Outgrown Your In-house Employee Recognition Program? 7 Signs It’s Time to Find a Partner

Employee recognition yields big rewards: Employees are 5x more likely to stay, 11x more likely to be engaged, and 15x more likely to thrive at work with integrated recognition. Many organizations pursue recognition by creating their own homegrown recognition programs. Relying on an internal team for creation, delivery, and execution can help companies save money and quickly create tools that reflect their unique culture.

A homegrown approach to recognition may work well for a few years—until you outgrow it.

As your company evolves, you may need to add more recognition tools or want to integrate recognition with other technology you are using. Individuals who are the backbone of your recognition program may have left or retired from the organization, or the initial tools you created may now be outdated.

And, as with any homegrown initiative, recognition programs require a lot of work. Already busy teams may not have time to handle manual nomination processes, troubleshoot, or gather industry insights and best practices.

You might see other organizations partner with recognition providers and adopt a more robust recognition platform like Culture Cloud®, or encounter recognition software demos at HR conferences and wonder if it’s time to find a partner. Read on for 7 signs you’ve outgrown your in-house employee recognition tools.

7 signs you’ve outgrown your homegrown recognition program

1. You feel overwhelmed with managing your recognition programs.

At first, your internal teams (HR or other) may be happy to add a homegrown recognition program to their responsibilities. But as managing the program collides with existing responsibilities, it can quickly become burdensome.

Homegrown programs require a heavier lift for internal program owners, who can quickly become overwhelmed by manual processes and approvals, mailing out awards, planning recognition events, promoting recognition, and tracking budgets, in addition to their existing workloads. Outsourcing the giving, receiving, approval flow, and promotion of recognition can make it easier for your internal teams.

Heritage Bank recognized great work during Employee Appreciation Day but couldn’t orchestrate year-round recognition. Once a year, hundreds of employee award nominations were manually gathered and vetted. Employees loved the awards, but the Bank knew they wanted to recognize more often throughout the year. Culture Cloud enables Heritage Bank to offer more timely recognition with easier review and approval processes.
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“What O.C. Tanner offers is the opportunity to have all that recognition in one place. From the eCards, awards, to celebrating milestone anniversaries and retirements, and the online site to choose a gift—having all that together creates a better experience for both us and employees.”
—Director of Talent Development, Heritage Bank

2. Existing recognition processes are manual and time-consuming.

Many organizations start with a paper-based recognition nomination system and quickly get overwhelmed with the number of nominations. Or they manually track recognition and budget through a spreadsheet. Perhaps your tools can’t integrate with the technology employees use every day, or you don’t have mobile tools for your deskless employees.

In-house programs are often created to address specific needs but can quickly hit a ceiling if your team or processes cannot scale as your company (and recognition needs) grow.

If you find yourself wishing for easier, more efficient recognition tools or processes, it’s time to find a partner with technology that can help.

Treasury Wine Estates wanted to replace their existing paper and email recognition system, which was not globally scalable because of the manual work involved and governance challenges. Culture Cloud reduces the administrative burden and creates an easier, more meaningful, and more consistent recognition experience, resulting in 92% of managers using the new recognition tools in the first year.

“Our existing recognition program was administered internally, and in need of a refresh, so we were looking for something more sophisticated. Opening the platform to nominate year-round means people can nominate colleagues in real-time, whenever the behaviors are demonstrated.”
—Global Manager Performance & Reward, Treasury Wine Estates

3. Recognition isn’t equitable across your organization.  

Often in homegrown programs, recognition depends on each leader’s comfort with expressing appreciation (which some leaders do better than others). Leaders also use their own methods to recognize their people, which differs by team and can be challenging to track, budget for, and ensure fairness around.

Without a centralized process, it can be difficult to know what recognition is happening across your organization or ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to receive it.

While Chevron had individual recognition programs in each of the 50 countries employees worked in, many leaders didn’t know the appropriate award amount for an employee in another country. Chevron wanted one partner and one solution to standardize recognition and recognize anyone across the globe. They use Culture Cloud to ensure recognition eligibility, access, and rewards are equitable in every country, leading to a 15% increase in people feeling valued.“

We have a global program, one tool, one partner, and a culture that is being enriched through recognition.”
—Recognition & Variable Pay Analyst, Chevron

4. You can’t track usage, budget, or results.

Who is being recognized and for what? How much is being spent to recognize employee achievements? How is recognition impacting workplace culture or business outcomes?

