By Mike Hill, Employee Experience expert at Mobius Vendor Partners and author of Measuring to Manage

If you are like most companies, you have a mix of employees working full-time from the office and others working full-time from a remote office, or a third group that work sometimes from the office and some from a remote location. Whichever case you have, you need to make sure your employees are receiving adequate recognition. Without recognizing your employees’ contributions, they can feel disconnected from your organization, and disconnected employees are the ones that are the least productive.

In this article, we will concentrate on employees working from a call center. Without having face-to-face contact, recognition can be challenging, but it can be done.

Recognition has been described as a “core” human need. So, what can recognition do for your organization?

• First, it can boost the employee experience helping them to feel more competent and it boosts their self-esteem.
• Second, it can help lower your turnover. When employee’s achievements and efforts are recognized, they feel connected and valued. This then acts as a motivator to repeat excellent performance.
• Thirdly, when you become known as a company that recognizes your employees, as compared to a company that does not, you will attract that level of employee that will make your company successful.

So, how do you take advantage of an employee recognition program for call centers?

You use some of the same techniques you use to recognize any of your employees:

• Make sure the employee is aware of what results will be recognized.
  • Think measurable criteria!
• Decide on what the “rewards” will be.
  • Ask for employee’s input!
• Make the announcement of an award personal.
  • Call the employee, visit them in person!
• Then, announce to the rest of the call center who is being recognized and why.

Finally, and this is particularly important to call-center employees: a recognition program helps your employees to find the “why” with regard to their job. Author Simon Sinek states that when an employee knows their “why” behind their job, they become more engaged, more motivated to perform at a higher level, and more inspired.

How do you know when you are meeting or even exceeding your employees desire to be recognized? You need to ask them. Do not assume you know what they are thinking or feeling.

You may want our help.

At Mobius Vendor Partners, our Employee Experience – EX Consulting–team has the expertise and software to make sure your employees are equipped with the material and tools to make them productive.