Employee recognition is key to the success of any organisation, but whilst this fact has been well established, it seems there is still a lot of room for interpretation.
For example, a statistic published by World at work states that the no.1 type of recognition that organisations have in place is still recognising years of service, with a whopping 87% of companies still building their recognition schemes around tenure. Compare that to the research produced by York College of Pennsylvania’s centre for professional excellence which found that Millennials require immediate recognition for accomplishments, and you can see where things could go wrong.
Another potential problem area applies specifically to the world we all work within. Whilst it’s an outdated principle, and becoming less and less prominent in organisations where customer experience is a specialist function, some companies still feel that complaint handling is a negative thing, not to be openly acknowledged or shouted about. They feel that admitting they get complaints shows the company in a negative light, and that can mean that anyone working hard to help customers in a complaint handling function, may not get the reward or recognition they deserve.
The chances are that if you spend time reading CXM, you already know how crazy that is. But maybe you’re having trouble getting that message through your whole organisation.
On top of everyday challenges, employee recognition and engaging the workforce has just become harder with the widespread enforced adoption of working from home to keep us all safe. How your company chooses to respond during this period of remote work will not only help you with your current employees, it will help you attract and retain high quality candidates in the future too – now is a great time to look at your employee engagement strategy.
We’ve pulled together just a few quick tips to help any organisation struggling to motivate and retain top customer service talent:
1. Enable your teams to provide peer to peer feedback, publicly and encourage this as much as possible.
Studies have shown that peer to peer feedback can have up to 36% more positive impact than manager praise alone. Looking at a platform that can allow your teams to shout about great work remotely will help them to stay connected and to know their hard work matters.
2. Reward the continued focus and hard work of your teams since the lockdown with a token gesture.
It’s not easy to adjust to working from home, especially for those also balancing child care. Studies show that gift cards mean a lot to staff, so why not invest in your local community at the same time as recognising hard work? You could buy a gift card for a local restaurant for when they open back up or try something a little different – Employee discount schemes such as My Vip Rewards can offer discounts on local independent retailers as well as larger national brands and may help keep the economy going once things start to re-open.
3. Say thank you face to face, and at a deliberate time.
Fitting a rushed thank you in at the end of the working week, or as part of a catch-up call can make it seem like a bit of an afterthought. Contact your team member via video call (if your internet speed allows) and say thank you. Make the call specifically about thanking them and finish the call without adding any other agenda items, so it’s clear that thanking them was your sole driver.
4. Be transparent and communicate regularly about any plans that could impact your workforce.
Share proposed plans on how you will safely manage their re-entry to the office. Staff will appreciate being kept in the loop and it will inspire their confidence that there is significant consideration being given to their safety and welfare. If it’s more serious than that, and there is potential for layoffs, you couldn’t do much better than look to the recent communication from the AirBnB CEO to all of his team. He delivered a heartfelt, and honest address that reassured his team he would do what he could to look after them, even if the worst should happen and he couldn’t keep them on.
Cartoon author: Rebecca Brown, CEO and Founder of ThinkWoW.