Diversity in the workplace affects employee recognition program implementation

Workforce diversity and employee rewards

You’ve got lots of different people, all of whom have different ethnic backgrounds, different areas of the country, different age levels, different genders and they’re all motivated by different kinds of things.

One of the things that’s become very clear to me in working with top performers over this period of time, top talent, is no matter how independent they are, they all want employee recognition: by their boss, their peers, other people within the organization, for what they’ve achieved and done.

Employee rewards change
We have to recognize what’s the type of workforce we have, what is it that motivates the baby-boomer group in terms of non-monetary rewards and employee recognition and what is it that might motivate the latest group of folks that came out of college in the last two years.

They may have very distinctive differences in what they’re looking for from employee recognition. One might look for pats on the back from their boss and the other would like a little more work-life balance, where they can have a few more flexible hours in where they come or leave early in the afternoon.

So, we’ll have to be able to think about how the diverse workforce fits into that.

Cost in employee rewards
The other piece is — the next element is the cost implications. We don’t have a lot of money we can throw at people sometimes. We don’t have unlimited budgets where we can give bonuses and incentives and financial rewards for employee recognition. And so, we have to find other ways of recognizing, rewarding, incentivising people that has very low, minimal or non-existent cost to start with.

Benefits of non-monetary rewards
Another importance of putting non-monetary rewards and employee recognition in place is it makes you a more attractive organization from a hiring perspective.

Many of the candidates I know over the years probe and interview you for how do you reward performance? How do you know when someone does a good job? How do you recognize that? And many of those top caliber candidates from $11 an hour customer service reps up to $150,000 a year senior executives are usually extremely disappointed in the kinds of employee recognition programs and the way companies go about it.

The next element is retention. It enables you to retain your best performers. It’s one of the key elements that enables you to retain them.

If you don’t do these things, your best people, over time, will leave you. They may not tell you this is the reason. But it’s one of the reasons that they stay, they’re excited, they’re passionate, they’re compelled by their role.