How to adjust your reward and recognition strategy to ensure it remains competitive
A reward and recognition strategy should always be evolving and moulding to the times that businesses are in. Think how contrary the corporate landscape was during Covid-19 times, and a time when your organisational targets were far exceeded, and business was flourishing. This is not to say that strategies need to be adjusted weekly or even monthly, but a status review focusing on what’s working best presently, and what's now superfluous, needs to be factored in to remain competitive. To be most effective and efficient, reward and recognition strategies should be adjustable and adaptable and not set in stone.
With this in mind, an employee reward and recognition strategy is no longer a buzz word nor a nice-to-have, but rather something which many organisations have incorporated into their overall organisational strategy. Due to the diversity of employees – geographically and demographically – a successful strategy should not follow a one size fits all approach. HR and management teams need to take into account the cultural norms, geolocations and lifestyles of all its employees, together with the business objectives and values.
There is a plethora benefits when such a programme is effective, including and not limited to, increasing productivity and job satisfaction, enhancing teamwork and increasing employee retention, as well as lowering the rate of absenteeism and stress. Reward and recognition programmes should constantly adjust and pivot as and when necessary.
How to adjust your reward and recognition strategy to remain competitive?
Think about how your recognition solution can be scoped to strengthen your other key strategic engagement priorities, particularly those relating to:
- Employee communications: how can you strengthen the link between recognition and communication with your employees? Perhaps communications need to feature more information about employee recognition and the organisational value propositions, and how best to align these values with business objectives.
- Performance management: employees need to understand the correlation and interdependencies between their performance and how it will impact how they’ll be recognised and rewarded.
- Talent management: if management and team leaders ensure employee retention and satisfaction, how would this positively affect their reward? As recruitment, training and replacing employees are more costly and challenging than meets the eye.
- Health & Wellbeing: when employees feel valued, recognised and acknowledged for all their efforts, they are generally more engaged and positive about their role and the company. On the flipside, when employees feel burnt out, overworked and undervalued, their health and wellbeing suffer, and so too will the organisation as a result. Recognising a job well done and saying thank you can make or break your employees.
- Learning & Development: when organisations encourage their employees to expand their skills, and offer them training and development courses, this shows how organisations can remain competitive with upskilled staff with top-notch expertise. As employees grow and develop within an organisation, recognising and rewarding them accordingly can only bring success.
How to adjust your reward and recognition strategy to align with key business objectives?
Think about some of the known ‘tension points’ across the organisation and how your reward and recognition strategy can be scoped to address some of these tensions:
- Team collaboration: teams are highly interdependent functions that plan work, solve problems and make decisions together. A team has the potential to be the core unit where real collaboration, togetherness and creation emerges from. However, there is always the threat of interpersonal conflict, unclear boundaries and undefined goals which can rock any team structure. Strategic reward and recognition can play a substantial role in ensuring that teams function with respect, in accordance with organisational objectives, and that each member performs as a unique piece of a greater whole.
- Remote teams, individuals and job functions: the corporate landscape is not how we know it to be. Covid-19 overturned workplaces and schedules, responsibilities and processes. Teams are no longer all sat together working 9–5 within an office. Job functions may have merged or adapted to the current times, and a lot of uncertainties fill the air. Ensuring employees are rewarded and recognised accurately and in a timely fashion keeps them as motivated, engaged and productive as possible. Without any recognition in such bleak times, team morale would plumet and absenteeism would rise.
- Familiarity with company core values: employers are constantly looking at core values and behaviours that can be reinforced via recognition, both in terms of how these might benefit the organisation and how they can foster greater employee engagement. Rewarding and recognising such values can help align employees with the organisation’s objectives. For example, if innovation is a value, reward an employee/team for innovating a solution which will save the business time and money.
It goes without saying that obvious achievements such as a new business win, or hitting a big milestone, are of course valuable to the company. But when organisations adapt to current times and think out of the reward box by considering other attributes that are appreciated, then these should be rewarded too. Integrity, loyalty, kindness…these are all important to your company culture and staff morale. Notice people who excel at the ‘softer’ stuff, and ensure they are recognised and rewarded as well as the high achievers, because together these elements will ensure you remain competitive.
Employee reward and recognition can help boost employee engagement and business success, especially when it is aligned with key business objectives. Download our free e-book on how to build an effective recognition strategy to find out more.
This article is provided by Xexec.
In partnership with Xexec
Xexec is the UK's leading Reward and Recognition and Employee Benefits provider.