Increasingly, peer-to-peer recognition is emerging as a popular and effective way of employee engagement and motivation across organizations. Experts consider it to be an important contributor to building an excellent organizational culture, which impacts employee satisfaction and retention.
Simply put, peer-to-peer recognition or peer recognition is the practice of appreciating, acknowledging, and recognizing co-workers for their achievements, performance, help, or support by anyone in the organization irrespective of their role or level.
Recognition by peers can be done in multiple ways – in-person or digitally. It can be accompanied by e-cards or ‘thank you’ cards as a token of appreciation.
Peer recognition can be done in person at the workplace directly, in a team meeting, or any other forum.
It can also be done digitally through an internal collaboration platform, a digital recognition platform, or even social media.
In recent years, peer-to-peer recognition has emerged as a powerful technique for organizations to drive employee motivation.
Being recognized and appreciated by their peers gives employees a greater sense of satisfaction, self-worth, acknowledgment, and achievement.
The important benefits of peer recognition are as follows:
1. Creates a Great Culture at the Workplace
2. Develops Collaboration among Employees
3. Drives Empowerment of Employees
4. Promotes Transparency and Openness
5. Redefines the Role of Managers and Leaders
Peer appreciation empowers employees with the necessary tools to praise others, appreciate their accomplishments, and provide positive feedback.
Therefore, this makes them feel truly engaged and helps build a great team.
Moreover, it provides employees with an opportunity to share their views and opinions beyond their assignments and responsibilities.
This contributes to creating a positive work culture and promotes the development of strong interpersonal bonds between employees.
A culture of recognition involving peers helps foster a deep sense of collaboration and camaraderie among coworkers.
Hence, appreciating their colleagues’ contributions and achievements improves team spirit and bonding between team members.
Also, being able to recognize and reward the efforts and achievements of co-workers gives employees positive energy and happiness.
They feel a greater sense of empowerment about the entire process of recognition.
This creates a greater sense of empowerment and hence ensures a greater level of participation.
This, in turn, has a positive impact on employee efficiency and productivity.
Also, organizations strive to create a transparent and open work culture. Hence, implementing peer recognition systems helps in enhancing the level of trust and camaraderie between employees.
So, employees feel free to share their opinions and express their views in a free and frank manner.
As employees become more open with each other and their seniors, the work environment becomes increasingly transparent.
It is a misconception that the popularity of peer appreciation may make managers and leaders irrelevant in the whole process.
Promoting peer recognition programs will remain the responsibility of the managers.
Also, despite the effectiveness of peer recognition, employees would still want to be appreciated for their achievements by their superiors.
Hence, it would be safe to say that the management will continue to play an important role in employee recognition.
Too much of peer recognition without genuine reasons might diminish its value in the eyes of the employees as well as for the organization.
It might be perceived as a mere formality rather than real appreciation for a real achievement or action.
Defining clear criteria even for peer recognition can ensure that its value is preserved in the organization.
Peer recognition might turn into a ‘popularity contest’ for employees who have good informal relationships with other employees.
This will impact the genuineness of the program itself and diminish its value.
Some sort of moderation by the supervisors or the HR even for appreciation from peers could ensure that recognition happens only in genuine cases.
Those employees who are not recognized by their peers, might feel disengaged with the team.
This might result in a decline in their performance and productivity.
Appreciation from peers needs to be supplemented by other forms of recognition driven by the supervisors and the management to ensure that all deserving employees receive appropriate recognition.
Here are the best practices:
1. Make the Process Seamless
2. Incorporate Organizational Values
3. Create Social Visibility
4. Promote the Program
5. Conduct Appreciation Events
6. Implement Appropriate Controls
Organizations must make giving and receiving peer acknowledgment seamless and convenient for employees.
One of the best ways to do this is to implement a digital recognition platform, preferably with a mobile app that enables employees to recognize their peers on the go.
Employee recognition platforms can help organizations make recognition from anyone to anyone, anytime and anywhere, a reality, which is challenging for traditional methods such as ‘Thank You’ cards.
Colleagues, being in close proximity, often have a unique perspective on the behaviors of their team members.
Their observations can be invaluable in the process of peer acknowledgment.
Hence, acknowledging peers for demonstrating behaviors that are closely aligned with the organization’s core values should be a priority.
To highlight the importance of peer recognition, social visibility should be created around it.
Physical or online walls of fame, leaderboards, and integration with internal platforms such as Teams, Slack, and intranets could be good ways to showcase peer recognition and create visibility around it.
Team meetings and other similar forums could also be leveraged to give shoutouts to peers.
Regular communication from the HR and management about peer recognition is critical to its success.
Such communication can help reinforce the importance of peer appreciation and increase the level of traction in the program.
Emails, collaboration platforms, workplace signage, etc., can be leveraged to promote the program in the organization.
It is a great idea to leverage important occasions such as Employee Appreciation Day, World Gratitude Day, or Friendship Day to promote peer-to-peer recognition in the organization.
The organization can conduct peer appreciation weeks around these events to promote employee recognition.
Such events can help renew employees’ interest in the program by creating more variety and excitement.
Setting appropriate criteria, moderation by the HR or the management, restrictions on the frequency of recognition, etc., are a few of the controls that can be implemented to ensure that the process stays fair and unbiased.
These are important to ensure that recognition by peers continues to be perceived as genuine, valuable, and desirable by employees.
Peer-to-peer recognition has become an important part of the workplace today and has been helpful for organizations in improving employee satisfaction and well-being, which directly impacts organizational performance and retention.
Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of experience in the corporate world and entrepreneurship. In the past, Sagar has worked with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank, in leadership roles. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn
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