TL;DR: The future of employee recognition will be shaped by leaner teams, AI adoption, global workforces, and growing expectations for transparency from rewards providers.
The future of employee recognition is being shaped by changes most companies can already feel. Leaner teams, new technology, and people working from all over the world are changing what it takes to make employees feel valued.
I’ve spent most of my career in the gift card and rewards industry. I was Director of Merchant Partnerships at GiftCertificates.com, then worked my way up to Chief Commercial Officer at Tango Card, and today I’m the CCO at Giftbit.
That’s given me two insider’s views of employee recognition. As a leader, I’ve been responsible for recognizing my own teams, and I’m not too proud to say I’ve made and learned from my share of mistakes doing it.
Then there's the other side of my career. I've spent years working with companies that run employee recognition programs of their own. That's given me a front-row seat to what works, what doesn't, and how things are changing.
Here are the trends I believe will have the biggest impact on how companies recognize and reward people over the next five years.
Not surprisingly, the first trend is related to our current economy.
Given where things are right now, many companies are hiring less.
So a lot of teams are being asked to do more with the same number of people (or worse, with even fewer people).
If you’re asking people to do more but not also recognizing them appropriately, that’s a real way to introduce burnout and attrition. And even just one burned-out employee can be harmful to your entire team.
Of course, even the best employee rewards won’t fix a workload that isn’t sustainable.
But it’s still really important to recognize people when you’re asking them to do more.
This might also be the moment to formally build a recognition program instead of relying on one-off initiatives. Done well, an evergreen program can help fill your employees’ sails with wind—even when the waters ahead look choppy.
The second trend revolves around technology, specifically AI.
We all know we’re entering an unprecedented time of technological advancement. Yes, there’s some excitement there, but there’s also some fear in the workforce, too. And people who are afraid of AI might not adopt it in all the ways that are going to be beneficial for your company.
The way to use recognition here is to incentivize the behavior you want to see. If you want your team to learn and experiment with new tools and workflows, you can incentivize that (just like you would any other behavior you wanted to encourage).
If you’re not sure how to get started, check out our detailed guide to AI adoption incentives.
→Learn more about what McKinsey-surveyed employees say can help improve AI uptake (hint: it’s financial rewards and recognition)
Money is going digital, and the world is getting smaller. More teams are working remotely around the world, often in technology-based jobs.
This all creates a huge need for global digital rewards and digital monetary payouts.
Indeed, employee recognition has to work at scale, even for global teams.
And HR managers can’t be bogged down trying to source and send merch across cities, states, or even international borders, which is going to be a a huge time drain.
That’s exactly the challenge that we’ve built our gift card platform at Giftbit to solve.
HR teams can use it to send digital gift cards and prepaid cards (e.g., Visa® and Mastercard®) to one employee or hundreds across different countries, all from one place. Employees can choose gift cards available where they live, and managers can easily track what’s been sent and claimed.
All said, it's an incredibly practical way to run one recognition program for your whole team, without having to figure out different processes for every location.
→Learn more about the challenges and opportunities of cross-border work, from the OECD
Reward programs in general are becoming more transparent and authentic. The companies that truly add value today are clear about what you’re getting and when.
I think that transparency will win in the long run.
Companies should know exactly what they're paying for, how their rewards provider makes money, and what happens to funds when a reward goes unclaimed. They should also be able to see whether their rewards actually reach the people they're meant for.
For too long, this industry has made some of those answers harder to get than they should be. I don't think buyers will keep putting up with complicated pricing, hidden fees, and vague or opaque answers when better options are available.
→Incentive Research Foundation: Participant Preferences in Reward and Recognition Programs
These trends will change how companies recognize people. But for me, the fundamental questions stay the same: How are you valuing your employees, and do they know they’re valued?
If you want to dig into that, I’ve written about what most companies still get wrong about employee recognition.
And as always, I encourage you to chat with our Sales team if you’d like to learn more about setting up a scalable, future-proof employee recognition program that saves you money.