Discussions about “employee connection” or “workplace connection” are happening all over the internet in the era of Covid-19 and the Great Resignation. People leaders have a sense that connection at work is important (especially in these extraordinary times) but often struggle to define what it actually is.
To improve employee connection, we need to understand employee connection—to define it in concrete terms.
See how your answer matches up with the nearly 400 HR professionals we surveyed.
The short answer: Very. According to our 2021 survey of almost 400 HR professionals and over 500 employees, employee connection is key to driving outcomes in retention, engagement, and managing remote or hybrid environments.
Our research also revealed a gap between what employees want when it comes to workplace connection and what employers are delivering. Almost 80% of employees want to feel connected to their company’s purpose and people, but most employees feel disconnected from their organization’s vision and values. And even more feel disconnected from their teammates and managers. That’s “The Connection Gap” and it’s an urgent problem.
Get the full State of Workplace Connection reportSee how your answer matches up with the 500+ employees we surveyed.
A meaningful recognition and rewards program can help you encourage and reinforce behaviors that will lead to a more connected workplace. Here are 4 best practices to help you drive connection through employee recognition.
Recognizing everyday contributions can be just as important as recognizing extraordinary contributions. This is why it’s essential to express employee appreciation frequently and in the moment.
You can make sure your team’s many contributions are recognized by nurturing an environment or building structures that facilitate frequent, peer-to-peer employee recognition. This can be as simple as creating a culture of gratitude and public praise or as robust as allowing employees to nominate colleagues for higher value spot recognition rewards.
Don’t waste your time trying to push employees to participate in a recognition program they’re not excited about. Focus your energy on developing a program that’s so enticing, they want to be a part of it.
One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is to include rewards in your recognition program. When there’s a tangible reward attached to a recognition moment, you’ll dramatically increase the impact of that recognition and continued engagement at work. Of course, you’ll want to offer rewards your people actually want. That’s where Blueboard’s experiential rewards come in.
Your organization is unlike any other. The individuals on your team are unlike anyone else. That’s why it’s critical to make personalization part of your employee recognition plan.
When recognition is aligned with your company’s unique culture, when rewards offer employees customization, flexibility, and choice—you’ll see increased participation in your program and you’ll see your recognition program feed right back into your company culture.
If you don’t have an objective way of measuring the success of your employee recognition program, you’re going to have a hard time reporting on its impact. As HR and People Operations become more data-driven, this will only increase in importance.
One of the best ways to evaluate a program is simply to ask the participants (aka your people) for their feedback—and ask regularly. Use recurring meetings and surveys to gather feedback at a regular cadence to help you understand program performance.
Connect with our team for a personalized demo of our recognition and rewards platform and see our hand-curated experience menus.
Let's talk