Employee Recognition Key To SME Retention

Article contributed by Andrew Greenwood

Retaining good employees is essential for any company. But let’s face it without endless resources it is even more critical if you’re an SME. Lose someone and you will probably be feeling the impact for months. Retention rates are affected by getting your recruitment right and that recruitment pool is increasingly being filled by the millennial generation. By 2020 it is estimated millennials will account for over half the global workforce.

And just look at this research carried out recently by Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking showing 86% of SMEs believe their future growth will rely on millennials. It seems SMEs value the fresh thinking and new perspectives, as well as the digital skills millennials bring to the table. This means SMEs are prepared to invest heavily in finding the right people – and for some that means a staggering 15% of turnover is spent recruiting millennial talent.

The Lloyds bank research point towards the difficulties with hiring talented millennials, highlighting a generation who are likely to turn down jobs if the culture isn’t right – regardless of how good the salary is.

This a big problem for those SMEs owners and leaders who are fully aware their existing culture is unlikely to appeal. Most SMEs in the Lloyds research agree the balance of power now resides with a skilled millennial generation whose values and attitudes are influencing the employer/employee relationship like never before.

Getting your SME ready for millennials

So is your company culture millennial ready? The clues are in the report. Flexibility’s a priority, both in terms of working hours and location. Millennials want to develop their own skills and personal brand so regular training, development and certification matters along with regular mentoring support too. And all of this needs to be transferable; millennials are looking to build your future alongside their own. This is also a generation accustomed to constant feedback. That includes feedback about their performance, attitude, behaviour, effort and results. And not just once a year in a performance review. If your employee recognition programme is not multi-channel, social and hierarchy free, then you’ve some serious work to do to get your culture millennial-ready.

Social recognition gives SMEs the answer

Until now, SME employee recognition programmes have almost always been manager-led or centralised. Being taken to lunch by your manager, going on a company outing as a thank you for a project completed or a last minute dash for Christmas gift vouchers, there’s been a whole host of well-intentioned ways that SMEs have attempted to recognise people, all of which are usually ‘done’ to the employee, and have done little to bridge the gaps in performance reviews or boost the employee engagement.

This kind of passive recognition is not going to go down well with millennials. However the very technology embraced by millennials, and the social age they have helped create, has provided the answer through social and peer to peer recognition. Better still SME’s are able to access cutting edge cloud based employee recognition applications that were once the preserve of only enterprise business.

Social recognition is a new software approach to employee recognition, providing  a personalised online workplace community for everything positive, be it performance, value or behaviour driven. Recognition from peers creates greater cohesion and builds the support structure and workplace friendships millennials value. Whilst also providing managers with the tools and real time insight to ensure they can finally excel at recognising their people. This hierarchy neutral approach to recognition is combined with multiple reward gateways, providing full access to the latest digital reward technologies that fit seamlessly inside high frequency feedback communities such as social recognition.

As SME business culture evolves, many issues and obstacles are appearing, whilst many long standing problems such as employee recognition are being solved. Say good bye to gimmicks, competitions and “110%” programmes. Get you culture millennial ready with Social recognition, and start to encourage your employees to build a culture they can believe in.

About the Author

Article written by Andrew Greenwood, Director of Sales and Service at social employee recognition experts Workstars.