle with how to effectively use their rewards and employee recognition programs to improve employee engagement.

Rewards

Rewards, both financial and non-financial, play a significant part in motivating employees. While monetary incentives may seem the obvious reward for high performance, they may not be viable for long-term or large-scale campaigns, as well as for smaller, and mid-size companies with limited budgets.

You need to think of different innovative non-financial rewards that can motivate your employees, and can put a positive impact on their sustaining participation in a variety of campaigns. Some good ideas of non-financial rewards can be, workplace perks, and assignments to develop and implement an idea.

Recognition

Besides rewarding, recognizing the efforts and performance of employees is also important. This can be done easily by implementing a customized employee recognition program, which can help keeping your employees motivated in a great way.  Unfortunately, not many managers realize the significance of such programs in the workplace. Studies indicate that an effectively implemented employee recognition program is likely to produce positive effects on the employee's performance. However, you must take care that the recognition program you choose for your organization is customized to fit the criteria you want to use for rewarding and recognizing your employees.

Given below are some tips that can be incorporated in your staff recognition program to keep your employees encouraged.

• Engaging in casual conversations with employees
• Praising them publicly for their good work
• Acknowledging their contribution during company meetings
• Writing a personal note to them, saying “thank you”.

With that said, keeping your employees always motivated and engaged to their workplace is highly important. Following the tips of rewarding and recognizing the efforts of your employees, you can really keep your staff motivated and make meaningful contributions.