Will Combining Disparate Recognition Reward Programs onto One Technology Platform Provide Better Bottom Line Results?

According to a survey recently released by Globoforce, a technology and reward recognition supplier, 88% of the HR respondents believe that their recognition programs need improvement and that their CEO would agree.
58% said their programs reinforce the mission and values, but 42% say the program offered no strategic benefit and are a tremendous waste of resources and do not produce bottom line results.

Within the survey it is noted that 38% of this group said they were not measuring their program’s results in any way. In our experience, the vast majority of these programs don’t have distinct quantifiable measurements and as such it is difficult to measure bottom line results. This has been the major difference between incentive programs and recognition programs from the beginning. Recognition programs measure such things as how many were recognized, how much money they spent, were they more engaged, did the satisfaction level improve, etc. They have nothing at all to do with how much was generated to the bottom line. This soft dollar data is not the kind that the C-suite wants to see when determining if recognition award programs are a good investment.

There are some recognition award companies that say combining different reward and recognition programs onto one technology platform is the best way to guard against the budgets being squandered on unchecked and unmeasured recognition programs. While corralling programs in one place does make it somewhat easier to know what’s happening with recognition programs on a corporate level and manage them accordingly, these platforms have nothing to do with measuring them against a predetermined set of quantifiable objectives. Those need to be and often will be the responsibility of the departments implementing them designed to produce bottom line results, like sales, safety, reduction of waste and scrap, improved quality measures and cost savings among others.

Recognition can support any company mission and value and when done properly can affect the performance of the employees in a macro sense. Unless you design it to tactically improving specific goals and objectives, and provide proper measurement, don’t expect it to produce bottom line results.

Combining all corporate award programs on one platform will definitely give you a synergy of all program budgets and allow employees to combine awards from many programs in one place, but it won’t give you a better chance at bottom line results. Corporations that have used this concept can have great recognition programs but in the end still ask…”What did we get for the money?” This is a question that leaves many of them scurrying for the exits.