Peer recognition is one of the most effective work cultures that promote employee engagement and team collaboration. In addition, peer recognition brings many other benefits to organizations.
Surveys of employees have demonstrated that recognition from colleagues means more to employees than manager-down appreciation. There are several reasons for that, which may seem unimportant, but play a huge role in an employee’s well-being and engagement at work. Here are ten of the many benefits of peer recognition.
1. Peer Recognition is Universally Sincere
When a colleague praises another for going beyond the call of duty, it is usually sincere and not contrived. Team Members are far less likely to, or be perceived to issue, fake or artificial praise, because of cooperative initiatives. Praise is given earnestly.
Because recognition is genuine and heartfelt, it has a much greater impact on performance and on the receiving employee feeling appreciated. The employee who receives peer recognition knows that they have truly made a difference.
SPOT is the #1 Peer recognition feature in Thanks
2. Lateral Recognition Increase Friendships Among Team Members
Peer appreciation boosts endorphins in both the giving and receiving team members. As a result, friendships are strengthened and the cohesiveness of the team solidifies. Having a friend at work makes an employee seven times more likely to be engaged.
Work friends are also one of the major reasons employees cite for staying in their job. They don’t want to let down their team. A team that has friendships and gets along can weather the stress and failures that occur in a stressful environment.
That kind of a team comes out stronger and with more creative solutions. Encourage peer recognition and you encourage greater bonds between your employees.
3. Gratitude Increases Satisfaction
Gratitude increases personal satisfaction, happiness, and well-being. Employees who regularly express gratitude are much more likely to stay at an employer. They are also more likely to be the advocates for their employers, promoting the company to friends and family.
For an unhappy employee, the act of expressing gratitude can turn an awful day into a great day and strengthen their bonds with others on the team. Gratitude releases endorphins and promotes greater optimism, which in turns makes work challenges less stressful.
4. Peer Recognition Promotes Engagement
The very act of pausing to thank a work buddy for helping benefits the grateful worker. That simple act increases engagement and boosts their mood. The more employees that stop for a simple act of recognizing another coworker, the more they will engage in other aspects of their job.
But, peer recognition doesn’t just benefit the giving employee. The receiving employee also increases in their engagement. As positive traits, habits, or characteristics are recognized, employees strive harder to grow and maintain them. Work performance increases and engagement spreads.
5. Peer to Peer Appreciation is Timely
Unlike corporate events, or team parties, peer recognition typically happens at the time that an employee goes all-out. Colleagues don’t wait until the next monthly team meeting to call another person out for a great job.
Instead, it’s often done in a personal, sincere way. “Thanks for taking the time to help me figure out the coding mistake” or “Thanks for staying late to help me get that file off to the underwriter” or “You handled that customer well!” Instant feedback makes a bigger difference on employee performance than delayed feedback and is one of the reasons team member recognition makes such a difference.
6. Gratitude is Contagious
As the culture of gratitude grows within a team, it has a multiplying effect. Gratitude begets gratitude. As employees feel appreciated the cohesiveness of the team improves and each member is more likely to see the positive things at work and appreciate each other.
Gratitude creates a positive environment that inspires employees to work harder, which inturn creates more successes at work.
7. Peer Recognition Reduces Turnover by Creating Community
Employees who feel needed and appreciated by their colleagues are much less likely to leave a job. In several studies, the fear of letting down their team is often cited for a reason employees don’t leave.
Peer recognition is one of the most effective ways to build the community at work and foster a sense of team unity. When colleagues appreciate and recognize the impact that individual team members make, each person feels appreciated and valued. They also feel like they make a difference and those feelings increase their loyalty to the team.
Memories
8. Increases Collaboration
As team members acknowledge each other’s strengths and efforts, the sense of competitiveness decreases and collaboration increases. Coworkers can see the various talents of each other and instead of feeling threatened or competing against each other, can work together better.
Competition against other coworkers tends to have an overall negative effect on the workplace environment. It can cause contention, division, and other negative feelings at work. Instead, collaboration inspires each employee to excel at their individual strengths and to be able to tap into the strengths of others around them.
Peer recognition helps to fost this type of an environment by allowing team members to recognize each other for talents that may not be obvious to managers or higher executives.
9. Peer Recognition is More Specific
In the past manager-led recognition tended to be generalized such as “employee of the month” or “top salesman.” Even with many managers growing their recognition to be more specific, peer recognition tends to be the most specific form of recognition.
Peers naturally identify exactly the positive trait or habit that made a difference. They identify exactly how they learned to calm a customer down from watching their colleague do it. They specify that they didn’t know how to find that item in the computer, or fix an issue on the assembly line.
Peer recognition is specific and effective because it points to the exact thing that helped the team. It identifies exactly how an employee helped out.
10. Peer Recognition Creates An Equal Voice
When management is solely in charge of recognition, awards, and celebrations, the power is still mainly held by management. But, when peers are given the ability to give out awards, additional strengths are recognized. When teams are allowed to choose their definition of success and celebrate those successes, then employees are given a greater voice.
Without a doubt, when peers recognize each other and teams define success, there will be individuals that are recognized that would have been missed. Strengths that are different than the obvious talents management would have chosen will be identified.
That is exactly what makes peer recognition effective. When teams can identify those quieter, behind-the-scenes individuals that make a difference and they have the power to give awards, the entire team benefits in improved performance.
Watch a Demo on how peers can give awards vía the SPOT feature on Thanks
How To Foster Peer Recognition
Although spontaneous peer recognition would be fantastic for any employer, it usually needs to be cultivated. Employers should provide the tools and encouragement for peers to easily express gratitude and recognize each other.
The many features on the Thanks platform provide for both private and public peer recognition. Colleagues can send ecards, a quick note, or publically recognize a coworker vía the social platform.
SPOT allows employees to give awards to someone who made an especially big difference to them without manager approval. Others can join in the conversation and reiterate the difference the receiving employee has made to them.
Conclusion
Through peer recognition, teams grow, expand, and loyalty increases. Employee engagement increases from both the recognizing team member and the receiving colleague. Everyone on the team benefits as others see the value that extra effort makes and the entire team’s performance improves.
But, although peer recognition is vital, it does not negate the effectiveness of manager-initiate recognition. Check out the next article on how to provide the most effective manager-led recognition to create a culture of Thanks!
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition