Bring Recognition to Life with Internal Recognition Champions

How do you bring recognition to life at scale?

Many organizations implement company-wide recognition platforms to recognize employees but struggle with taking them from just another program to building a recognition culture. Without role models or advocates to inspire and energize people, any culture initiative—including recognition—can fall flat and be ineffective over time.

Creating a champion network, a group of local company influencers, brings initiatives to life. Read on to learn how to build an effective internal champions program that fuels a recognition culture that regularly celebrates people, contributions, and efforts in meaningful ways.

What are internal champions for a recognition program?

Internal employee recognition champions are a network of team members who inspire and rally others around recognition. They lead the charge to promote the message and encourage the practice of recognition throughout your organization. The idea of champions is not new; many companies already have culture, engagement, and wellbeing champions. They can be critical to boosting engagement with HR initiatives.

The most effective internal recognition champions have both the excitement and passion for employee recognition as well as the empowerment and autonomy to advocate for recognition and make it a lasting part of the culture.

How to find and create your internal champion network

Remember that recognition champions are fulfilling this role in addition to their normal job duties. You’ll want to create a network of volunteer employees and give them the resources and support to be successful in this role.

Here are six best practices for developing internal champions:

1. Design a structure for your champion network. Clarify objectives, goals, responsibilities, and success metrics.
2. Instead of having leaders pick individuals to represent their areas, ask for recognition champion volunteers. You want someone who believes in recognition and has a heart for promoting it.
3. Utilize a formal application process for internal recognition champions so potential champions understand the role is important. Clearly communicate what their responsibilities are, how they apply, and how they are selected.
4. Host a formal kickoff for your champion network. Build excitement and community and provide clarity around their role and expectations. Tie their role back to current (and target) metrics and outline their next steps as champions.
5. Train champions on how to influence recognition and build momentum. Give them resources and practical tools they can leverage and tailor to fit their local needs.
6. Continue to engage internal recognition champions regularly. Have them meet quarterly or every few months to share and learn best practices, get their feedback on what’s happening with recognition around the organization, and report on progress or metrics that have resulted from their champion activities.

If you have an existing champion network for other culture initiatives, it may be more efficient to include recognition into those existing networks instead of creating an additional champion network.

Most importantly, empower your recognition champions and give them autonomy to improve recognition strategy and tools at your organization.

The role of a recognition internal champion network 

As you are building an internal recognition champion network, you may be wondering what their exact roles and responsibilities will be. This will vary in organizations, but the main role of a recognition champion network is to inspire and promote employee recognition across the company.

Internal recognition champions may:

• Communicate about and promote recognition and recognition tools
• Share stories about employee successes and how employees are recognized
• Answer questions and provide best practices on how to use recognition tools
• ‍Ensure recognition tools are available and accessible to all
• ‍Encourage leaders to model recognition
• Inspire and encourage employees to recognize one another
• Look for opportunities to integrate recognition into the flow of work
• ‍Model recognition by recognizing others
• Report out on metrics and successes with current recognition tools
• Collaborate with the Recognition team and other champions to improve, grow, and evolve recognition programs

Don’t forget to recognize and reward their successes as a recognition champion and invite them to help to plan what’s next for recognition at your company.

Examples of successful recognition champion networks

The Auto Club Group

To build adoption and engagement for their Celebrate as One recognition program, the Auto Club Group created a robust champion network of over 180 employees who act as trainers, coaches, and influencers for recognition. They worked with O.C. Tanner to develop a unique champion logo and swag and empower their champions to develop training and educational content around recognition, spread awareness through communication campaigns, and customize and improve their recognition tools.

As a result of the champion group’s efforts, ACG saw:

• 97% of employees recognized
• eCard usage increase almost 7x from their previous program
• Award nominations increase from 54,000 to 89,000 per year
• ACG was recognized as a top place to work for the past 2 years
  

“I think that the launch of our champions team was so pivotal in our engagement in the adoption process. One of the benefits of our champions team: champions could potentially reach all our employee groups. They provide real time support and resources for employees to ask questions to learn best practices on how to appreciate.

It really changes the culture from ‘this is a corporate program’ to ‘this is our program’. This is our culture. This is our recognition platform."
— Toi Johnson, Employee Programs and Experience Specialist, ACG

Hear directly from AAA – The Auto Club Group about how they leverage recognition champions to bring recognition to life.

CIBC

Working with O.C. Tanner, CIBC built an extensive network of 150 recognition champions across the bank to help plan recognition events and budgets and answer questions about their MomentMakers recognition program. Many champions serve on other committees in their business units, like Employee Experience, so recognition is aligned with other people initiatives across the bank.

With the help of this champion network, within 12 months of the launch of MomentMakers:

• Over 70% of employees receive recognition
• eCard usage increased 5x and award nominations increased 9x compared to their previous program
• 85% of employees feel “My personal contributions are recognized”

IAG

IAG’s extensive Culture Amplifier network meets regularly to review insights and data and share ideas on how they are embedding culture initiatives like employee recognition within their respective businesses. The Culture Amplifier network was critical to the success of IAG’s refreshed recognition framework:

• Within 14 months of the launch of their new recognition solution, 100% of employees had received and 90% of managers have given recognition
• Odds of employees reporting stronger pride in IAG, likelihood to recommend IAG as a place to work, and giving stronger discretionary effort increased

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O.C. Tanner works with thousands of companies around the world to deliver over 120,000 employee recognition experiences every day. To start your employee recognition journey, visit octanner.com.