Retirement and healthcare benefits have dominated the discussion on total rewards lately as public employee benefits have been scrutinized. But benefits aren’t the only component of a total rewards program that is significantly impacting the workforce right now. 

Employee engagement surveys have revealed that employees don’t feel appreciated in their current roles. In fact, as many as two thirds of employees are actively looking for a new position right now, and one of the primary contributors to the discontent is a lack of appreciation. More than half of respondents in an Aon Hewitt survey said being appreciated would motivate them to stay at their organization. 

Thank you for joining me at today's Recognition TV webisode to talk about peer-to-peer recognition programs! You can watch the complete recorded version on Baudville.com or Baudville’s Facebook page. Several of my tips, ideas and best practices are below, but I recommend you watch the entire video (it’s only about 15 minutes!) to catch everything. 

What is peer-to-peer recognition?
At Baudville, we’ve defined peer-to-peer recognition as the genuine expressions of appreciation between co-workers. Peer-to-peer programs typically equip the entire staff with low-cost tools and give employees the ability to recognize one another without any manager approval. 

Peer recognition programs are very popular in organizations today. Peer recognition increases the quantity and frequency recognition is given, and it takes pressure off managers who are typically responsible for top-down recognition. We published a peer recognition white paper that explains the benefits of this type of recognition program– including improved culture, loyalty, job satisfaction and camaraderie. 

Creating a peer recognition program is very easy thanks to existing, ready-to-use programs. We currently offer three peer recognition programs, and I’m going to give a brief how-to for two of them today. 

When we set out to create our own internal peer recognition program, we had a pretty good feeling it was going to be popular. We’re Baudville, after all; if anyone knows how to recognize, we do. But I don’t think anyone expected that it would be this popular:

You may have heard about peer-to-peer recognition from a colleague or saw it mentioned on Twitter, but you do know what it is or how it works?