A recent survey from the Pew Research Center revealed that low pay, a lack of opportunity, and feeling underappreciated drove millions to quit their jobs in 2021.
While you might not be able to raise your employee’s salaries or offer them more responsibility, you can most certainly make them feel appreciated with employee loyalty rewards.
Research has shown that employees who feel valued are less likely to leave their jobs. Showing you appreciate your team’s big contributions, ongoing efforts, and loyalty really does reduce turnover.
What’s more, 52.5% of employees want to receive more recognition from their immediate manager or supervisor, according to a survey by Quantum Workplace and Bamboo HR.
The best employee recognition programs include plenty of opportunities to acknowledge team members throughout the year. Here are some ideal milestones to consider incorporating into your employee loyalty rewards program.
These days, employees are switching jobs more than ever, thanks to the pandemic causing a shift in attitudes about work. How to retain employees during what’s been called the Great Resignation should be top of mind for most organizations.
Making sure to recognize your employees’ work anniversaries can support your retention efforts. But don’t just give employee loyalty rewards for the big anniversaries, like five, 10, or 15 years. Consider giving a reward — even a nominal one — for each year of service.
For example, you could give employees a choice of digital gift cards, with the value increasing for each year of service. A public shout-out over email or Microsoft Teams, so colleagues can congratulate them and amplify the impact of the reward, is also a good idea.
This one may seem strange, but hear us out. Yes, promotions typically include a raise, and that may seem like reward enough. But calling out the achievement itself with a reward (especially publicly) shows you have a healthy corporate culture that cares about its employees’ achievements. It’s also important to offer thoughtful recognition, according to the Quantum Workplace and Bamboo HR research. They recommend using the following equation to ensure you offer meaningful employee loyalty rewards:
Deep Knowledge of Your Employee’s Recognition Preferences
+
Detailed Articulation of Their Accomplishment
+
Expression of How the Accomplishment Benefits the Team/Organization
=
Thoughtful Recognition
Establishing and deepening connections with team members can also help your retention efforts, not to mention foster stronger relationships at work.
To show you care about your team members as people, and not just as employees, recognize personal events such as celebrating birthdays, getting married, and becoming parents.
After all, these outside-of-work milestones are important, too. In your weekly team meetings, make recognition an agenda item, so you can be sure to call out these occasions and offer on-the-spot employee loyalty rewards.
READ MORE: Need Creative Employee Reward Ideas? Here’s One for Every Season
Recognizing your team’s hard work to complete a major project — whether it requires working extra hours or not — can make a huge impact on how employees feel about their manager and employer.
Even if the project still has ongoing updates and maintenance tasks, acknowledging the successful completion of that work is a milestone you don’t want to miss. If you do, it’s a safe bet your team will feel unappreciated.
For big projects like these, consider letting everyone on the team knock off early on a Friday or giving each team member a prepaid Visa or Mastercard to treat themselves however they want.
When employees reach their key performance indicators (KPIs) or achieve their annual performance goals, they’re typically rewarded with raises during end-of-year reviews.
But keeping track of these milestones throughout the year and rewarding monthly or quarterly achievements helps maintain motivation in the near-term.
Plus, just because someone didn’t hit EVERY ONE of their targets, they may have surpassed a single important one that’s still worth rewarding. Recognizing
Improvements, instead of focusing on big wins, will also help your employees stay engaged at work.
Recognize your employees anytime, anywhere with BHN Rewards’ extensive catalog of digital rewards. Learn more here.
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
