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How a UK financial services company sent 1.2 million recognitions in just 2 years

Topics Covered:

Employee engagement

Client profile

Financial services group
Group-wide recognition
70,000+ colleagues

Programme objectives

Create a consistent employee experience
Increase employee engagement
Build a customer-first culture across 12 divisions

Initial uptake of the programme was very quick, with additional incentive events used to encourage subsequent account activation — within 6 months, 90% of employees were active in making recognitions, and this has continued to rise to the almost 100% we see today.

How are employees recognised?

Peer-to-peer social recognition
Long service awards & divisional awards
Points to spend on a catalogue of items/ activities

Since the launch, various campaign options have been added, helping to keep employee interest high and drive continued interaction with the recognition programme.

Different activities rolled out over the last year include:

Recognition during COVID-19 pandemic

The programme came into its own during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a key communication link for boosting staff morale and motivation, which ensured everyone felt part of the team despite fragmentation of the workforce.

Lockdown 1

The challenge

90% branches stayed open 50,000 employees worked from home How to mitigate this sudden, disorientating event?

The solution

Increased budget to support the additional recognition of front-line workers in branches Recognition helped create an ‘in-it-together’ feeling across the company.

Lockdown 2

The challenge

Traditional office Christmas lunches and events could not take place How to boost employee morale?

The solution

Transfer of employee annual function allowance to the recognition budget. Each member was awarded points from their function allowance. A popular food delivery option was added to the catalogue to support employees’ requests to order festive food for themselves and their teams.

2 year anniversary campaign

To celebrate 2 years of introducing this highly successful recognition programme into the business, a campaign was run with a focus on driving specific engagement behaviours.

Prize draws were set up, with 5000 points to be won in each of five categories. Winners were randomly selected from those employees doing the following within a set period:

Profile picture uploaded
Account activated
Recognition sent
Recognition sent to a colleague in a different division
Recognition sent to a leader

The campaign saw a 15% increase in recognitions sent, compared with the same period in the previous year.

Continued success

Their recognition programme has been, and continues to be, a great success. The statistics speak for themselves:

“A major plus point of our system is that it enables cross function and division recognition — which means that achievements can be celebrated throughout the whole company. And recognition is not one-way, so employees can recognise their managers if they wish.”