With the shift to remote working comes an urgent need to create a healthy remote culture where employees feel connected and valued. This is particularly crucial in the pensions sector, where stress and burnout are rife.
Get it wrong, and you’ll not only lose productivity, you’ll also lose people. A Gallup poll found that employees who don’t feel recognised are twice as likely to want to quit. And with the “Great Resignation” looming – 70% of employees are considering changing jobs post-COVID – employee retention must be top of the agenda.
Happily, good employee recognition for remote workers doesn’t need to be hard or expensive – it just needs to be timely, specific, and conscientious:
Timely
Employees are like puppies: they respond best to praise when it’s given shortly after the event. Make a habit of recognising positive actions and results within hours, not days or weeks.
Specific
Specific compliments not only feel better than generic ones, they also help your employees understand exactly what they did right – which means they’re more likely to do it again.
Conscientious
Some people love being singled out for praise in public, others find it mortifying. As you practise giving more positive feedback, be alert for signs that employees might prefer private over public recognition or vice versa. Even better, in your next round of 1:1s, just ask them.
Here are nine creative ways you can recognise your remote employees:
- Send an email recognising them for a specific achievement or contribution.
- Tag them on social media and make their achievement public.
- Set up automatic alerts on your internal communication platform so the whole team gets notified when a goal is reached.
- Start 1:1s by mentioning something the employee is doing well at.
- Quarterly or monthly, ask employees to share the accomplishments they're most proud of. This will allow you to compliment the things that matter to them.
- Encourage employees to nominate colleagues for special recognition.
- Collect anonymous compliments from teammates and deliver them in a card or a short video (make sure everyone on the team gets one!)
- Have a senior member of the company send them a personal note of appreciation.
- If budget allows, send care packages (or at least handwritten cards) to your employees for birthdays, onboarding and work anniversaries.
While the pensions industry continues to face challenges, leaders who take the opportunity to be a positive force in employees’ lives will reap the rewards. According to Psychometrics, 58% of employees say better recognition would make them more engaged. You can prevent burnout and boost morale across your whole team by taking a few minutes a week to recognise their efforts.