4 Tools That Will Help You Boost Employee Recognition

These days, finding quality talent is hard. Keeping that talent is even harder.

Employee recognition can play a major role in staff retention and overall morale.

Not sure where to start when it comes to employee recognition? Here are the tools we use to invest in to champion staff achievements, cheer each other on, and cultivate growth.

Everyone loves a pat on the back for a job well done. And if an employee knocked a project out of the ballpark, we want to recognize them for it! That’s why we encourage staff members to give coworkers who have gone above and beyond a shoutout in Slack.

Virtually all of our office communication happens on Slack, which makes it the perfect forum for public praise. A note of applause may not seem that significant, but it can go a long way in making employees feel appreciated for their hard work.

Plus, it costs zero dollars to send!

You can do this informally, but there are a few integrations that take all the guesswork out of it. The Donut app’s integrated kudos command is one of them – allowing you to assign emojis to certain attributes (like dependability or initiative) so you can show exactly how the person is living out your company’s core values.

One of the ways we show our all-star staff how much we appreciate them is sending personalized gifts through Thnks.

We love that the gifts range in size so we can celebrate small victories and major milestones. Whether it’s a gift card for lunch on their first day, a surprise birthday treat, or a bottle of their favorite drink to toast a work anniversary, Thnks makes employee recognition a breeze.

Thnks takes all the hard work out of gift-giving. You select the employee and the item you want to give them and they receive an email with details on how to redeem it. It really is that simple!

For a long time, our company’s progression bands, personalized role pathways, and feedback loops all lived in different places. As a result, a lot of employees didn’t have a clear line of sight into their performance and personal development.

We realized we needed to streamline these processes to help foster faster and more transparent growth, so IMGE went all-in on Lattice.

Lattice is a one-stop-shop for managing people success. It eliminates bottlenecks and blind spots in the professional development process, making it easier for staff members to own their own growth trajectory and advocate for themselves when it’s time for a raise or promotion.

Lattice is also a feedback hub – on both a private and public scale. Like Slack accolades, public praise in Lattice enables employees to be cheerleaders for one another. If you see a coworker crushing it, you can announce it to everyone at the company via Lattice.

Unlike some Slack shoutouts which may happen in channels with only a handful of members, public praise in Lattice is viewable by everyone at the company. If you have Slack’s Lattice integration, this praise will be cross-posted there as well.

Maximum visibility. Maximum appreciation.

A large percentage employee recognition happens from the top down. We wanted to empower our staff to recognize one another in a meaningful way. That’s why we created the Veto. (Where are all the Big Brother fans at?)

The Veto is a peer-to-peer monthly award. At the end of every month, staff members secretly nominate coworkers who have been going the extra mile, then the current Veto holder selects a winner and announces them at our all-staff meeting.

It’s a great pat on the back…and did we mention it comes with a $500 spot bonus?

This investment has paid off dividends. Productivity goes up because everyone wants to win the Veto, and employee happiness goes up because staff members feel appreciated when they do win.

At IMGE, we believe that investing in our team powers great work for our clients — and we think results like these speak for themselves.