Every employee wants to feel a sense of accomplishment – that’s obvious. Who wants to feel like their hard work isn't worthwhile? This is why recognition and reward are so important. Making positive reinforcement part of your employee experience signals to teams they are doing a great job and encourages them to keep up the good work.
When employees achieve their career goals and feel proud, it gives them a sense of purpose. It's something we all – hopefully, feel most of the time in our careers.
In fact, the Happiness Research Institute found that setting achievable targets is the fourth most important factor in increasing employee engagement.
When people feel accomplished they are naturally more engaged with their work. And it's this feeling that motivates them to go the extra mile.
If a task seems too complicated, unachievable, or too far outside someone's skill-set, they'll likely feel overwhelmed and disheartened. When faced with an unmanageable task, most people will detach themselves from it – why bother engaging with work if it can't be completed to the best of their ability?
Setting realistic and achievable targets is important for your employees to feel accomplished. It’s simple really, when employees feel comfortable in their abilities, they'll perform at a higher level.
When they do something well, this doesn't only make them feel accomplished. It has a knock-on effect throughout the entire team. Which, of course, is great for employee morale.
That said, it’s important to keep challenging employees. Most people will eventually grow bored with repetitive tasks. Understanding your employees' capabilities is key to setting achievable targets. Aim to give them tasks that push them a little bit outside of their comfort zone. But not so much that it overwhelms them.
When setting a particularly complex task, it's very easy to slip into the trap of micromanaging. We've all probably been there at some point in our careers. But try to avoid being overly critical or overbearing. This will only knock your team's confidence and is a horrible employee experience for everyone.
A more encouraging and productive way of managing complicated projects is to split them into smaller achievable goals. This way, problems are smoothed out along the way and teams are rewarded more frequently.
Sometimes things don’t go to plan. It’s a natural part of any project – there will always be a margin of human error.
However, while nobody can control what happens, they can control how they respond. There’s no point in dwelling on failures or simply pointing fingers.
Sit down and talk about what could have been better, and what could be improved upon. Gather feedback – and ask difficult questions. For example, could leadership have been better? Could more support prevent these issues from reoccurring. Understanding and focusing on improvement rather than criticism will create a culture of feedback in your workplace.
Studies consistently demonstrate the importance of constructive feedback. Did you know that nearly half of workers are actively disengaged when they receive little or no feedback? And 82% of employees appreciate both positive and negative feedback? If scheduling employee feedback is too time-consuming though, consider using a pulse survey tool.
Replacing cumbersome annual reviews with something more agile can streamline and improve the feedback process – boosting engagement and helping your business grow even faster.
When workloads start piling up and there are a million things to do, giving employees positive encouragement often doesn't feel like a priority.
Unsurprisingly, this is a common trend. According to a 10-year survey, including 2.5 million employees, only 51% reported feeling satisfied with the recognition they received.
One concrete way of showing employees appreciation is with rewards, and points-based reward systems are becoming more popular due to their flexibility.
They are an ideal choice for organisations with remote or global teams. Using Perkbox, managers can send Reward points, which employees can save or redeem right away on meaningful rewards.
Perkbox helps you acknowledge every employee in your organisation. How about the unsung hero of the week or the team player who has gone above and beyond the call of duty? The live recognition feed also displays the recognition everyone receives, which showcases your people's talents.
Creating polls on the Perkbox app is a great way of using a little healthy competition to incentivise recogntion. Even better, you can build polls that align with your company’s goals and values. For example, who has demonstrated innovation or bravery over the past month? The whole organisation can then vote for the employee they feel has put these values into practice.
And, for when work is truly outstanding, Perkbox has that sorted. You can send your employees Reward points, which they can use on over 8,500 rewards, ranging from big brand gift cards to experience days, cinema tickets, and more!
When employees have a sense of accomplishment, business leaders may start noticing the following benefits:
Employees who feel accomplished in what they do tend to produce higher quality work than those who don’t. Think about when you’ve excelled at your job, you probably remember feeling highly motivated and productive. Harnessing this positive energy benefits everyone. So it's not surprising that businesses with highly motivated employees also have healthy returns and high retention rates. They understand their star performers need to be challenged but not overloaded.
Having a sense of purpose and feeling fulfilled is empowering and builds resilience. The average working day is 8 hours, a third of the entire day.
Of course, everyone has bad days, but as long as they feel accomplished most of the time, it won't impact on their wellbeing.
Many organisations are recognising the effect of wellbeing on employee experience. So in addition to making tasks more manageable, they're also investing in wellbeing gifts and digital wellbeing resources, such as what Perkbox includes.
With Perkbox employees have access to an ever-expanding library of wellbeing resources, from on-demand workouts and webinars, to soothing sleep stories, yoga meditations, and more.
Success is one of the most powerful factors that can uplift a department. Whether it's hitting that sales target or ranking number one on Google.
Everybody loves a win. So make the most of these moments and prioritise celebrating them.
A reward and recognition platform makes recognition simple, as everything is in an easy-to-use app.
Usually, a recognition platform is part of a more comprehensive employee experience solution, which is developed by a benefits provider, such as Perkbox.
Employees can – and many do – work without feeling accomplished. But that doesn’t mean they work as hard or are happy with it.
In other cases, people might feel a sense of accomplishment because they feel like experts in their field, but they feel undervalued because managers fail to recognise their contribution or effort.
In other words, hard work has to be recognised for employees to feel both happy and accomplished.
Some jobs naturally don’t receive as much praise. Those in front-facing roles, for example, are more likely to receive direct praise for their work than those in finance or managerial roles.
But that doesn’t mean, different roles don’t require or deserve the same level of recognition for their accomplishments – in fact, it’s more likely that they need even more praise as their achievements take longer to come to fruition. When recognition for work is lacking, it's easy for people to fall into cycles of feeling demoralised and disengaged.
Recognising and rewarding employees shows you care about them as individuals and understand they are invaluable team members. But without a good employee rewards system, this is challenging to maintain during busy periods.
If this resonates with you and developing a rewards and recogntion system is too big of a job right now, don’t worry. Perkbox has streamlined everything for you in one easy-to-use system.
4 steps for how to create a sense of accomplishment:
When people feel a sense of accomplishment they're proud of their work. Simply put, it's that sense of satisfaction that comes with finishing something challenging. When we complete lots of small and repetitive tasks, we won't feel accomplished. The task has to be just outside of our comfort zone, but not too far that it causes distress. When something is challenging it prompts growth and development, which increases employee engagement.
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