Effective Employee Recognition for Remote Employees in 2022

Importance of Recognition for Remote Employees

Human beings crave appreciation by nature. They want to be appreciated for their efforts and contributions. This is even more true for the employees in a workplace. But when it comes to remote employees, the importance of employee recognition increases manifold, as, without it, they can feel lonely and isolated. Instead, you need to make them feel engaged, valued, and appreciated. They will feel really happy and satisfied with their work when you’ll recognize their work by providing them with proper employee recognition.

Also, remote employees might feel that their work isn’t getting appreciated enough due to them not being present in the workplace. They might feel the need to prove themselves productive in front of their peers and higher-ups, and they might often feel that their efforts and hard work are going unnoticed. If they often get recognition from the management, it will work as a reassurance that their contributions are seen and appreciated.

Employee recognition must be an integral part of any company culture, and remote employees must also receive recognition in a timely and meaningful manner. It will help them build healthy relationships with their peers and the management. That’s why the higher-ups of a company must think of innovative, engaging, and interesting ways to recognize remote employees.

Ways of Providing Recognition to Remote Employees

Let’s have a look at the ways you can provide employee recognition to your remote employees in a meaningful, innovative, and engaging way.

Following A Structured Orientation Process

It takes time for a new employee to understand the company’s vision, values, and missions. While hiring remote employees, make sure that they don’t get overburdened with expectations and work from the very first day. It’s important that they get enough time to adjust to the company culture and feel comfortable.

Since remote employees don’t share the workspace with their colleagues, they don’t get much opportunity to connect with other employees of the company. This can make things difficult for remote employees, as they hardly get the chance to get engaged with their colleagues and the company.

To ensure that your new remote employees feel valued and comfortable, you can follow a properly structured orientation process. You can focus on certain points during the onboarding process to help them understand the company and its culture, resources, and employees. They will get familiarized with the new work environment easily in this manner.

Offering Development Opportunities

Doesn’t matter if an employee is working physically at the office or remotely; they always value professional growth highly. Around 30% of employees think that their opportunities for professional growth got reduced due to the pandemic, as there was a lack of in-person seminars, conferences, and other industry events. You can help your remote employees by providing them the opportunities to join various online courses, conferences, seminars, or other events that will help them with their growth. This will also make them feel highly valued.

Providing Feedback Regularly

If you want to keep your remote employees engaged with the company, it’s essential that you maintain constant communication with them. Your remote employees might start to feel anxious and unsure of their performance and get less productive if you only maintain minimal communication with them through emails. You can try maintaining a proper communication with them by providing them with feedback on a regular basis.

Doesn’t matter if your provided feedback is positive or negative; it will help your remote employees have clarity about their work and performance. As a result, they will also have peace of mind and room for development. They will understand the value they add to the company through their work and their position in the company. All of these will make them feel valued and recognized, so you can use feedback easily as a part of your employee recognition process. Your remote employees will also feel motivated to work harder and bring in better results by improving their work if they get timely feedback.

Offering Flexibility

These days a lot of employees prefer remote working opportunities as they get the freedom to operate from their preferred working environments. It also provides them with additional time for their personal affairs and recreations. People usually switch to remote work so that they can have flexibility regarding their working location and working hours. It also helps them manage enough time for their personal life.

You can offer your remote employees flexible work hours instead of forcing them to work on your pre-defined schedule. If they get the opportunity to choose their working hours, it will make them feel highly valued and appreciated. It will get them more engaged with their work and feel more motivated.

Investing in Technology

You can recognize your remote employees effectively by implementing innovative and fruitful technology solutions, which will make the work a lot easier for them. You can go for various software and tools these days that will help you run different work and projects of your company smoothly.

You can have reliable, secure, and immediate access to all the data and information of your company by investing in technology. This will help your remote team access them easily from any place in the world. Also, they will be able to sync their work easily with their colleagues with the help of these tools. It will also help them stay organized. And you will be able to easily track the progress of work and various projects through these tools and software.

You can provide them with recognition easily with these tools, as many of them have special virtual recognition features. Most importantly, it will make communication between you and your remote employees a lot easier.

Prioritizing Two-Way Communication

You can provide employee recognition to your remote employees in a valuable manner by prioritizing efficient communication. You can ask for their feedback and ideas about certain projects instead of just assigning them different tasks. It will make them feel involved and valued. You can ask for their opinions on how a project could be improved or done in a better way. This way, it will build trust among your remote employees and encourage them to collaborate more with other employees. You can also try to be transparent with them about different challenges and the company’s current state. All these will make them feel that they have a proper role in the company.

Showing Gratitude Virtually

You can show your gratitude to your remote employees just by saying a simple “thank you.” Even though it might seem an obvious thing to do, it’s a great way to recognize their efforts and make them feel appreciated. It can make anyone’s day better. When your remote employees are highly exhausted and stressed with their work, such small acts can do wonders in terms of making them feel happy.

Social Media Shout Out

You can publicly appreciate and recognize your remote employees by giving them social media shoutouts. Social media platforms work as a perfect virtual tool for appreciating the efforts, achievements, and good performance of your remote workforce. It can reach a broader audience easily and is also cost-effective. Public recognition can highly motivate people, especially when it involves their peers. Since your remote employees are deprived of the usual peer connection and peer-to-peer recognition, it is even more important to recognize remote employees publicly.

Providing Virtual Experiences

Your remote employees are more likely to miss different events that will provide great joy and excitement, such as concerts, festivals, etc. But there are also many music festivals, concerts, and stand-up shows happening virtually, as virtual events have become highly popular in the post-pandemic world. You can provide your remote employees with the opportunity to enjoy their favorite activities or events virtually, which will make them feel highly appreciated and valued.

Celebrating Work Anniversaries and Birthdays Virtually

While you might celebrate the special days of your regular employees at the office on a regular basis, you can’t simply forget the special days of your remote employees just because they aren’t present at the office. You should also celebrate their important days such as birthdays and work anniversaries as a vital part of your company culture. You can virtually celebrate those anniversaries for your remote employees and turn them into something memorable by taking extra steps to make them feel appreciated, valued, and recognized.

To celebrate the occasions, you can host virtual parties and get all the company employees to take part and deliver sentimental messages. You can send cake, snack baskets, or goodies to their home to make them feel special. You can also provide them with other virtual benefits such as reward points, electronic gift cards, etc.

Employee Wellness

You must prioritize the health of your employees, including the remote ones. Your employees are a vital part of your company, and you must make sure that they are in good health to deliver their best. To make sure of that, you can make employee wellness a crucial part of your employee recognition program. You can provide your remote employees with several virtual wellness benefits that won’t only make them feel recognized and appreciated, it will also make them feel highly valued. These virtual wellness benefits are-

• Healthy snack hampers
• Meditation App Subscriptions
• Fitness Bands
• Care packages consist of masks, sanitizers, and other important health-related stuff.

Final Words

Providing your remote employees with proper employee recognition will help you build trust and long-term relationships with them. Your remote employees require special attention from you, as they don’t get a lot of opportunities that regular employees might get. You’ll need to make them feel motivated and valued by going through special measures. You can do so by implementing a proper virtual employee recognition program for your remote employees, and you can easily include the above-mentioned measures in your program. These will also get them highly engaged.