An employee’s personal brand is the sum of their work contributions, large and small. Encouraging employees to develop their personal brands through social recognition has a powerful ripple effect, one that propels the organization's success. By bringing peer recognition into the corporate Intranet and making that recognition visible across the organization, employees can share their success stories while educating each other about company business and what it takes to drive success.
Social recognition is a fundamental need
Fair compensation is important, but for today's knowledge worker the most valuable currency is recognition. Companies spend $38 billion on reward programs annually, and yet studies show that 39% of employees aren't satisfied with the recognition they receive.
Elements of a valuable recognition program
The right recognition program does more than enable employees to send sentiments of appreciation and thanks. When a recognition program infuses the corporate Intranet with stories about the repeatable behaviors that drive personal career success and organizational goals, recognition becomes a powerful business asset.
Here are 4 ways recognition helps build employee personal brands, while contributing to the success of the business:
- Connect employees and skill sets - When recognition is leveraging the powerful social features of the Intranet like employee profiles, recognition becomes a place where employees from different lines of business can connect. By expanding their social graphs, employees can network within the organization, while sharing what they know with their colleagues.
- Build profiles around success - By giving employees a tool where they can tell stories about their colleagues' achievements, they have a way to highlight their everyday contributions to the company, while making it easier for others to adopt those behaviors in their daily activities.
- Instant positive feedback - While formal performance reviews give managers the opportunity to give employees feedback to improve themselves, those conversations can't be frequent enough. Real time and publicly visible feedback about what an employee did well reinforce those actions to the person and across the organization.
- Digital trophy case - It's great to win an award and take home a badge. But a digital trophy case lets employees showcase their contributions and awards on their Intranet profile, which brings a sense of pride and encourages others to strive for the same.
Today's workforce is looking for ways to network themselves within their organization and build that personal credibility. Recognition programs are a win-win for empowering employees to do that.
Learn how RBC employees build their personal brands inside their company Intranet every day.
