Want to know what separates the best businesses from enterprises that flounder? Employee recognition: It’s true!

At the best businesses and brands, employees feel that management recognizes that and are always rewarded for hard work and work anniversaries.

Let’s review how to practice digital employee recognition and the benefits of doing so:

Employee Recognition — What Does it Mean?

Management is so much more than assigning an employee a number, name tag, and uniform. Employee recognition is about seeing them for who they are and recognizing when they do great work, especially top performers who go above and beyond the call of corporate duty.

In other words, employee recognition means:

• Ensuring that your entire workforce knows that you’re sensitive to their needs and desires.
• Singling out high-performing employees and rewarding them when necessary.
• Inviting remote employees to feel like part of the office and ensuring that they never feel like they are socially isolated.

Employee recognition is highly important for maintaining a strong workplace culture. With a healthy workplace culture, a brand’s seen as a desirable place to work and has an easier time attracting top talent.

By practicing ongoing employee recognition and facilitating positive interactions between employees, your company will attract new workers and inspire current employees to stick around even when faced with significant challenges.

Furthermore, employee recognition is vital for maintaining a strong employee experience and stellar employee engagement. Real-time recognition, such as through platform integrations with Slack and other tools, enables your company culture to facilitate birthday celebrations, employee rewards programs, and incentives tracking.

Beyond bringing accolades to individuals, don’t forget about company-wide employee recognition programs! Taking a moment out of the day to ensure everyone has a moment keeps a company culture inclusive. We’re not saying that to lump everyone in on the same day. Although, you absolutely will make your team’s year by throwing an epic Employee Appreciation Day celebration every year.

Beyond Employee Appreciation Day, we’re talking about milestones — work anniversaries, birthdays, onboardings — all these days deserve a round of applause.

The Importance of Digital Employee Recognition

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If your company is like many others, you’ve hired a lot of remote or digital workers over the last couple of years. While this is great for your bottom line and may lead to increased organizational flexibility, it also comes with some challenges.

For example, remote workers oftentimes don’t feel as connected to the office or brand as their in-person counterparts. Zoom and Microsoft Teams may offer customizable backgrounds, but they don’t quite replace classic workplace rapport. For this reason and more, digital employee recognition should be a top priority for lots of executives.

Digital or remote employees may need additional attention or appreciation compared to in-person employees due to their physical distance: They don't spend all day communicating or connecting with their peers or superiors.

Unfortunately, many companies only have programs that benefit or recognize in-person employees, like employee of the month programs tend to happen more with in-office organizations. That can and should be different.

Types of Digital Employee Recognition

Two main types of employee recognition are recognition from management (like a reward from one's boss) and peer-to-peer or P2P recognition.

Recognition from Management

Recognition from management is highly critical for a few key reasons:

• It shows employees that management is involved and interested in the day-to-day operations of the company. Managers that recognize employees are almost always hands-on, attentive bosses.
• It allows managers to support employees as they grow and progress, helping them identify employees to promote to management positions later.
• It gives managers a chance to reward high-performing employees personally, which sticks in the minds of hard workers much more than impersonal emails. Perhaps record a personal video and send it along with your reward of choice, like luxury digital gift cards — where substance meets sentimental.

Peer-to-Peer Recognition

Peer-to-peer recognition is, as you can guess, recognition that comes from one's peers. For example, say that a new sales team member does a stellar job securing a new client. The department manager or another salesperson then recommends that sales team member for a special reward or points out their success on the company's social media platform.

Peer-to-peer recognition can be as powerful as recognition from management. These kinds of programs are usually most effective when inspired from the top down. For example, management might need to send out a training video or bulletin explaining the value of building each other up.

If you already have a positive workplace culture, the odds are that peer-to-peer recognition takes place every day. But if you are still working on it, don’t worry. The right mindset, and a focus on rewarding employees that do excellent jobs, will naturally kickstart other workers praising their peers.

Culture of Recognition: What It Is and How To Create One

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We love to see our co-workers thrive and take initiative! We do our best work when our workplace culture is positive. While constructive criticism does have a home in offices remote and in-person, it should always start and end on a positive note. Giving someone a “kudos” on a job well done goes much further than a “What will you do better next time, though.”

You’ve probably heard of this term — “culture of appreciation.” The metrics don’t lie — when we love where we work, we’re inspired to think creatively and work diligently. A culture of recognition starts with following values from the top down, rewarding effort (not only results), and boosting up others.

From recognition software to company swag to perks like digital gift cards (from Prezzee), you’re well on your way to a healthy, happy workspace — virtual and in-person.

Recognition Software: How To Implement It

Speed things along by implementing employee recognition software. It's an excellent means to facilitate a culture of praise and support, especially if your workforce is split between in-office and remote employees (since the remote employees can log into the software as easily as on-premises workers).

Employee recognition platforms combine feedback tools and automated notifications for things like meeting goals or anniversaries onto a unified dashboard for everyone to see. It often includes dedicated recognition tools to easily provide service awards to employees who meet certain milestones.

Automated programs can send out emails or messages in company-wide Slack channels notifying the whole team of an individual’s birthday or fifth-year anniversary with the company.

Finally, look into a rewards platform that offers performance management and workflow tools. The best employee recognition software can help you fulfill your company values in new ways, as well as collect employee feedback and bolster employee retention simultaneously.

