How to Measure Employee Recognition: 11 Key Metrics to Track

An effective employee recognition program will supercharge your company.

The question is, how do you know your recognition program is effective? That’s simple: you measure your efforts in this area using the specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter.

But, of course, getting it right is a little harder than that. Using our tips from the human resource experts, here’s how to measure employee recognition programs the right way.

What is Employee Recognition?

Employee recognition is the act of acknowledging positive employee performance. In many cases, said performance will be rewarded in some way too, though this isn’t strictly necessary.

When employees are recognized for their efforts, they feel valued, work harder at their jobs, and stick around for longer periods of time (plus it impacts the customer experience). This attaches a real monetary value to getting employee recognition right. In fact, companies that recognize their employees achieve 44% more profitability over time.

Proven Ways to Measure Your Employee Recognition Program

Employee recognition is obviously important. But measuring the recognition program you put in place is easier said than done. How do you make sure your program is effective?

Here are four proven ways to measure your employee recognition program:

Study Metrics

First, you can study specific metrics and KPIs that pertain to employee recognition programs. Some of the more popular ones include participation rate and employee engagement.

With the right KPIs, you can determine the effectiveness of your efforts. They’ll also help you identify ways to improve your program.

This data can be accessed a number of ways, like through analytics dashboards in your employee recognition software or culture reports from HR or leadership.

Read More: 10 Companies with the Best Employee Recognition Programs

Send Surveys

Second, survey your workforce to learn about your employee recognition program. Is it working? How can you improve it? Ask the people that the program is supposed to benefit.

To make sure your employee surveys are effective, keep these tips in mind:

• Keep it Short: Your team doesn’t want to answer 97 questions. Send pulse surveys that can be completed in five minutes or less to increase the amount of feedback you get.
• Make it Anonymous: Allow employees to answer survey questions anonymously. This will make your team feel more comfortable and help you collect honest answers.
• Send Surveys Regularly: Survey your employees on a regular basis. That way you always know where your recognition program stands. (Just don’t overdo it!)

Host Meetings

Third, host one-on-one meetings (or form an engagement committee) to measure employee recognition.

Invite individual team members to your office for a quick sit down. Then ask them what they think of your recognition program. Does it make them feel appreciated? Does it engage them in their work and give them greater job satisfaction? What can you do to improve the program?

Before you ask these questions, though, tell your employees that you want their honest feedback. Assure them that they won’t be penalized for negative comments. Your goal is to learn. You can’t do that if your team doesn’t tell you the truth about your recognition efforts.

Use Software

Finally, use the right employee recognition software.

A quality recognition platform will help you track some of the metrics and simplify your internal appreciation. Even better, it will crunch the numbers for participation rates, employee rewards given, and more so you don’t have to do it manually.

11 Employee Recognition Metrics to Track on a Regular Basis

When it comes to measuring employee recognition programs, the numbers matter.

Track these 11 metrics to determine the effectiveness of your own employee recognition program. Then dig deeper into the stats to identify successes and areas of improvement.

1. Participation Rate

Participation rate measures the percentage of your workforce that engages with your employee recognition program. Generally speaking, the higher this number is, the better.

This begs the question, what does engagement look like in this context? Employees who recognize their peers with written messages and/or corporate gifts (if applicable) are considered engaged.

Participation rate will help you determine whether your recognition programs are effective or not. If they are, engagement will be high and company culture will likely improve.

2. Employee Engagement

Speaking of engagement…

The “employee engagement” metric will help you measure the success of your recognition programs as well. You just have to determine how you’ll measure engagement levels.

You can calculate participation rate to identify engaged employees. Or rely on supervisor anecdotes and gut feelings. You can also send engagement surveys to your staff.

To be clear, you do not need to implement a recognition program to improve your employee engagement metrics—but these programs tend to engage employees better than other strategies. As such, employee engagement is a great way to measure the success of your program.

3. Employee Satisfaction

Are your employees happy?

Job satisfaction is a sign that your employee recognition efforts are working. When your team’s efforts are acknowledged, they’ll feel valued. When they feel valued, employee morale will rise.

This often results in less employee absenteeism and a higher retention rate, as well as the productivity benefits. Honestly, there really aren’t any downsides to employee satisfaction. Track it to measure your recognition program.

