Why recognition can be more important than benefits to increase employee engagement

What employees want from their employers is changing. Staff have switched emphasis from wanting tangible financial reward benefits to seeking recognition and status to get job satisfaction and affirm their sense of purpose for their career. This is particularly the case for the millennial generation.

In this pursuit of recognition easy-to-use, socially-biased communication is the key element in delivering this new focus for job satisfaction in a business.

Let’s face it, skilled people are overwhelmed by job offers and ever greater transparency in the job market is spoiling them for choice. So how can you make sure you retain your best staff? How can you demonstrate that you are a 'cool' company to work for, and one that puts its employees at the core of the business’s vision?

Nowadays, staff recruitment and retention isn’t just about attracting and keeping your best people with a couple of vouchers or awards once in a while, or a benefits scheme that they will look at on their arrival but never touch again. We are in a new era of technology enabled and accelerated change with new ways of thinking and sharing ideas and keeping up with the trend is where your employee expects you to be.

Employees want to be recognised for their hard work and be encouraged and praised so that they know that their role is well valued in the organisation in order to help validate what they are doing.

Many organisations have understood the mechanisms necessary to optimise the success and prosperity of their business. But being customer centric isn't enough. Instead the focus has to also be on the people who are the face of the business to the customer – being colleague centric.

Excited employees

Two studies show the importance of recognition in increasing engagement. The Harvard Business Review 2013 states that 72% of high performers rank recognition as having a significant impact on engagement.

Meanwhile the Gallup State of the Workplace 2013 study explicitly proved that for those companies where the supervisor focused on positive recognition (for their strengths), active disengagement fell dramatically to 1%. Furthermore, healthy behaviours are contagious. Employees' experience of recognition affects their inclination to provide positive feedback to others in their workgroups. This means that any strategy should seek to capitalise on this powerful chain of influence – since peer to peer recognition and good company social communication is key.

There are business oriented social media tools that can help with your communication and recognition efforts. WorkAngel for example is a mobile app that enables recognition, communication and benefits in a single colleague journey. It is working across our client base daily. One of our clients recently said that using it “boosted peer to peer recognition and caused a social buzz”.

This article was provided by WorkAngel.