Rewards & Recognition: The Balance Between Personalization & Automation

Organisations today are entering a new era of disruption. Today’s workforce is highly exposed to technology, whereby technology is “expected” to automate processes and bring about a slew of advantages to the workplace.

Concurrently, the workforce is also witnessing a change in employee rewards and recognition. The concept of total rewards, which goes beyond monetary benefits and includes employee benefits, talent management and performance management, is intricately linked to employee engagement levels and employee retention. Employees today want the best of everything – and they know that they have the power to negotiate given the scarce talent pool that our workforce is facing.

Given that total rewards and employee engagement are all interconnected, there is no doubt that HR is likely to rely on technology to automate the numerous processes to get work done. However, the problem then lies in too much automation. Given that employee recognition should be timely, surprising and most importantly, personal, too much automation may end up removing the human aspect of it, together with the effectiveness of your employee rewards program.

1. Drawing the line between personalization and automatio

Most HR leaders are worried that automation leads to fewer personal interaction with employees. Surprisingly, the opposite is more likely to happen.

Automating certain administrative HR processes frees up more time for HR to develop and focus on more ways to engage employees. HR leaders are able to invest more time on strategic tasks such as reviewing and implementing programs to boost employee engagement levels and productivity in the long run.

2. Maximising software and personalization is key

HR leaders can also implement a seamless recognition platform that recognises employees’ contributions and achievements. This allows employees’ accomplishments to be recognised within that moment which makes it more impactful for the receiving employee. However, it is crucial to ensure that recognition is personalized to the employee.

For instance, suppose John receives a generic email that says “Great Job!” for a sales deal that he has cinched, a client that he has been following up for almost a year and the deal exceed his sales target by 100%. He is less likely to feel recognised as this same email could be sent to another any employee, creating the impression that his efforts and contributions are not truly valued.

As such, personalization is key, and it is ideal to ensure that the recognition platform is set up in such a way whereby line managers can customise the “Thank you” note or even create an online board for employees to post their congratulatory messages. It could be a simple email reminder to the employees’ line manager to send out an email blast highlighting the employees’ achievement or even a reminder to send a simple “Thank You” email.

With technology, there are plenty of ways for organisations to customise recognition and rewards – while ensuring that it becomes a regular affair as opposed to a sporadic or annual event. At the same time, customising rewards and recognition specific to each department or office location can take personalization of recognition a step further. This then helps organisations and HR leaders to strike a good balance between software – automating certain manual HR processes – without compromising on the human aspect of employee recognition.