Inspired by the current economy, many businesses are focusing on retaining highly skilled and talented employees. The ability of any sized business to attract and retain employees can be achieved by providing staff members with consistent recognition and motivational corporate gifts.
Whether your company is planning time and budget for employee recognition awards or you already have an employee award program in place, focusing on employee retention in 2009 should be a main component of your benefits strategy in order for your organization to remain competitive. According to a February Managesmarter.com article, the businesses that continue to invest in reward and recognition programs are more likely to outperform their competitors.
“Companies which cut their incentives programs too severely run the risk of losing their top talent once economic conditions begin to improve,” reports Norma Jean Knollenberg, author of the article Operation Motivation: Gauging Employee Value. Knollenberg points out IMA research revealing that “non-cash incentives, such as merchandise and travel, are a significant motivator.”
One of my clients in the IT industry has been experiencing a lot of cutbacks due to the recession but continues to recognize employees with merchandise-based corporate gifts for reaching anniversary milestones. In order to maintain the employee recognition program this year, my client simply adjusted the dollar amount given to awardees for each anniversary level they award. However, when the economy rebounds the organization will begin offering recognition awards for various accomplishments in addition to increasing the anniversary award program budget.
Recognition programs do not require minimum order quantities and tend to be very flexible for my clients to budget depending on the organization’s performance. In times of success, companies are clearly meeting and even exceeding their business objectives and may have a lot of reasons to reward and recognize employees. Alternatively, Paul Hebert reports in the Incentive Intelligence Blog that economic downturns are the best time to focus on rewarding and recognizing employees for contributing to the positive attitude in the workplace, participating in successful team projects and providing high quality customer service. Employee recognition programs offer a great solution to employers looking to accomplish such goals amid the recession.
When you offer tangible employee awards and recognize staff members consistently, research shows that the organization is able to boost employee retention by over fifty percent.
We are experiencing a down economy, but this does not mean that companies should stop all employee recognition efforts. In fact, employee recognition is needed now more than ever for two reasons- so that valued employees will want to stay with the organization and your company can remain competitive.
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