What are the Risks and Success Criteria for Successful Program?

Be aware of the risks and success factors to design and run a successful program

Some of the reasons and risks we see for poor employee engagement with a recognition program are:   

• Control and governance measures - There is a thin line where HR works on how to put measures of control to eliminate abuse of the system, but without having blockers so the programs would be as simple and instant to use. Adding too many layers of workflow approvals takes away from the instant experience of showing gratitude.  
• Communication – Poor communication will lead to people not knowing about the program existence or not understanding the purpose of it.  
• Guidelines - If there are no clear guidelines for the program specifics, people will get confused when do they use what form of recognition and for what purpose. Remember that the first blocker for people to say a simple thank you is feeling of vulnerability and being exposed. We need to help them overcome that step until gratitude and recognition becomes a natural habit and part of the culture. 
• Complexity – You want to have the programs as simple as possible and without additional complexities so the recognition process would be as fluent and simple as possible  
• Inclusion - Your workforce is of all ages where maybe not all are tech-savvy as it might be for some others. Keep it simple as we mention above, but also allow physical forms of recognition where some users can choose from a digital to a non-digital form of recognition  
• Recognition as daily routine – If they work on their mobile devices, recognition has to be present there.  If they are working with their hands and do not have digital means, have a non-digital process and enable them via smart change management, if they want a kiosk to see their digital profiles and to print out their certificates or create a digital report, have those available for the workforce  
• Lack of self-recognition –When recognition is only peer-to-peer and manager-to-peer, there is a missed out opportunity for employees to earn points via dynamic, claimable campaigns that promote positive behaviours. 
• No social aspects –Make recognition culture to also be social. Create a community. Gratitude culture can take a while to be built and habits such as recognition will be easier to do when you see others do it as well  
• Neglecting data and data-driven decisions - Tracking data and reports that software provides can give some meaningful insights on what is working well and what is not. Use it to make smarter decisions and improvements  
• Unengaged managers - Managers who don’t understand the benefits of recognition are much less likely to promote the initiative within their teams 

Some of the key elements for success are: 

• Keep the program simple to access and perform key actions with few clicks  
• Keep the program desirable for everyone to want to participate  
• Keep the program always fresh and dynamic to want to come back  
• Keep the managers fully enabled and serve as change agents for the recognition culture  
• Give special attention to your blue collar/front line/non-wired employees working at the stores by providing additional training on how to use mobile devices to recognize their peers 
• Consider creating special recognition programs for those non-digital workers 

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