Few Remote Employee Recognition Ideas That Always Work

The ongoing Coronavirus crisis has resulted in an unprecedented shift to remote work, almost every organization’s entire workforce shifted to self-isolation and are required to do their jobs from home.

Times like this, when the team members are not together bantering and collaborating on a project, it’s more important than ever to recognize employees for their hard work – even when it can’t be done in person.

The Value of Recognition For Remote Employees

When compared to 10 years ago, the number of remote workers has now increased by 115%, currently, this number is sharply increasing with the ongoing of COVID-19.

According, to a Virgin Pulse survey, remote employees are more likely to be disengaged and quit, a shocking truth when currently the majority of the workforce has moved to remote work.

With multiple distractions while remote working, from crying children to the allure of checking social media with no one looking over your shoulder, it’s easy to disengage from the job.

A simple way is to keep the remote workforce engaged by regularly supporting and engaging them. Recognition also strengthens the peer-to-peer relationship, manager – to – peer relationship & understanding of organizations core value.

Ways To Leverage Recognition During Covid-19 Pandemic 

•  Using technology for recognition

 It’s probably when the employees come together in the office every day, they acquire numerous ways to celebrate achievements together. You might rejoice closing a sale by having a round of applause, or maybe buying the office lunch. Now that the employees are working remotely from home, inviting them to a virtual meet using tools like Zoom or Skype to celebrate these major accomplishments. The employees can try to socialize together, celebrate wins, and might feel that office feeling they might be lacking at home. Additionally, the extra face time will help alleviate the loneliness remote workers often feel on the job.

• Give Employees Local Gift Cards

Numerous local businesses are merely surviving during the COVID-19 pandemic due to past mandatory closures. The easiest way to support these businesses is by buying gift cards that might be redeemable by the employees at a later date. It’s a very commonly known fact that employees usually prefer to be recognized with gift cards instead of cash, so this might be the perfect time to stock up. This would not only lend a personalized touch to your recognitions; it will also support the community in a time of need. Brownie points if the gift cards are purchased through an automated rewards platform which can be forwarded to them via email. These platforms help eliminate the hassle of mailing gift cards to remote employees.

• Recognize Employees for Specific Actions

Adjusting to working from home can be hard, which is why it’s now more essential to reward specific behaviours/attitudes you would like to see more of in the current time. This not only shows appreciation, but it also encourages other employees to learn and follow.

• Using Public Channels

Make sure that the recognition is public and company-wide to celebrate the achievements. This means that you should recognize the employers in a public channel like Slack, your company intranet, or on a recognition platform that includes a social feed where everyone can view recognitions of their peers. This encourages other employers to engage with the recognition as well. When recognized publicly, recognition is a huge motivator for employees, and encouraging peers to participate in the celebration only drives motivation further.

• Provide Opportunities for Professional Development

One of the more creative ways is to reward and recognize employees by distance is by providing them with professional development opportunities. With all this spare time and valuable time (especially for your sales team), now is the time to handle new projects, learn and grasp new skills, and develop your repertoire. We now have more spare time than ever to develop our professional skills, so taking advantage by rewarding employees with online classes is one of the most rewarding experience which goes both ways.

• Giving Remote Workers a Voice

Many things can go wrong in an organization but, few things are worse for an employee than feeling like they don’t have a voice or they’re underappreciated in their organization. This can create perceptions like they’re only a number or a cog in the perpetual machine. Implementing and analysing an employee feedback system or even asking for suggestions on how to improve the company offers a chance for interaction, which gives them an identity which might be more important than their monthly paychecks. In addition to this, organizations can obtain some fresh ideas that could boost productivity or streamline a particular process, setting you up for success in the coming future.

• Creating informal communication sessions

It’s a good start to introduce a new habit/rule among your remote workforce to hold informal “water-cooler” sessions through Skype once or twice a week to keep the lines of communication open and which indirectly help the team to become friendly with each other.

These sessions might provide a space for team chit-chat and the best place to update one another about work-related matters or personal things which are not in line with other senior management teams.

Survey2Connect is a global award-winning customer experience management (CXM) solution that offers 3 core suites designed to help businesses seamlessly improve customer experience, employee experience, and market research.

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