The rise of New Year reward underlines opportunity for year round recognition

While employee reward at Christmas is still a main feature of many employers’ recognition activity, it is also for a majority, the only foray they make into non-salary based reward for their people in the course of the year.

Research for our 2015 annual report into Christmas Reward and Recognition shows signs that this is could be set to change.

This year, in the run up to Christmas, we found that a quarter of employers aren’t just considering what they can do to give a festive thanks to their people. They are also looking into the New Year, considering how they can use reward and recognition to improve employee motivation and engagement when they return to work and experience the January performance dip.

This shift in thinking to a more strategic approach to end of year reward which balances the important act of saying thank you with the need to ensure employees stay on song from a performance perspective makes sense for employers who want to get more from the effort and money they expend each year.

I hope it will also get people thinking more broadly about how they can use employee reward to keep employees motivated through the remainder of the year.

Generations 2

That’s because although salary and benefits are rightly considered the aces in the pack for doing the job of attracting and retaining employees, non-salary incentives and reward are still relatively underused as a way of driving performance.

I don’t think this is down to a belief that they can’t deliver a positive impact in this way, but more because not enough employers take time to think through how and when they can be used effectively at other times.

I also think this a symptom of a broader problem which is the ‘recognition deficit’ where many managers and leaders fail to regularly praise and thank individuals and teams for a job well done.

The big opportunity for employers is to address this.

Reward and incentives are part of the solution but only as part of a bigger shift within the business to creating a culture of recognition where managers, leaders and individuals see a thank you for a job well done something as a day-to-day which is part of the fabric of the business – not just something which happens at Christmas.

This article was provided by Edenred.