Unfortunately, often it can be tough to define and measure results in homegrown programs. Some of the value of a homegrown approach is that managers and colleagues can be creative about how they celebrate one another, but that also means the organization can’t assess or replicate what’s working. Nor can they find areas in which improvement may be required.

Similarly to #3 above, equitable recognition means having a program, and partner, that can track who is being recognized when, with what, why, and the impact that’s having on your employee experience, culture, and business.

TD Bank Group had a variety of recognition programs that differed between lines of business, country, and function. Recognition was inconsistent, so the Bank chose Culture Cloud to create a common recognition currency with simpler tools, processes, budgets, and more robust reporting. This has led to over 90% of colleagues being recognized and recognition correlating with lower attrition rates.

“Through collaboration with our business partners and O.C. Tanner, we’ve been able to drive the necessary tools and change required to manage appreciation and recognition more effectively.”
—Senior Manager, Global Recognition Programs, TD Bank Group

5. There are limited reward options.  

Whether you are using cash, gift cards, company swag, or even Amazon to provide employees with recognition awards, your options may be limited to what your program owners have time to order and manage. A good partner will have larger supply chain capabilities and help you provide a wide variety of award options (and personalized custom awards) that are appropriate for a variety of achievements—and can help you get them to employees at the right time.

Newgen used gift vouchers and other limited award options to recognize their people, but knew they needed more as they transitioned from a small enterprise to a large organization. Culture Cloud allows employees greater freedom to use their points as they wished, selecting from a broader award and gift selection, enhancing the overall employee experience.“

O.C. Tanner gives us a choice of vendors where I can pick and use my points. It was a good experience as that was the first time that we in HR had bought something. So O.C. Tanner’s is the first platform that we have brought in from outside.”
—AVP – HRD, Newgen

6. Your recognition strategy is undefined or unaligned.  

Homegrown recognition usually evolves on an ad-hoc, as-needed basis. Immediate needs and personal opinions can drive recognition processes rather than an overall strategy, and in the absence of reviewing strategy over time, these programs (and the inequitable recognition patterns they create) can stagnate.

If you don’t have a holistic recognition strategy, or your current recognition isn’t aligned with your company values and purpose, or there’s no specified goals for recognition at your organization, or recognition is a stand-alone program rather than integrated in your culture-building initiatives, it might be time to find a partner who can help you create a more aligned recognition strategy.

St. Elizabeth Healthcare has a unique culture of care and belonging and wanted their recognition platform to reflect that culture. They ensured their Culture Cloud solutions were aligned with their existing culture as well as their purpose, external marketing efforts, and goals for leaders. As a result, engagements and patient experience scores are at their highest (86^th and 76^th percentile), “belonging” is the highest scoring area on their engagement survey, and they’ve seen a steady decline in turnover with increased recognition.

“You don’t always think about the impact you make, so when people tell you, it really moves you. Our culture is one where you care about each other, and that is so rare. These programs we have just add to that culture.”
—Manager of Associate and Provider Experience, St. Elizabeth Healthcare

7. You want a best-in-class program.  

There are successful elements of your homegrown program and effective tools you want to keep. How do you expand your program and not lose what’s working? The right partner can help you simplify processes, maximize the effectiveness of recognition, and keep the goodness in the programs you already have. They can provide the research and best practices you need to create a best-in-class program.

American Airlines had a variety of recognition programs but wanted to expand recognition— make it more accessible to all team members and better understand what and how much recognition was happening across the organization. They chose Culture Cloud to meet their growing needs and accommodate more types of recognition.

“As we went through the process it became very evident that O.C. Tanner had the tools, the systems, the people, and the expertise that we were looking for. It was a good match to where we were on this journey. They would really bring best-in-class recognition to American.”
—Senior Manager, Recognition and Engagement, American Airlines

O.C. Tanner’s Culture by Design services provide trusted best practices in consulting, research and assessment, education, branding and communication, award design, and client success to help you take your homegrown programs from great to best-in-class.

Starting the search for an employee recognition partner

Working with a partner like O.C. Tanner can make a huge difference. Use our guide to relook at your existing tools and prioritize your recognition goals, engage the right stakeholders, and begin to build a business case. Your leaders may assume bringing in a new recognition platform will be expensive but remind them of the cost of your current processes—the manual work, inability to track existing recognition spend, cost of finding and shipping awards—and how using a partner might actually be more cost-effective and sustainable.

If you’ve been using a homegrown approach, now is the perfect time to build upon it with a reputable partner who can help you create a culture where employees thrive.

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Check out our series of articles for tips on finding a recognition partner to help maximize the impact of your homegrown recognition programs