Engagement and the Employee Experience: The role of Rewards and Recognition

Engagement with one’s work is fundamental to each and every employee’s journey. In our Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey, our “Engage” domain covers some core elements, including well-being, rewards and recognition, off-boarding - and of course engagement itself. We have brought together what these best practices looks like in this area in the the third and final e-book in our three-part series, Optimising the Employee Journey. We can share these insights thanks to our Top Employers Certification Programme, which begins with a survey of nearly 1700 organisations’ people practices across the employee lifecycle. 

Our first e-book examined what is being done to improve Employer Branding, Talent Acquisition and On-boarding efforts, part of our “Attract” domain. Our second e-book focused on improving Performance, Career and Learning, part of our “Develop” domain.

Individualised Rewards System

Top Employer STMicroelectronics provides an excellent example of how this can impact positively on the employee experience. The business, which creates and manufactures microelectronic technologies, enabling smarter mobility, efficient management of energy and power and large-scale rollouts of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, stands out to us for its user-led approach, with rewards designed to be unique and meaningful to employees. In the past, managers had been charged with giving recognition at key moments in the year.

The majority of Top Employers have started to introduce programmes to support real-time, peer-to-peer recognition as an important ingredient in keeping teams motivated and engaged. And STMicroelectronics promoted the use of non-monetary rewards with a focus on aligning “unique experiences” with business needs.

It gathered ideas and feedback from employees to identify what kind of new ‘experiences’ could be added to its recognition programme. The HR team then brought together the best suggestion and the resulting recognition programme appears to respond well to the needs and preferences of employees. STMicroelectronics reports an improved culture of recognition, an increase in acts of recognition across local sites, and resulting gains in engagement.

Each of our e-books covers similar best practices in the employee journey. They showcase the most innovative and engaging people practices implemented by organisations globally.

You can download our first e-book to discover what Top Employers are doing to improve their Employer Branding, Talent Acquisition and On-boarding efforts. These topics fall under the “Attract” domain in our HR Best Practices Survey. Our second e-book focuses on Top Employer people practices for improving Performance, Career and Learning under the “Develop” domain. The third and final e-book looks at the “Engage” domain, with a specific focus on Well-being, Engagement, Rewards & Recognition and Off-boarding.