4. Employee Absenteeism

Employee recognition programs help engage team members and build company culture. In other words, they create a working environment that people want to be a part of.

Track employee absenses after you launch your recognition strategy. If it’s working, your staff will take less unneeded time off and show up to work more consistently. The more your employees are around, the more they’ll get done and the more successful your company will be.

5. Employee Retention Rate

Staff turnover leads to decreased productivity, low employee morale, and reduced revenue. That’s why every company wants to boost its employee retention rate.

Good news: employee recognition programs will encourage your team to stick around. When they feel valued for their work, they’ll enjoy their jobs more. People don’t look for new career opportunities when they enjoy the opportunity they already have.

So, track your company’s retention rate to help evaluate your recognition initiatives.

6. Employee Productivity

There’s no debate: engaged employees get more done.

When evaluating your company’s employee recognition programs, analyze team productivity metrics to see if they’ve gone up after program launch. But don’t stop there…

Study new employees to see if they reach peak productivity faster. If they’re more productive than past employees after a month on the job, your recognition strategy could be the reason.

7. Peer Recognition Given

Management-to-employee recognition is important, but don’t overlook peer-to-peer recognition.

When team members acknowledge each other’s efforts, morale and company culture improve. This recognition could be as simple as a shout out or a big celebration of a milestone, but it can have a big impact.

With that in mind, track the number of times your team recognizes each other within a specific timeframe. Said recognition could manifest as a written message or gift given. It really depends on the recognition platform you use and the options available to participants.

8. Employee Rewards Received

As recognition increases, it could create a culture of gratitude that manifests in the form of employee rewards.

How often are individual team members given a gift or monetary incentive for their work? The more it happens, the more engaged each employee is likely to be, which will improve performance.

Analyze the employee rewards given metric to help evaluate your recognition program. If it’s in a healthy spot, every member of your team should be acknowledged on a consistent basis.

9. Management Ratings

Does your management team give written performance reviews? You can study these documents to understand the impact your employee recognition strategy has on your team.

Compare past performance reviews to current ones. Have scores gone up since you began recognizing employees on the regular? If so, you can safely conclude that your program is having the desired effect. If not, you may need to adjust your program to achieve more success.

10. Specific Business Outcomes

Finally, track your company’s progress towards its goals.

Since recognized employees work harder and more productively, your team should accomplish more after you put a recognition plan in place—and in less time, too.

Measuring employee recognition isn’t an exact science. But the KPIs above can help you evaluate your efforts, as can tracking progress towards specific business outcomes.

Why Measure the Impact of Employee Recognition?

We’ve covered the KPIs you should use to measure employee recognition. Now let’s talk about why you should even bother. Here are three reasons to evaluate your recognition programs:

Understand Your Recognition Strategy

Once you learn how to measure employee recognition, you’ll be able to properly evaluate your program. Is it working? What can you do better? You won’t know until you track your results.

Start by monitoring the important metrics, then take action based on the data you collect. For example, if program adoption is an issue, consider rewarding employees who participate. If employee engagement levels remain static, try using a different piece of software that allows team members to interact and acknowledge each other’s accomplishments in different ways.

Understand Your Employees

Measuring employee recognition will also help you understand your team.

What encourages them to engage with company values and initiatives? What motivates them to work harder and more productively? What will prevent them from seeking a different job?

When you understand how individual employees tick, you can put them in positions to succeed. For example, you might assign specific projects to some team members but not others. Or, you might speak to them in different ways that make them feel valued, and therefore put in more effort.

Build a Thriving Workplace

Last but not least, meaningful recognition will elevate the employee experience and help you build a workplace culture that other people want to be a part of (and improves company vaule).

When this happens, team performance improves, employee turnover goes down, and greater success is within reach (basically, good things will happen).

Boost Employee Engagement With Kudoboard

Once you build a successful social recognition program for your company, your employees will become more engaged in their work and effective in their roles. The right software can help!

With Elevate by Kudoboard, you’ll have the power of authentic employee appreciation and recognition on your side. Employees can have a fun platform for engagement, admins get streamlined management, and the business benefits.

After a few weeks, look at the built-in analytics in the employee recognition platform. Kudoboard will tell you who’s recognizing who—and what they’re recognizing them for. You can use these stats to level up your program.