You are fortunate enough to have an executive sponsor for employee recognition and who supports all the managing of recognition related things that you do.
They are willing to go to bat for you and are exemplary in using the company recognition programs and expressing appreciation to employees.
Their expectation of you is to regularly provide them with high level results on how recognition is impacting the business.
After all, your executive has to present the numbers to the complete senior leadership team and collectively they approve your budget.
So what is the best way to present the progress and impact employee recognition is making to your senior leadership team?
At a bare minimum they will be expecting the following:
1. Focus on Business Goals. First on the list is no big surprise. Those at the C-suite will want to know how employee recognition programs have positively impacted the strategic business goals they established that year or in the recent past.
For recognition to be successful it must be aligned with, and help lift, the core strategic goals that have been set.
Show leaders the number of recognition experiences and rewards given to employees for behaviors that mesh with each of the strategic business goals.
You can use level based recognition programs and point based recognition programs to focus on reinforcing performance results.
Give leaders the 5 W’s of who, what, why, where, and when, and even how recognition focused people more on the strategic goals. Knowing which goals are focused on the most may generate the need for stronger communications on weaker goals.
2. Performance Results Impacted. You will have to prove that employee recognition and reward programs have positively helped improve sales results, productivity indicators, other performance outcomes, along with people metrics such as employee engagement and retention.
How has money been made and saved or time and costs reduced? Find the cause and effect variables and measure them.
Move beyond descriptive reporting to diagnostic analytics to show who is and what recognition is making an impact.
You will need data of your performance results and your recognition output data from your programs. Analysis of the data will help predict why something happened and what and when it will happen again. Show the causal relationship.
3. Direct Reports Usage of Programs. Looks like your recognition programs are making a positive difference. Now these senior leaders are going to want to know which managers are using them effectively and those who are not. How are their direct reports doing with recognition giving and what is the correlation with performance results?
Provide drill down reporting to show how each manager is doing quantitatively and qualitatively with recognition giving.
Setting expectations for managers and gaining feedback on their recognition activity allows senior leaders to coach them and hold their managers accountable for effective recognition giving.
4. Elevator of Employee Engagement. Recognition is always considered one of the top five drivers of employee engagement. There tends to be a parallel direction of engagement scores with employee recognition scores. By effectively improving employee recognition activity and perceptions you will likely see a correlating improvement of employee engagement measures.
Make sure you have a regular gauge on engagement and compare with recognition activities.
There are enough indicators to correlate performance measures with employee engagement. Your senior leaders will want to know which departments or divisions they need focus on to lift engagement scores with your employee recognition tools.
5. Improving Positive Relationship Strength. When recognition is given frequently and the right way it elevates positive relationship strength between givers and receivers. Are employees feeling positive relationships with their peers and their managers? Do they seem loyal to the company and likely to recommend their company as a place to work for to family and friends?
Ensure you have employee perception data on how effective managers are with recognition and the likelihood of employees to recommend the company.
It is one thing for people to use the recognition programs but usage can sometimes be gamed and manipulated. Always solicit employee perceptions of how well recognized they feel as well.
6. Strengthening of Culture. Having a strong and healthy organizational culture is essential for corporate success. Employee recognition can be key to encouraging and reinforcing people to live the espoused core values and pursue the purpose of the company. Whatever employee focus and customer service principles you have going for you, recognition can strengthen them.
Attend to employee and customer satisfaction scores and compare with recognition given for values and service principles.
Culture is all about the way things are done where you work. Recognition should be a central practice that just happens.
Always remember that your senior leaders will be looking for numbers.
They can be with dollar signs up front or percentage symbols after them. Give your senior leaders the numbers they need to look good at the C-suite table and make recognition a star contributor towards business results.
Your goal is to always prove how recognition makes a difference.
Question: What employee recognition progress measure do you find senior leaders want to know the most about?
Roy is no longer writing new content for this site (he has retired!), but you can subscribe to Engage2Excel’s blog as Engage2Excel will be taking Roy’s place writing about similar topics on employee recognition and retention, leadership and strategy.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.