In today’s competitive landscape, the experience employers deliver to their workforce is now more important than ever, with significant reputational damage at risk for those neglecting this. Competing to attract and retain the best talent requires a brand to stand out in their commitment to an empowered, supportive and inclusive workplace that genuinely values its people. Employee recognition is key to tangibly demonstrating this commitment.

Our partnership with Asda demonstrates the power of effective recognition and reward on their employee turnover rates, with those who are regularly outwardly appreciated for their work representing under a third of the overall staff turnover. This is a key example of how effective recognition, especially when elevated by reward, can be a crucial retention predictor, particularly in traditionally higher turnover, ‘revolving door’ industries such as Retail and those with predominantly frontline employees.

Employee recognition is also key in increasing collaboration across teams. Often, recognition is thought to fall to managers and leaders only, and whilst it’s important this is spearheaded by senior colleagues, an effective culture of multi-level recognition is crucial for championing a collaborative culture at all levels. Enabling colleagues to outwardly recognise and celebrate their peers’ achievements enables employees to feel seen and valued from multiple perspectives, whilst also creating a domino effect in inspiring others to replicate recognitions towards those they collaborate with.

Our brilliant customer, Emma Bridgewater, designed the ‘My EB’ platform with Rippl to optimise collaboration and recognition between their non-management colleagues, particularly crucial for a dispersed business operating across 7 different UK locations.

As burnout is a key challenge in today’s landscape, with two-thirds of employees reporting they experienced this in 2023, employers need to make proactive strides in creating a workplace that authentically champions its people’s wellbeing. Recognition represents a key pillar of wellbeing strategies in tangibly demonstrating employers’ commitment to the happiness and satisfaction of their workforce.

Whether it’s a simple ‘thank you’ or one elevated with reward, when employees feel valued for their work, they understand their contributions are appreciated by a business which values them. When recognition is embedded into the core of wellbeing strategies, inclusive of holistic support, tools and services, employees feel healthy and happy at work, empowered to deliver their potential.

An effective employee recognition platform will show real-time data surrounding programme adoption and engagement. This will include the percentage of the workforce that has activated a user account within the platform and downloaded the mobile app, plus summarise an overall programme engagement level and what typical user activities look like.

This should be summarised as an active user rate, with the ability to break this metric down by department and team to identify trends across different areas of the business, and identify opportunities for improvement. Of course, by investing in an employee recognition platform that’s mobile accessible and enables push notifications, overall programme adoption and engagement rates will be optimised.

Alongside the data metrics, feedback from all levels of the business is crucial in providing insights around the recognition programme’s impact. This can be feedback collected directly around employees’ experience of their programme itself, as well as assessing overall satisfaction levels of the business more generally.

Gathering feedback should collate quantitative metrics around engagement and job satisfaction, as well as offer qualitative opportunities for new improvements and ideas. Insights provided in annual engagement surveys should also see improvement since the employee recognition programme was implemented.