Employee Recognition Mistakes Large Companies Make (and Helpful Solutions)

Large companies have a lot on their plates at any given time—with dozens of teams, projects, and priorities all vying for attention, how do you create a cohesive culture that equally motivates, engages, and rewards everyone?

One key solution is employee recognition for large companies. With hundreds or even thousands of employees at enterprise-level organizations, executive and HR teams need to make regular recognition a priority.

However, it’s hard to recognize and reward so many people in ways that mean the most to them. Recognition at work is a subtle art, and employee recognition mistakes at large companies are all too common.

To shed some light on these challenges, we’ll go over some of the most common recognition mistakes at large companies we’ve seen. We’ll also provide some solutions to help you avoid these mistakes in the future.

Understanding the Importance of Employee Recognition

Recognition is a must, regardless of business size. However, for large companies, where employees can so easily feel forgotten and overlooked, recognition is even more important!

Employee recognition decreases employee turnover by 31% by making them 3X more loyal to your organization. It also helps employees be 4X more engaged at work and increases productivity by 14%.

Not only that, but recognition also makes employees 5X more connected to company culture, and 37% of employees say that being recognized is the single greatest motivator for them.

Finally, high-performing companies are 10X more likely to prioritize employee recognition—in the uber-competitive scene that is enterprise business, the companies that invest in employee recognition perform better. It’s that simple.

Breaking Down 6 Common Employee Recognition Mistakes at Large Companies

After learning how impactful employee recognition truly is, let’s dive into some of the mistakes large companies make and how to avoid them.

1. Not Investing In Recognition

The most basic mistake is not putting time or effort into recognition programs at all. A lack of recognition at work leads to a 200% greater chance that employees quit their jobs because people want to feel valued, seen, and supported.

Not creating, implementing, and growing recognition programs is the worst mistake any enterprise can make.

Solution: Invest at Least 2% of Payroll Into Recognition

Make recognition a priority! A study showed that the average budget for employee recognition is only 2% of payroll—we here at Awardco think that anywhere between 3-5% is ideal, but if you don’t have any recognition programs in place, start small and grow from there.

Use the tips and solutions farther down this article to help you build successful recognition programs and watch as your people respond with greater engagement, enthusiasm, happiness, and productivity.

2. Offering Generic or Impersonal Recognition

Another trap many large companies fall into is offering impersonal recognition. After all, personalizing rewards and recognition to so many employees can feel nearly impossible, so why not send a generic email on birthdays or give out one-size-fits-all swag?

This is a dangerous mindset because generic recognition can actually push the employee engagement needle the wrong way. Employees are good at sniffing out insincerity, and if they’re given recognition or a reward that doesn’t feel personal to them and their contributions, they’ll know the company doesn’t REALLY care about them.

Solution: Implement Peer Recognition

In order to make recognition more personal, put the power in employees’ hands.

Peer-to-peer recognition allows employees to recognize each other for the good work they notice. This not only makes recognition more frequent, but it increases personalization because an employee’s colleagues know much more about their work than an executive. Which means recognitions will have more personalized details and be more memorable and meaningful.

3. Giving Generic or Samey Rewards

Generic recognition is bad, but generic rewards are almost worse. Many enterprise-level organizations choose some basic swag (such as mugs or a t-shirt) and hit the “send all” button. These impersonal rewards don’t mean anything to employees and don’t make them feel valued or cared for.

Solution: Let Employees Choose Their Own Rewards

Handing out the same item to everyone to save time may sound good…but giving everyone access to a reward network where they can simply choose their own items is even better! Platforms like Awardco make offering even thousands of personalized rewards easy with our world’s-largest reward network.

4. Using One-Size-Fits-All Recognition Programs for Everyone

Similar to the previous mistake, many enterprise organizations focus on company-led recognition initiatives. Programs that involve everyone are well and good (think holiday programs or service awards)—however, company-wide recognition doesn’t have room for the nuance of different teams and different departments.

