HR.com's State of Rewards & Recognition Programs and Tools 2024

Bottom Line

The bottom line is employee recognition is used by many companies, but it isn’t perfect with concerns around motivation and effectiveness. Overall, the benefits are clear.

Percentage of HR professionals agree that:

65% – Helping employee feel valued

49% – Increasing employee morale

45% – Improving company culture

38% – Enhancing the employee experience

37% – Increasing employee retention

31% – Rewards and recognition program are highly effective

Analysis

HR leaders have to set up their recognition program to work best for their organization. Upfront the leadership must have buy in and the partner you choose needs to be integrated and have their own training.

Challenges in employee recognition

HR leaders have five major concerns:

Cost

Companies are concerned by the cost of their programs. This is why the Recognize team has cost effective solutions to not increase costs but drive status, access, and power as motivators.

Concerns about Fairness

HR is concerned that managers and employees are not consistently recognizing leading to unfairness. That’s why with Recognize we remind managers every week of a different person in Recognize. Also, Recognize mechanics increase restrictions on number of times someone can recognize someone.

Loss of Engagement from those not receiving R&R

Similar concern as the previous one. Managers need to pay attention to the reminders in Recognize for an effective program.

Lack of Leadership Involvement

Leaders need to be reminded that positive reinforcement leads to more behaviors they want, plus Recognize is capturing data on skills and abilities across the organization. The data is being generated on the peer, manager, and director level.

Lack of Managerial Training on Best Practices

As new employees join, HR shouldn’t be tasked with training all managers and employees. That’s why Recognize has weekly trainings for Managers and Employees to learn how to Recognize and what to expect.

Tips for an Effective Recognition Program