Employees want recognition here and now – Reward Gateway

Almost 60% of British workers would prefer to be employed in an organisation where they receive recognition rather than in a higher salary paying organisation without recognition, according to research from Reward Gateway. Over half state they would prefer to be thanked by a manager as-and-when they do good work, rather than in a single annual recognition event.

Despite this finding, the majority of the £35.6 billion a year that Reward Gateway estimates is spent on recognition is focused on rewarding employee tenure, for example, through long-service awards.

Glenn Elliott, founder of the firm, says:

‘This is another really strong data point that tells us what we’re doing with recognition is wrong. If companies want to improve employee engagement, motivation and retention they need to urgently divert investments from tenure based, long service award programmes which aren’t working but are costing businesses a fortune.’

Research was undertaken by Atomik on 11th May 2017: a sample of 500 workers were surveyed in each country (UK, US, Australia); a sample of 500 senior decision makers were surveyed in each country (UK, US, Australia). For more information, please visit www.rewardgateway.com