For example, creating a recognition program that’s based around productivity is great, but doesn’t each team measure that differently? Having a lot of meetings is awesome for a salesperson, but what about the teams that don’t interact with prospects?

Solution: Break Recognition Down Into Departments and Teams

One of the best things about modern recognition platforms like Awardco is that HR can give administrative authority to other leaders and managers. This means each department and even each team can create their own recognition programs.

This allows each person to have the opportunity to feel appreciated for their work, regardless of how their team measures success. It also leads to more personalized recognition, like we mentioned above.

Give a budget to each department and team to build the recognition programs that are best for their specific needs. 

5. Not Setting the Example/Not Training Managers to Recognize

Enterprise leaders are always busy—there’s no getting around that. But you should never allow yourself to get too busy for recognition. When managers and leaders recognize, every measure of morale, productivity, performance, and retention increases.

However, only 20% of managers are seen as supportive. If this disconnect exists in your company, it shows employees that leaders don’t care for them, even if you have robust recognition programs.

When enterprise leaders get so busy they forget to show appreciation to those around them, employee morale and engagement suffer.

Solution: Train Leaders to Recognize

Getting buy-in from leadership is a vital part of successful recognition for large companies. By showing leaders why recognition is important and training them on how to recognize their people in a personalized, meaningful, and intentional way, you’ll see recognition flourish from top to bottom.

6. Not Using a Recognition Platform

We’re a little biased here, but not using a recognition platform in today’s world is pure crazy talk. However, many enterprise companies still rely on drawers full of gift cards and spreadsheets to manually track budgets and orders. Not only does this waste HR’s time, it’s extremely hard to measure the impact and improve your efforts over time.

Solution: Implement an Employee Recognition Platform

Platforms like Awardco make recognizing and rewarding both easier and more effective than ever before with features like:

• Customizable recognition programs with variable admin access to celebrate any milestone and recognize any achievement
• Reward catalogs with millions of options and zero-hassle fulfillment for you
• Fully automated communications, reports, budget tracking, and more
• Integrations with many HRIS systems and collaborate apps

Still not convinced? Read on to see the benefits Awardco’s enterprise clients have seen.

Case Studies and Examples

Pilot Company

To better reach their 24,000 employees spread all over North America, Pilot upgraded their recognition strategy with Awardco. They were able to build programs that reach their retail stores, truck drivers, and corporate employees effectively.

Because of these new programs, they’ve seen 24X more recognition than before, which has led to 96% of their 24,000 people getting recognized. Their culture of appreciation and engagement is stronger than ever.

Visionworks

With nearly 8,000 employees spread all over the country, Visionworks used employee recognition through Awardco to spread more appreciation to their retail-centered workforce and drastically cut their turnover.

How? They gave the power of building recognition programs to their regional leaders, allowing them to build programs based on what their employees wanted. 

ClickUp

ClickUp switched from their outdated recognition platform to Awardco to better reach their over 800 global employees. The switch, which introduced powerful automation, budgeting, and reporting capabilities, saves ClickUp’s HR team a lot of time and effort.

Not only that, but their pioneering peer-to-peer recognition program, which gives every full-time employee 100 points to give out to other employees each month, has given employees a huge morale boost.

Ultradent

Working in the dental equipment manufacturing business ought to make recognition difficult, especially with over 1600 global employees spread over corporate and manufacturing positions.

However, Ultradent has used Awardco to customize recognition and rewards to their different global locations, ensuring everyone feels seen and valued, no matter where they live. And with Awardco’s offline recognition capabilities, both corporate and manufacturing workers are recognized frequently. 

Make the Enterprise Employee Experience Meaningful

With so many employees, each with different personalities, work styles, and career goals, it can feel difficult to recognize them all effectively. However, building successful recognition programs for enterprises is possible, and hopefully these strategies and solutions will help as you build and implement your own programs.