I am interested to know about your recognition moments in the company.  What are things in place that let employees feel they are valued, appreciated, and acknowledged? Specifically, I try to benchmark recognition programs and awards. If you have something structured and even innovative, it would be greatly appreciated if you could share it with me. 

Our organization relies heavily on surveys for benchmarking and driving initiatives. They use the Gallup Q12 survey as a regular benchmark for measuring employee engagement, with one of the key aspects being how employees feel recognized and rewarded for their work. This benchmarking is used both internally and externally, including by vendors. Additionally, the organization conducts one-off surveys focused on benefits, where employees rank their priorities and identify gaps in the current benefits package. The results from these surveys inform the development of future benefit strategies. This data-driven approach helps shape the organization's initiatives and improvements based on employee feedback and engagement metrics.

We believe that genuine gratitude and recognition are the keys to engagement and retention of quality employees. As our workforce has grown in size, diversity, and complexity, we have adapted to that, by offering multiple ways of recognizing our employees.

The first is an enterprise-wide, formal recognition program. Any employee at any level can send "kudos" to anyone else within the organization. This is submitted electronically as an extension of our HRIS and employee experience software program. A copy of the recognition is sent to the individual, that person's direct leader, department head, and anyone else the sender wants to include, via email. The receiver(s) can print out a physical copy, display it at their workstation, or keep it private. Many leaders will compile and share these out in town hall/all-hands meetings.

A copy is also stored in both the sender and receiver's electronic employee file. We track how many times an individual is recognized and how many times an individual recognizes others. 

We are looking to enhance this program, by allowing non-employee individuals the opportunity to recognize our employees as well. For example, if a materials vendor wanted to recognize the exceptional service from an employee in purchasing, we want to offer them an easy way to do so.

The second program is more location and department specific. Annually, senior leaders will nominate, deliberate, and present company awards to employees. Some are earned based on merit and some based on milestones. There is a formal ceremony and banquet; however what that looks like varies from year-to-year and location-to-location.

The last is not a formal program, but an adopted practice by many of the teams across the organization. The team meeting facilitator will reach out in advance, requesting names of any "MVPs" the deserve recognition from the prior week. Co-workers will submit names and deeds; the facilitator will take a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting to recognize 1-2 that stand out.

We recognize employees thru major townhalls. Managers are encouraged to submit their nomination with justification that is linked to at least 1 company core competencies. It could be an individual nomination or group recognition (e.g. initiative or project implemented).  For other clusters, they have a reward system wherein nominations are submitted via online system wherein aside from being recognized publicly thru company announcements, nominees and actual winners in the monthly or quarterly recognition gain certain points which they can use to purchase products from the catalogue in that online recognition system. 

We have a weekly message CEO recorded by our CEO where employees are encouraged to send in Shout-Outs for teammates for agency-wide recognition. We also routinely send out department + company-wide Slack's to recognize employees and teams in general channels, as well as channels specifically created for employee "props."