How to create a data-driven employee recognition program to retain your best employees

Employee recognition can be a double-edged sword.

If awards seem arbitrary or based on favoritism, those who aren’t recognized can become discouraged and disillusioned.

Utilizing data and objective metrics for employee recognition removes bias. In fact, recognition grounded in data is an effective catalyst for better performance across the whole team.

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Evidence-based employee recognition programs are essential now that many employees are working from home. Here is how you can create an employee recognition system based on clear, indisputable evidence.

What outcomes are you trying to improve?

Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.”

Your first step is to define the performance metrics that matter, which should be tied to the outcomes you’re looking to improve.

If you’re trying to improve customer satisfaction goals, the metrics should be closely aligned with a customer satisfaction metric like Net Promoter Score (NPS).

There are several factors to consider:

Have you found your data sources?