Everyone wants their hard work to be appreciated and recognized, but when the well-deserved reward isn’t rewarding, it has the opposite effect of what employers intended—that the employees’ efforts aren’t just unnoticed; they’re underappreciated.
Employee recognition and gifting, while they may seem simple enough at first, are a lot more complicated than most assume.
So, whether your recognition program is in a rut, you’re an employee who was less than happy with a gift you received from your company, or maybe you’re just curious—let’s talk about the main reasons employee recognition falls flat and how it can be avoided.
Lack of personalization
When you’re gifting a friend or family member, you take into consideration their personality, likes, dislikes, and more. The fact that you took the time to think about them, consider what they like, and go out in search of something they’ll enjoy shows how much you value and appreciate that relationship.
So, why wouldn’t you treat employee gifting and recognition the same way?
Most companies build customer profiles to better understand their audience and different markets, and the same special treatment should be given to employees. Listening to employee feedback or sending out annual surveys are great ways to better understand your team.
A successful recognition or gifting program is run by leaders who understand employee preferences and take feedback from their team seriously.
Recognition becomes transactional
Everyone likes to be recognized for a milestone or achievement, but when it comes in the form of a gift card emailed to you with a short message, it can really deflate motivation. Especially if the email is clearly automated and written out by AI.
A gift card is nice, but that doesn’t make the celebration of a milestone or achievement memorable nor very meaningful. Recognition should be an experience, not a transaction to reward good behavior.
A heartfelt word of praise from a leader, a special shoutout in the company-wide newsletter, or even a spotlight on social media make all the difference when paired with a gift card. Because if you just email them a gift card, there isn’t much recognizing going on, just half-hearted acknowledgement. We like to think employees are worth more than that.
Poor execution
Clunky software, confusing dashboards, misplaced orders—when recognition programs start to feel like a chore, whether you’re the employee receiving a gift or the one handling the backend work, employee participation drops.
Running a recognition program or strategy is no simple endeavor, and often teams underestimate what hosting one entails. From procurement, logistics, fulfillment, and customer support, if you don’t have the manpower recognition requires—and, trust us, it requires plenty of it—you end up digging yourself into an inescapable pit, and your employees suffer the consequences with the company’s time and money wasted.
Dedicating a team to oversee recognition does wonders in eliminating extra work and fully understanding what employees like. When the programs are given the time they deserve and recognition is prioritized, your employees receive more personalized experience without adding to your team's administrative load.
Employee recognition, whether a comprehensive program or a simple kit strategy, requires careful planning and execution. Shortcuts should never be taken, because you wouldn’t want your employees to do things the easy way rather than the right way either.
If you want to learn more about what employee recognition could look like for your team, or even just some tips based on successful programs we've helped our partners implement, reach out to us at 1-800-784-9666 x104 or send an email to kurt@theelitegroup.net.