Employee Recognition for Everyone in the Digital Workplace.

Digitisation of the workplace is an exciting and positive process opening up boundless opportunities for greater productivity and a happier workplace.

Most companies already operate a digital workplace to one extent or another using technologies and advances that have been transforming businesses in a steady, if not, rapid evolution towards an ‘ultimate digital workplace’. Part of their digital transformation has been the use by many of the corporate intranet delivering and sharing internally a wide variety of applications. From marcoms and sales interactions, corporate content of all kinds, HR and internal communications, intranets have become a fundamental core of the digital workplace.

But their benefits have not always been all-inclusive, as only those employees with access to a computer, an email address and a company log-in have been able to feel the full impact intranets have delivered. This risks remote and lone workers, as well as staff in the lower echelons of a company becoming isolated, ill-informed about company news and generally left out, and that can lead to low morale and low productivity. Even basic employee recognition issues have not been able to include everyone and that’s been bad news for staffing and employee retention. More workplace digitization is needed.

The good news, however, is that the ongoing digital evolution of the workplace is continuous and more companies are turning to mobile enterprise apps for aspects of such things as training, HR and internal communications; this presents a great new opportunity for employers to deliver employee recognition and rewards over such apps, so they reach and involve everyone. Good work recognized will not only boost morale, but it will also increase productivity, encourage collaboration between employees, and help to reduce staff turnover.

Sure, some companies might still opt for dishing out traditional rewards like a VIP parking space for a week, or awarding an employee-of-the-month prize in the form of a printed coffee mug with recognition of the accolade printed on a staff notice board. But as the workplace becomes more digitized forward-looking companies are now opting to use employee-recognition apps to support their employee motivation strategies, bringing aspects of the corporate intranet to the mobile device in everyone’s pocket. With the boundless mechanisms and innovations a mobile app offers, the employee recognition options might complement or totally replace previous recognition processes; but whatever they do they are a sure indication the workplace will have attained a new level of digitization.

An employee recognition app might, for instance, enable the employer to celebrate employee milestones, appreciate efforts, reward results, and allow employees themselves to leverage social media and send one another inspiring messages and share accolades on Facebook, Twitter or other platforms. The app might enable staff to accumulate recognition points that can be used to acquire merchandise, gift cards, and even trips – almost like a loyalty or air miles scheme; or, instead of ‘purchasing’ something with recognition points, the app might also enable employees to make charitable donations instead. And when it comes to peer-to-peer recognition, an app might also allow employees to use employer-designated recognition points to give to their peers.

The bottom line is that digitization of the workplace is an exciting and positive process opening up boundless opportunities for greater productivity and a happier workplace, all essential for business success; the employee recognition mobile app has the potential of being one of the most important parts of that process helping make all those things happen.