Every industry is different, which means building culture, managing employees, and bringing out the best in your employees looks different for each industry. Implementing employee recognition effectively in your industry is no different.
In today’s post, we’ll talk about recognition in the technology industry. For our purposes, when we say tech industry, we’re talking more about the software side of things. For the manufacturing side, we already have a post discussing recognition in manufacturing. For distribution and other frontline positions, we have a post for that, too!
But let’s get back to the tech industry with some information and statistics to give you an idea of the state of the industry:
- 67% of employees in the tech industry work remotely all or some of the time
- Employment in the tech industry is steadily growing by around 3% each year
- Turnover in the tech industry is one of the highest at 12.9%
- 62% of tech workers feel emotionally and physically drained
Technology is a growing, competitive industry, where employees aren’t afraid to leave a position to search for greener pastures. Recognition can be the key to engaging and retaining your tech employees, but only if you do it right.
Benefits of Recognition for the Tech Industry
Employee recognition can transform your tech company from a hustle culture ripe with burnout to a self-sufficient culture of appreciation and productivity. Check out some of these amazing benefits of recognition:
- Lowers voluntary turnover by 31%
- Increases productivity and performance by 14%
- Increases employee loyalty by 3X
- Raises the chances of employee engagement by 4X
One more stat puts it all into perspective: the highest performing companies are 10X more likely to prioritize employee recognition than their low-performing peers. Recognition is a key motivator that leads to higher performance—it’s that simple.
Strategies for Implementing Recognition in the Tech Industry
Let’s dive into what you can do to make recognition more effective at your tech company. Whether you’re just starting to look into recognition platforms or you want to improve the one you already have, these strategies should help you build a culture of recognition that reaches everyone.
1. Use Digital Tools to Reach Remote, Hybrid, and In-Person Employees
Building an all-inclusive culture that equally reaches both in-person and remote employees can be tough, but digital recognition can make it easier.
Many recognition platforms provide digital capabilities, such as sending digital shoutouts, sending and spending points on a digital store, and automating things like birthday and holiday messages.
At Awardco, we’ve built multiple features to try and make recognition reach everyone, regardless of where they work, such as:
- MemoryBooks™. Digital service awards that include messages from coworkers and are automatically sent to employees.
- AwardCodes. Printable recognition cards with QR codes on them that allow you to give physical gifts in person or send them in the mail.
- Lifestyle Spending Accounts. Each employee has an account that is reloaded with a certain amount of points on a regular cadence. Then, they can use their points on approved expenses whenever or wherever they want.
2. Empower Collaboration and Frequent Recognition With Peer-to-Peer Programs
Manager-led recognition is an important part of your culture, but it’s tough for managers to see everything, every day, and to send genuine recognitions each time. However, employees work with each other constantly, so peer recognition can fill in those gaps.
Peer recognition can do most of the heavy lifting when trying to build a culture of appreciation. A study from Gallup found that team recognition:
- Encouraged collaboration and friendship
- Enhanced agility and clarified expectations
- Improved employees’ sense of meaning and purpose
- Improved work quality
To build an effective peer recognition program, you should follow these strategies:
- Lead by example. Managers and executives should start recognizing as frequently as possible. This shows employees that recognition is a part of the culture and will motivate them to recognize each other in turn.
- Give everyone easy access. Make sure every single employee has access to both recognize and be recognized. And make it easy to do!
- Post recognition publicly. Awardo has a social feed that posts each recognition so that everyone can see and react to it. This type of feature keeps recognition top of mind for everyone.
Peer recognition can spread recognition throughout your tech company, no matter where people work or how big your workforce is. This can lower stress and promote feelings of goodwill and appreciation. For more peer recognition ideas, check out this post.
3. Lower Stress and Build Behaviours With Recognition-Powered Incentives
Tech employees often work in high-pressure environments with long hours and stressful situations. That’s not to say that the organizations are doing something wrong—tech is just a fast-moving industry.
One solution allows you to decrease stress, increase employee well-being, and actually boost motivation and productivity—employee incentives.
Build custom incentives to incentivise behaviours and then reward the people who participate with recognition, which makes them much more likely to repeat that behaviour. Think about incentives like:
- Wellness incentives to help employees improve their physical and mental health.
- Sales incentives to motivate your salespeople and fairly compensate them for their efforts.
- Professional development incentives to drive employees to learn new skills, find their passions, and move up in the company.
The best part of incentives is that you can use them to improve both the professional and personal lives of employees, which lowers stress, raises engagement, and keeps employees around for longer.
4. Build an Onboarding Program
Turnover is going to happen, regardless of industry, which means that hiring new employees is a constant need. To start your employees off on the right foot, minimize the risk of quick turnover, and reinforce your culture of recognition from day one, an onboarding programme is the perfect solution.
Here’s how you can build an effective onboarding recognition program:
- Send new hires a survey before they start to learn their favourite snacks, food, interests, colour, etc. Then recognize new employees on their first day with a personalized gift bag.
- Let them choose company swag that they actually want in their first week.
- Give each team a budget to go out to lunch when they have a new member.
- Build your program to recognize new hires on their one-month, three-month, six-month, and one-year mark. This will show them that they always matter, even when they’re not “new hires” anymore.
- Train managers how to watch for team member contributions and recognize people effectively.
These steps will ensure each new hire has a great first impression with your tech company.
Rec & Tech: Made for Each Other
Recognition in the technology industry is like peanut butter and jelly or cinnamon and sugar. It’s the perfect combo to make things better. The tech industry will only get more competitive and stressful as time goes on—instead of pushing your people for more, more, more, recognize their accomplishments, empower their health, and build them a culture of appreciation.
This will get you the benefits you’re looking for and then some. If you’re interested in building custom recognition programs for your tech company, schedule a demo with Awardco today.
An avid lover of fantasy books, a proud Hufflepuff, and a strong proponent of escapism, Jeff has a love of good storytelling. He relies on that for both his professional work and his writing hobby (don’t ask about the 10+ novel ideas collecting virtual dust on his computer).
