Top tips for ensuring your recognition strategy is inclusive
1. Embed a culture of recognition
Recognition must be integrated into the organisational culture so that it’s seen as an everyday part of the employee experience. This means witnessing recognition daily across the organisation – in meetings, one-to-ones, employee communications, etc.
When recognition is a part of everyday culture and leaders use it for celebrating work anniversaries, everyday effort, and employees who go ‘above and beyond’, employees are 25 times more likely to have an above-average connection with their leaders. With only 17% of organisations having deeply embedded\/ recognition programmes, there’s clearly much work to be done.
2. Encourage everyone to give and receive
Every single person across the organisation must be encouraged to recognise their leaders, their teams and their peers. No-one should be excluded either intentionally or inadvertently.
For instance, in most employee recognition strategies, leaders play the role of recognition givers but rarely receive recognition themselves, making them feel undervalued and taken for granted. With 65% of leaders admitting that receiving more recognition from the people who report to them would improve their experience at work, it’s important to remember that leaders are employees too.
3. Ensure recognition is personalised
Tailoring the recognition to the recipient is crucial to making them feel valued. So ensure every recognition moment highlights why that particular person should be appreciated, and which of their distinct qualities are deserving of praise.
4. Provide the right recognition tools
It’s all very well encouraging everyone to give recognition. However, if the organisation doesn’t make recognition giving quick and easy, it’s unlikely to become an integrated part of the workplace experience.
A recognition platform that’s integrated into the apps employees use the most, such as Outlook and Slack, means that giving and receiving recognition can be part of employees’ daily flow of work. The streamlined nature of recognition giving means that the act of appreciation quickly becomes second nature.
5. Use analytics to identify potential biases
Recognition technology can not only streamline the giving and receiving of recognition, the data from the platform can help identify potential biases. For example, if certain employees regularly receive recognition from a manager and others receive recognition infrequently, why is this? Are some employees being excluded from receiving recognition due to managerial biase? With the data to hand, difficult conversations are easier to broach.
6. Teach leaders inclusivity
Leaders must be taught to lead through inclusion so they foster more inclusive environments. This is a skill in itself because it’s all too easy for leaders to create environments and situations that are more favourable to some employees.
As part of being inclusive, leaders must become skilled in effectively communicating to employees that their unique identities are appreciated and valued, and learn how to support each individual equally and fairly.
By introducing a staff recognition strategy, this is a simple and yet powerful means to support inclusivity. A recognition-led workplace culture in which personalised and authentic appreciation takes place daily, and both managers and peers can recognise and reward employees’ efforts and results, helps to avoid a culture of ‘favourites’.
Recognition also enhances employees’ sense of belonging, making the recipient feel an important and valued part of the organisation’s success - and strengthens workplace connections through the very act of giving and receiving appreciation.
Insights taken from O.C. Tanner’s Global Culture Report
In partnership with O. C. Tanner
Giving teams the integrated tools they need when, where and how they need them.
