Does your CHRO or HR Manager seem overwhelmed?
Human Resources leaders are getting fatigued with all that is on their plates right now. They tend to get bogged down with all the administrative details versus the strategic work they want to do.
They’re expected to keep the talent acquisition pipeline filled, increase the engagement level of all employees, have the most attractive benefits and compensation packages, keep up with diversity and inclusion, and ensure everyone’ productive and performing well.
Where should HR prioritize?
HR needs to focus on the people side of the company and all actions that will add value to the business.
There is one tool, however, that will help you with both these areas.
It goes across all the functional responsibilities HR has to handle.
Are you ready?
One Solution Done Well
One tool that cuts across the many functional silos and HR issues and creates value for the company is effectively given employee recognition.
You should have known, right?
But it really can. Let me show you how.
The key is not viewing recognition as simply another “to do” item or a major project you have to deliver to someone. Look at your employee recognition practices and the recognition programs you have in place as a performance lifter and an accelerator to progress your other HR initiatives.
Looking at Employee Engagement
Employee recognition practices and programs done well can immediately lift employee engagement and the whole employee experience. Recognition has always been one of the top drivers of employee engagement.
Ignore it at your peril.
Effective recognition elevates the positive relationship strength between managers and employee recipients, which lead to improved employee engagement.
Well-designed recognition programs can include monthly or quarterly pulse check monitoring surveys to determine how well recognized employees feel and other pertinent questions. This beats out the once-a-year engagement survey that is always a lagging indicator of engagement. Pulse surveys also provide timely insight on where recognition needs to be improved upon.
Recognition has a strong causal connection to improving employee engagement.
Challenging Performance Management
Careful mining of your recognition program data can generate understanding of various work functions, goal achievements, daily and significant contributions of your people.
Data analytics gives you who is performing, what they are doing, and where and when it happened, and sometimes even how. You’ll learn the positive actions your people are doing and the meaningful contributions they are making.
You’ll also learn which managers are consistently giving feedback and coaching their employees through the use of social recognition programs or sending nominations of different employees for specific awards.
Social recognition and e-card programs give you insight on which employees are participating and show signs of collaboration and teamwork.
Performance management is easier to manage with the unique information gained from recognition outputs and perceptions.
HR Needs Predictive Analytics
HR professionals will need tools to help them with predictive modeling for talent management and optimizing organizational succession planning.
Today’s employee recognition programs provide predictive reporting so your HR leaders know who is at risk of not being engaged, or at risk of leaving the organization, and not performing at their maximum ability. And like any online tool, recognition programs are only as good as the managers and people using them.
Fortunately, there are disruptive recognition programs that also prescribe the required learning and development leaders and managers need to improve themselves at better recognizing their employees.
HR can benefit greatly from recognition programs and the data they produce.
Today’s recognition program analytics can help you with knowing what is likely going to happen in the future with your people. But recognition programs can also assist you with prescriptive education so you will know what to do to help your managers give better recognition.
It All Starts With A Strategy
You most likely have a total rewards strategy in place to deal with compensation, benefits, professional development, performance management and bonuses, etc.
Now it’s well time to add yourselves to the 55 percent of organizations that have a written recognition strategy. Here you can align recognition and incentive rewards with assisting you in achieving your organization’s business goals and people strategy objectives.
Recognition is not a silver bullet and is not the end all, be all solution to all of the HR issues you face.
However, recognition is a powerful tool to reinforce your organization culture and the behavioral and business objectives you are responsible for reaching.
If you haven’t done so recently, take another look at how effective recognition practices and programs can help you deal with your HR problems.
Question: How have you leveraged employee recognition practices and programs to solve your company’s multi-faceted human resource issues?
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.