Gift Automation Programs

That’s not all you can automate. Business leaders are busy, to say the least. Between big-picture ideas and putting out little fires, you never want to forget an important work anniversary, but there’s only so much time in the day.

That’s why we started Prezzee for Business API. Set it up, and let it run! Over 4,000 companies rely on Prezzee to send eGift cards to employees, VIP clients, and more. Our rewards catalog is ever-growing, with hundreds of options in every category.

Why Implement a Digital Employee Recognition Program or Policy?

Implementing a digital employee recognition program takes a little work that makes a big impact. With a range of pricing options, there’s definitely one out there that fits the bill…pun intended.

Let’s review why before we get into the how:

Demonstrate Your Company’s Core Values

First and foremost, recognizing digital employees helps to demonstrate your company’s core values, like inclusion, support, and dedication.

After all, if our companies are truly inclusive, everyone who works under our brands should receive attention and recognition for their results, right? Right.

Reward Employees for Hard Work

But beyond that generalized benefit, digital employee recognition helps you reward employees for their hard work no matter where they happen to put their noses to the grindstones.

Say that a remote worker does a fantastic job solving a customer service issue. They manage to keep the customer in the fold and come back for another purchase. That’s certainly worthy of celebration!

We can reward that employee by:

• Recognizing them publicly by giving them a social media shout-out.
• Pointing out their success the next time you have a video conferencing call.
• Giving them a reward, like an eGift card from Prezzee or a half-day off (at Prezzee, we call it a Friyay).

Employees need to know the rewards for hard work to stay motivated. In truth, rewards are sometimes more valuable than pay, at least when pay scales are fairly consistent across the industry.

If all the companies in a given niche pay employees the same amount of money, employees will only flock to the company that sets itself apart from its competitors. There’s no better way to do that than to highlight that you reward employees for stellar work.

Welcome New Employees Into the Fold

Your human resources’ efforts should include more than just healthcare and other benefits — you should support the overall well-being and development of your employees, personally and professionally. Digital employee recognition can help you achieve that goal.

In the remote work onboarding process, new remote workers may feel a tad isolated or separated from their peers. To some degree, this is natural and unavoidable. Those remote employees won’t exactly be able to take a tour of the office on their first day at work. But luckily, we can help fix that with a carefully-formulated onboarding process.

Onboarding is critical. While people often say that first impressions are often wrong, a poor onboarding experience tends to speak volumes. Research shows that a negative experience in onboarding can result in a 12% higher employee turnover. This boost in turnover isn’t only chaotic on the individual or team level; it can cost companies 100 to 300% of an employee’s annual salary.

For example, say that you hired a new remote worker, and you want to make sure that they are settling in nicely. Instead of waiting for a progress report from their supervisor or mentor, consider giving them a video call yourself and speaking to them face-to-face.

A few minutes of personal attention from the manager could help prove to the remote worker that they are seen, heard, and truly a part of the team. Don’t forget to also invite that team member to videoconferencing meetings throughout the week; that can also streamline or smoothen the onboarding experience for the new hire.

Additionally, since your remote workers won’t have the luxury of working in a fully furnished established office environment, you can send along an eGift card to home supply stores. Top choices could include Best Buy, Pottery Barn, Staples, and more.

Unify the Office/Workforce

In a broad sense, recognizing and appreciating digital employees helps to unify the office and workforce.

When you have half of your workforce, say, in an office and another half of your workforce scattered around the globe doing remote work, your company can feel a lot more segmented or smaller than it actually is.

By regularly recognizing digital employees, you'll remind the in-person employees that those remote workers exist — and that they do vital work for your organization, ranging from sales to customer support to web development and more.

Help Rising Stars Feel Motivated

There’s another niche benefit to recognizing digital employees as often as possible: being able to motivate and inspire rockstar workers.

Rockstar workers are motivated, ready to go from day one, and oftentimes have record numbers or results within their first quarter or year. In other words, they’re exactly the kinds of employees you want to stay at your company.

But what if those workers are remote? In that case, appreciating them and giving them the time and attention they need to thrive can be a little tricky.

Therefore, digital employee recognition and rewards programs go a long way toward helping those remote rock stars feel seen. For example, expand your employee of the month program to include remote employees. Or, maybe set up a separate program for remote employees only.

The more opportunities you give top-tier workers to thrive, the more they'll surprise you. You might even find a future manager or executive to promote among those employees!

Strive. Thrive. Recognize.

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Ultimately, digital employee recognition can provide comprehensive benefits throughout your workplace and for both in-person and remote employees. With the right recognition program and/or software, your workforce will feel more motivated than ever, resulting in a better bottom line in no time.

eGift cards from Prezzee can help you maximize the effectiveness of your recognition program or philosophy. With cards from hundreds of brands available, you can give each of your employees a gift they’ll love — check out our catalog today!

Sources:

5 Common Problems Plaguing Remote Workers And What To Do About Them | Forbes

Employee Motivation | Inc.com

What Does Poor Onboarding Really Do to Your Team? | BusinessNewsDaily

NATIONAL EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION DAY - March 3, 2023 | National Today

Here are the 5 Steps to Creating a Culture of Appreciation | HR Executive