You’ve got a recognition program in place for your employees, but how do you take your program to the next level? Peer mentors and recognition can help make employees feel more welcome and happier in their workplace. When employees feel empowered, they are more productive and better team players. How does peer recognition motivate employees to work harder, be more productive, and love their careers?
Receiving praise from a supervisor makes any employee feel good, but praise from a peer coworker can strengthen the bonds between colleagues. Coworkers often feel more at ease sharing feedback with each other than with a superior, partially because they feel their peers truly understand the work they are doing and the struggles and successes they face. Giving your employees the ability to recognize one another will promote further sharing and camaraderie.
When recognition is coming from a peer, rather than a supervisor, it can feel more genuine and more like an organic expression of gratitude. It can also come as an unexpected surprise, giving it a more candid feel, unlike an expected or scheduled performance review.
Just as peer recognition promotes teamwork and camaraderie, it can help build trust among team members as well. When recognition from peers is clearly visible to the whole organization, there is no secret as to who receives credit for completing a project or going above and beyond and why. Among the main deterrents of trust in a corporate environment is when a manager either takes credit for an employee’s work or doesn’t give the person fair acknowledgment for their contributions. Allowing peers to acknowledge each other removes this element of mistrust.
Peer recognition is very helpful, but it is best used in conjunction with manager-to-peer recognition as well. Companies utilizing peer recognition reported higher levels of employee engagement with their existing programs. Further, younger employees in the 18-34 year-old age group are more likely to appreciate peer recognition elements, so adding peer recognition may help your organization attract and keep younger employees in the coming years.
Whether your company has implemented a recognition program already or is just getting started, adding peer recognition into the mix can definitely help your employees feel more empowered. Ask us about what Awards Network can do to assist with your peer recognition needs!