Struggling to think of some peer to peer recognition ideas? Peer recognition refers to an appreciation from colleagues or teammates of similar ranks, not your bosses or direct reports. It helps build good relationships with your team members and makes you fall in love with your work. And, more impactful to your work life is realizing that your peers appreciate and respect your contribution, which improves your performance.
Human resources departments are incorporating peer-to-peer recognition programs and looking for ways to cultivate teamwork at the workplace. A peer-to-peer recognition program comes with several benefits. Here are some:
- Builds employee engagement
- Builds a great company culture
- Fosters a feeling of team spirit and togetherness
- Reduces employee turnover
- Improves performance of the entire organization
- Benefits employee wellbeing
- Increases employee happiness
Adopting a peer-to-peer recognition program is not challenging. This article guides you on various peer-to-peer recognition ideas that will positively transform your company. You can nurture a great workplace culture with the following employee recognition ideas.
6 Quick & Easy Peer to Peer Recognition Ideas
- Send a handwritten note of appreciation
- Give a shout-out on social media
- Leave a positive review online
- Thank them in person
- Make a public declaration of gratitude
- Record a video testimonial
How to Develop a Peer to Peer Recognition Program
If your company has an employee recognition program, use the guideline to develop a peer to peer recognition program. Otherwise, create a peer to peer program from scratch and launch it as a culture-building initiative to receive support from many employees.
The new program should ensure the best practices by detailing the end-to-end process surrounding peer recognition awards. Outline how the awards are requested, accepted, and given.
Ensure the awards reflect your organization’s values, where each nomination is founded on a specific company value, thus, creating value-based recognition programs. Adopting these practices will ensure peer recognition awards effectively mold desired behaviors and incentivize exceptional performance.
Besides, a team member who recognizes peers and appreciates them openly motivates others to replicate their actions. Hence, stimulating recognition of rich culture.
Identify a Compatible Employee Recognition Platform
You should select an employee recognition platform that easily integrates with existing systems. It becomes easier for your employees to manage their work and be more productive when assimilating your systems.
The platform should be easy and fun to use, allow employees to use it anywhere, and provide real-time sending options. If possible, the platform should have mobile and offline capabilities. Moreover, it should support data analytics to identify high-performing employees and continuously improve the program.
Having the right platform does not guarantee its continual usage and adoption. After the program’s launch, you need to follow up and ensure it creates a positive impact and becomes a successful peer recognition program.
Make the Peer to Peer Recognition Program Inclusive
Empower all employees to participate in the program by ensuring they can all access information on the program. Every employee should recognize their peers and receive recognition irrespective of job title, employment terms, or department. Remember to make the platform accessible to remote employees as well.
Establishing an inclusive peer to peer recognition program builds trust and promotes team cohesion, creating a workplace culture that encourages all employees to do great work.
Promoting the program to employees is vital to its success. However, it would help if you did not make it mandatory but voluntary. Mandatory nominations will result in dishonesty and not serve the intended purpose. It should be heartfelt and authentic for employee recognition to have a ripple effect.
Make the Recognition Public
Instead of giving recognition privately, publicizing it increases visibility and employee attention, thus inspiring a multiplier effect. Companies that have enabled public peer recognition confirm an extraordinary rise in the number of recognitions done.
Some ideas to make it public include:
- Using the company’s newsfeed
- Social media
- “Wall of fame”
- Beginning company meetings with success stories
- Highlighting accomplishments in public spaces
- Using sticky notes on co-workers’ desks or a corkboard in a break room
- Publicly giving a small gift during a team meeting
You may also incorporate features that provide additional support, such as a “like” or comment options to boost recognition. Publicly appreciating employees motivates recipients, and those who observe the nomination are enticed to emulate noted behaviors. Appreciating employees publicly or on social platforms increases job satisfaction, improving employee retention over time.
Exercise Consistent Peer Recognition Programs
An essential aspect of employee recognition, particularly peer recognition, is frequency. Recurrent peer recognition sets an example that demonstrates desired behaviors to both the recipients and fellow team members. If there is low activity, there will be little or no impact on the company. Therefore, encourage employees to recognize their peers by giving feedback.
Recognitions need to be given instantaneously to build a company culture that embraces recognition. You could also have the recognition program during the net team building session. Delayed recognition may not be as effective as it should be to the recipients in encouraging the wanted behavior.
Having a uniform and straightforward template for peer recognition makes it easy for employees to fill out their nominations continuously. Also, the flexibility of the technology used in terms of place, time, and the device can influence employees to recognize their peers constantly.
Ensure the Recognitions are Specific
Design the peer recognition template to give specific kinds of recognition. The template should guide employees using specific questions to elaborate on the great work done and provide constructive feedback. But, do not make the recognition process complex.
Personalizing the recognitions and linking the behavior to company values ensures the programs support actions that align with company values. You should ensure that the appreciation message is not standardized to all recognized employees.
Research confirms the intended benefits of peer programs. Over 90% of recognized employees will repeat desired behaviors, and the same percentage will be encouraged to perform better. So, it would help if you made sure recognitions clarify the actions done and individual behaviors impacted to inspire replication.
Use Leadership Support to Boost Peer Program
The company leadership team focuses on guiding team members on the following action. When management showcases anticipated behavior, other employees copy the actions. Hence, it would be best to encourage leaders to participate in peer programs to boost the program and develop a better company culture.
Many organizational practices flow from top to down. So, it is crucial to train the management team on the value of recognizing employees promptly and consistently. Trained leaders are informed, and they will remind their teams to observe each other’s actions to identify and recognize outstanding performance.
Incorporate Social and Monetary Appreciation
When employees feel valued, they are highly inclined to endorse their employer and work hard in their duties to contribute to the company’s objectives substantially. Social recognition is essential to make employees feel valued. Social recognition is observed to highly increase employee engagement, performance, net promoter scores, and even stock prices.
To enhance the program, you should introduce a points-based program. Once employees have accumulated sufficient points, they can use them to redeem rewards of their choice. The resultant rewards experience drives employees to consistently improve their performance to gain as many points as possible.
Have Individual and Team Recognitions
Ensure your platform allows employees to recognize teams, functions, branches, and individuals. Often, success is not achieved solely; several co-workers take part in delivering exceptional performance. Appreciating teams enhances team collaboration which is critical in any organization.
Celebrate Professional and Personal Milestones
Recognizing professional achievements at work is understandable, but it is equally essential to celebrate significant accomplishments in your personal life. You should delegate management as champions for recognizing employees. They should look for creative ways to commend employees for accomplishing noteworthy milestones at work and in life.
For example, some employees have studied hard to complete various courses or saved to buy a house and other accomplishments. Some companies organize quarterly meetings to recognize their employees, reward them and make high performers visible. Select a recognition model that will motivate and permit employees to celebrate their daily triumphs and significant milestones.
Analyze the Data
The performance measures you may want to monitor in your peer recognition platform include;
- The monthly trend of peer recognitions received
- The monthly trend of active leaders on the platform
- The monthly rate of active employees (activation rate)
If the numbers are low, you need to rethink strategies to make the peer program attractive. You may explore the platform to confirm it is fun and easy to use, involve employees in improving it, and use other strategies.
To fully understand the benefits of the peer program, find relations between the recognitions and your key performance indicators such as employee engagement scores, retention rate, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction scores.
Regardless of the size of your company, a peer recognition program can improve the performance of your company to levels you did not expect. By using the guideline provided, you can either modify your pre-existing employee recognition program to incorporate a peer program or develop a peer recognition program from scratch.
