Imagine the following scenario: you have set up a peer to peer recognition award program, communicated the kickoff and gotten a great response from employees. A couple of months pass and you start to see the number of peer award nominations dwindle. Is there any way you can help to sustain the momentum created when the program kicked off? This is a common situation for organizations that implement a peer to peer recognition program and I would like to share five specific techniques that companies can utilize to maximize participation.
Tip #1: Provide Incentives to Employees Submitting Nominations (aka Nominators)
Most peer to peer recognition programs give incentive awards in the form of points to employees who are recognized by co-workers. When organizations provide incentives to nominators and nominees, employees have a good reason to submit their thanks via the peer recognition program. I usually see clients awarding nominators with a smaller amount of points compared to the incentives awarded to nominees but these do add up over time.
Tip #2: Reward 100% Participation
Make one of the peer to peer recognition program goals to be that when everyone in a department and when everyone company-wide submits at least one nomination in a given time period, each employee receives an incentive. These goals encourage employees to assist each other become familiar with the peer to peer nomination submission process which in turn facilitates greater participation.
Tip #3: Inform Employees on the Peer to Peer Recognition Statistics
How many employees have submitted one nomination? How many workers have been nominated for an award? How many nominations have been submitted in total? These are facts that should be communicated and celebrated. Some clients will put these kinds of facts on a poster to display these fun facts about the peer recognition program in a common area of the workplace. Companies and employees should be able to boast about the achievements of their workplace recognition culture.
Tip #4: Communicate Reminders to Employees to Participate
Remind employees to thank their co-workers formally via the peer recognition program. Tell your staff where to go, what to do and remind them to do it often! Communicate to employees via email, flyers, posters and word of mouth. When someone tells you about a great employee performance, don't forget to ask if a nomination was submitted.
Often recognition comes from the top down. If you are regularly using the peer to peer recognition program, your subordinates will follow your example and also use the program. One the other hand, if you neglect to submit nominations and thank your peers and subordinates, employees will not take the program as seriously and participation will suffer. When a peer to peer recognition program is implemented, you can expect that nominations will come flooding in more than any other time during the program because employees will have pent up recognition that needs to be expressed. However, by following these five tips a company can maximize participation and sustain peer to peer recognition program momentum.
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