14 June, 2022
Digitizing Award Nomination in Your R&R Framework: A Journey Guide
Do you have a teammate that has delivered exceptional performance in this quarter or has contributed in a significant manner to a team project? Do you deem him worthy of being awarded for the same, and if so, how can you materialize your opinion? The answer lies in the most advantageous feature of employee awards- Nominations. An indispensable precursor to disbursing an award is the selection of the most adequate candidate from the shortlisted ones and this selection process can be a scrupulous endeavor. This is why nomination serves as a core prerequisite to the final outcome- a successful employee awards program.
Employee awards have traditionally been an exclusive territory of HR, where tremendous manual effort is expended by HR professionals to strategize and execute the process in its’ entirety. However, in keeping with the transformational nature of the corporate world, the increasing focus on employee experience as well as the demand for holistic employee engagement, the conventional once-a-year approach to delivering awards has now been infused with a bout of digitization- read on to know how!
Why Should You Digitize Your Award Nomination Process?
According to World at Work’s Trends in Employee Recognition report, the majority of service awards are presented en masse at large company meetings. As well, 80% of the rewards are a simple certificate or plaque. This anomaly represents a hugely missed opportunity to foster a thriving organizational culture hoisted on authentic, free-flowing appreciation. Some of the top challenges faced by HR while designing an awards program manually include:
1. Laborious effort: A multitude of tasks constitute an employee awards program- ranging from designing award categories and collecting nominations to award disbursement and fulfilment. When done manually, these tasks can become burdensome as they entail massive administrative, financial, and logistic overheads.
2. Infrequency: Timeliness is crucial to appreciation, especially when it comes to the workplace where the dynamics are ever-changing and good work may tend to go unnoticed if not recognized in real-time. The outdated model of company awards that dedicates a single day to appreciate and award people fails to leverage the fundamental factor of spontaneity that drives employee motivation.
3. Biasness: Fairness and transparency in awards is vital to building trust and loyalty towards the employer brand. The traditional approach to employee awards may entail biased decisions based on recency or proximity. Hence, digitizing the R&R framework and automating award nominations is a surefire way of ensuring objectivity and instilling the virtues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
These challenges cause hefty restraints to the success of the awards program and also hamper the RoI of the initiative. Digitizing the essentials of employee rewards and recognition is thus, the best way to optimize, simplify, and streamline your employee engagement efforts.
What Does a Digital Award Nomination Framework Look Like?
Now that the benefits of digitizing your rewards and recognition program are crystal clear, you may be wondering what the next steps are. We have enlisted the core award functionalities offered by a digital R&R solution and how they can be leveraged for maximum effect:
- Employees can nominate their peers as well as themselves for relevant awards through a simple, hassle-free workflow that constitutes award category selection, candidate nomination, citation in the form of a self-written note or a pre-defined form, and the option to attach media content to support the nomination
- A customizable solution can also allow for self, peer, team or departmental nomination as well, depending on the type of award
- Approval workflows can be designed in line with the organizational needs
- Nominations are documented as they are submitted and approvers can review and assess their credibility to make an informed decision. They can accept or reject the nomination by adding relevant comments.
- Data-driven insights and nomination trends are available over the platform to ensure fairness and evade biasness of any kind
- Nominees can withdraw or edit their nomination forms at any point of time, and the status of nominations can be tracked through a digital dashboard
- Award disbursement and reward redemption is undertaken by the R&R solution provider
- A digital solution helps in hyper-personalization of rewards. Read our blog on customization of employee rewards to know more
How To Implement Digital Award Nomination?
The good news is that when done right, digital award nomination can be the prodigal silver bullet, which when added to the mix, results in a holistic and impactful rewards and recognition program as a whole. Thus, deploying an employee engagement software equipped with strong functionalities for recognition, rewards, awards, and engagement can serve as a one-stop solution to drive a successful employee experience across your organization.
Ready to transform your R&R and awards framework? Ask for a demo of our revolutionary R&R platform today!