There are two levels to setting goals for your recognition program.
At a basic level, you will want to set objectives to measure the success of the program itself, in relation to whether people are using it and how happy they are with it.
Looking at the bigger picture, you may also tie your program to larger organizational goals to gauge its wider impact on your culture.
Common organizational goals
Chances are, your decision to implement an employee recognition program is probably a response to a larger organizational challenge or objective. Maybe you see a need to improve morale, or have seen low employee engagement scores, or are having trouble retaining people.
Whatever your aim is, it can be useful to set specific goals related to these larger organizational challenges as you implement your recognition program in order to track improvement. These will vary depending on your industry and your objectives, but some examples might be:
- Productivity- Increase in the number of rooms cleaned per hour by hotel staff
- Retention- Reducing turnover by 10%
- Absenteeism- Reduction in average days missed
- Results- Increase in sales revenue
- Engagement- Increase in eNPS score
While drawing a direct correlation between recognition and these bottom line metrics can be difficult, it is still very much worth tracking these larger goals as your program progresses.
If you’re seeing real improvements, it’s probably not a coincidence. The key to demonstrating this to your leadership team is to support your case with more tangible metrics on your program’s performance. With that in mind, it’s always best to pair any of these larger goals with goals for program participation and budget usage.
Pro tip: Don’t hesitate to gather feedback! If your program hasn't moved the needle on your larger organizational goal, survey employee sentiment on the program to confirm your goals are on track. Conduct a company-wide feedback survey or speak with your employees one-on-one to confirm that the metrics you have chosen accurately reflect success.
Common program goals
The KPIs (key performance indicators) you should be looking at when setting goals for your program will mainly fall into two categories: participation and budget usage.
Participation goals help you to set targets for how widespread adoption of your program is, while budget usage goals will help you determine if you are investing the right amount in recognition for the return you want.
Here’s an overview of some KPIs you might want to build goals around in both areas.
Participation KPIs
Participation rate
The percentage of team members who are using the system to either send gifts or Shoutouts. This is the standard participation metric that most companies will use to set participation goals.
Set a goal for this KPI if: you want your program to be adopted by as many users as possible.
Average number of gifts/Shoutouts sent
This metric can be helpful in allowing you to track not just how many people are participating, but how often they are sending recognition during a given period. This can be a good participation benchmark to consider for a better sense of how frequently recognition is being used, rather than how many people are using it.
Set a goal for this KPI if: you want your team to send recognition regularly.
Recipient rate
You should also keep an eye on the percentage of your team who are receiving gifts. This can be important to ensure that the program is inclusive, and that everyone who deserves recognition is getting it.
Set a goal for this KPI if: You want to make sure that as many of your employees as possible are being recognized.
Percentage of claimed gifts
The percentage of claimed versus unclaimed gifts can give you a sense of how many people are using their rewards. This can be especially helpful in milestone programs, as you want to make sure that people truly value the rewards they are receiving.
Set a goal for this KPI if: You want to make sure people are finding value in their rewards.
Budget usage KPIs
Percentage of budget used
The percentage of your overall rewards budget that is being used. If the percentage is high, it’s a sign that the program is making an impact for your team.
Set a goal for this KPI if: You want to make sure that you are investing as much in recognition as you intended.
Percentage of people using full monthly budgets
Keeping an eye on the percentage of people or departments who have used their full monthly budget will give you a sense of how widespread adoption is across different departments and employees.
Set a goal for this KPI if: you want to make sure your team isn't just participating, but using the budgets allocated to them fully. This metric is effective for DE&I efforts to ensure all participating departments are recognized equitably.
Average value of gifts
Tracking the average amount spent on gifts will give you a better sense of how your team members are distributing their budgets. This can be particularly insightful when you look at it in tandem with what people are recognizing each other for, as it will give you a sense of whether the rewards are appropriate for the action.
Set a goal for this KPI if: You want to make sure your rewards align with what is being recognized.
Pro tip: Set goals for qualitative feedback
While you will want to set some kind of measurable benchmarks for the success of your program based on data, it’s also important not to discount qualitative feedback from your employees.
You could even set simple secondary goals in this area. For instance, you could have a goal to hear at least one positive comment from an employee about the recognition program in the first 90 days.
Or you could take a more structured approach, and ask questions in your pulse surveys about how recognized people feel at your company, or how satisfied they are with the program, and aim to improve that score over time.
Gathering this qualitative feedback adds a human element to your results, and will help you present the full picture to your leaders when evaluating its success. You could even seek out specific stories from employees who your program has made a real difference for, and share those alongside your raw data.
Other Goals
Depending on your needs, you might want to set specific goals that fall outside of these two areas. Here are a few examples.
Gift Reasons/Core Values goals
For some companies, it isn’t just about whether people are being recognized, but what they are being recognized for. For example, you might want to specifically encourage more collaboration in your team, or more learning and development, or another specific behaviour.
This is where you can use the Gift Reasons function in your program to your advantage. By setting specific Gift Reasons, you can then track how often people are being recognized for taking specific actions.
Gift reasons can be whatever you want, but we highly recommend using your company’s core values. By recognizing employees when they do something that reflects your values, you highlight their importance and reinforce them to your team, helping to ingrain them more deeply in your culture.
This also serves to draw a clear line between your values and how they translate into your day-to-day work, making it easier for your employees to understand the ‘why’ of your values, and what they look like in action. And because they’re being rewarded for acting in line with your values, they’re more likely to keep doing it.
Over time, you can track the growth of specific core values, and see which ones are truly being lived by your team, and which ones aren’t.
Reduced Admin Time and Costs
If you’ve been running your own in-house recognition initiatives, it’s quite possible that one of your goals might be to reduce admin time and cost by streamlining and centralizing your recognition using software like Guusto.
If that’s the case, you might want to set benchmarks around this to see if it lives up to your expectations. Estimate the time and resources you were putting into your previous solution, and then track the improvements over time. Take note of how many HR Leaders needed to administer your previous solution. Are you spending less time on your employee recognition program? Are there other projects that you can now dedicate more time to?
Specialized Custom Goals
It’s possible that some of your goals will be more specific to your company. For instance, you might have different goals for adoption in different locations and departments, or at different levels of the company.
If this is the case, Guusto allows you to create up to 10 custom user fields to help you to track your program on a more granular level, helping you to gain deeper insights into your performance. Other people leaders use custom fields to track items such as gender, location, department, region, and more. Click here to set up custom fields.