ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 24, 2018 — Employers seeking to improve retention and recruitment efforts may want to look to their employee recognition programs for assistance.
In a new survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Globoforce, a leading provider of social recognition and continuous performance development solutions, the majority of human resource professionals said that recognition programs have a positive impact on retention and recruitment, two of the current top HR workforce challenges.
In the survey, Using Recognition and Other Workplace Efforts to Engage Employees, 68 percent of HR professionals agreed that employee recognition has a positive impact on retention and 56 percent said such programs also help with recruitment.
While employee recognition (cited by 80 percent of respondents) was the most common type of workplace program, organizations offered a variety of programs to influence workplace culture. Others were health and wellness (70 percent) and learning and development (68 percent), according to the findings. In addition, 60 percent of HR professionals said their organization helps employees celebrate life events such as having a child, birthdays or retirement.
Findings from the survey also indicate that employee recognition programs should be tailored to the organization to have the most positive impact. Programs are rated more highly by HR professionals when they are integrated with the organization's talent strategy and are aligned with organizational values.
"Rewarding employees for performance that reinforces organizational values and contributes to the organization's overall business goals can help engage employees and create a purpose-driven culture," said Tanya Mulvey, SHRM researcher. "While monetary investment is also important, the research found it had a more positive impact when recognition was core to the organization's talent strategy."
The survey also asked HR professionals about performance reviews, finding that 71 percent of respondents conducted annual performance reviews. However, HR is more likely to agree that reviews are a more accurate appraisal of an employee's work when they are conducted semiannually or more often.
HR professionals were nearly twice as likely to agree their organization's performance reviews were accurate when reviews were ongoing (90 percent) compared with being conducted on an annual basis (46 percent).
The survey polled 738 randomly selected SHRM members who hold a title of manager or above and are employed at organizations of 500 or more employees. Conducted from September 27 to October 18, 2017, the survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
