5 Best Employee Recognition Tools for Microsoft Teams

Working in the office has its perks such as getting recognition for your work in real-time. But there are certain things you can do to engage your workforce such as appreciating your employees via employee engagement software.

In other words, to replicate that feeling of appreciation and ensure that your employees are motivated you can use an employee recognition tool.

But, before we get into the detail, let’s talk a bit about why employee engagement is important and why an engaged employee is essential for a company.  

Why Employee Engagement Is Important?

1. Positive Workplace

Millions of companies worldwide are running themselves into the ground simply because their owners can’t dissipate the negative mentality making its way around the workplace.

If you want to ensure that this doesn’t happen in your workplace, employee engagement is essential.

Everyone needs involvement and appreciation to know that they are on the right track.

This appreciation promotes the perspective that a good work ethic is vital in your business and improves employee morale.   

2. Healthy Competition

Your employees are adults, but they still have the same natural tendencies that we used to have as children. If a person pours their time into something, they are expecting some recognition in return.

By complimenting good work wherever you see it in your workplace, you’re promoting an environment of healthy competition where everyone knows that good work is appreciated.

Once your employees see enough encouragement being passed on, they will eventually want in on the action.

Therefore, your workforce will start functioning productivity and working even more challenging to make sure that the next pat on the back is heading their way.

This will help you to improve employee engagement.  

3. Key to Better Leadership

What is the difference between a good and a bad manager? Both managers run a company, and their primary mission is to ensure that their business stays afloat, but what is the critical mistake that a lousy manager makes? The answer is easy: not offering credit where credit is due.

Even though communication skills are important, business leaders have a highly effective role in preserving employee engagement and motivation.  

Individuals that lead their employees mostly own an “I’m paying their salary” mentality to get the work done.

However, the amount of effort an employee will put into their work is nothing compared to what they will do for an employer they admire.

By offering different ways to engage, managers solidify their official position as a “good guy” who gives appreciation where it is deserved.

Yes, business owners are indeed paying their salaries, and managers are responsible for getting things done. But occasional ‘good work’ and frequent ‘thank you’ goes a long way

4. Employee Retention

There is no denying that employees that are happy tend to stick around longer. Think of it from a different perspective:

Every employee is an asset, and you must try your best to ensure that this asset sticks around.

On average, a new hire cost around $4,129 USD in hiring and training costs and will make you lose 42 hours because of reduced productivity annually. 

If your company must keep swapping old employees for new ones, that’s not good news. To clarify the importance of employee engagement, most employees in the United States indicated that they leave their jobs due to a lack of respect.

So, if you want to save all the money that a new hire will cost, one of the simplest and easiest ways would be to offer your workers rewards, employee engagement activities, and employee recognition for the effort they put in. 

How to Manage and Measure Employee Engagement?   

Before starting “measuring” employee engagement within the company, you need a proper definition of this concept.

Employee satisfaction is not something you can decide and plan by yourself. Instead, you will need some key indicators to dive deep into the concept and understand the levels of employee engagement.  

 1. Walk-in their shoes: Employees Feedback  

All organizations are unique. So, you need to understand that each company requires a different employee engagement strategy. Start building your plan by asking these questions:    

• How would your employees describe their workplace?   

• What does working here mean to your employees?   

• Would any of your employees recommend their workplace to their friends?  

• Do your employees think they are engaged?  

• Do you have any functioning employee lifecycle?  

• Where do your employees stand in this cycle?  

2. Drivers of Engagement: Employee Engagement Surveys  

The second step would be finding the triggers: What are the pain points to increasing employee engagement in your company? What triggers employees’ performance?  

You can simply run an engagement survey to understand their expectations — teamwork, mobility, career opportunities, or recognition? This survey may give you a more straightforward path on what your employees want and how they want it. 

These employee surveys should be conducted very carefully. Quality is over quantity here, so try NOT to run basic pulse surveys frequently. Instead, find the main pain points and ask the necessary questions only. 

3. Be Consistent with Your Research 

When it comes to strategy, consistency is key. Since your company is built on a “social wheel” surrounded by many diverse individuals, answers to your questions may change in time, which forms your approach.

That is why you always need to be ahead of your time to track and update your engagement action plans to fulfill job satisfaction. 

Engaging your employees is the hardest these days.

Only one day of working from home was a dream benefit for any employee two years ago, but now, most employees don’t want to go back to the office at all. So, what will you do now to keep your team engaged?  

To set up a proper plan, you can start developing a recognition program within your company. Such as:  

• Designing team building activities

• Setting up a perfect work-life balance  

• Building excellent employee onboarding process for remote teams

• Running employee engagement or pulse surveys

How to recognize your employees remotely?

Now that you are slightly more informed on why employee recognition is important, let’s discuss how you can achieve it in a remote workplace.

Your company is probably working on Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, or other productivity applications during COVID-19.

To turn these apps into platforms that encourage recognition, you need the extra help of an employee recognition program.  

How to Use Microsoft Teams as an Employee Recognition Tool

Employee recognition is a vital part of any company’s culture. If you’re using or considering Microsoft Teams to improve collaboration and communication among your team members, an employee recognition tool can help boost the value that your organization derives from this investment even more significantly. 

Here are some tips on how to use Microsoft employee recognition program:

1. Use public praise channels in Microsoft Teams to recognize your employees. You can do this when your employees or team hit an important milestone. With this practice you will not only appreciate their contributions but also inspire others to improve their performance.
2. Create customizes badges and stickers to use Microsoft Teams as employee appreciation software. For instance, you can create stickers such as “The Top Performer of the Month” or Innovator of the Year”.
3. Use Microsoft recognition to provide personalized praise: You can also provide recognition through one-on-ones. This approach can be even more meaningful to your employees because it’s more personal.
4. Integrate with the best employee recognition software: Microsoft Teams allows you to use integrated employee recognition apps. These Microsoft Teams employee recognition apps will help you automate the process and facilitate it for HR professionals and managers to drive engagement in a consistent way.

There are countless advantages to providing regular feedback and appreciation for your workers: from heightened productivity levels to greater job satisfaction.  

If you are asking yourself what are employee recognition programs, here are a few of the best employee recognition software you can use to offer appreciation and recognition in a remote workplace! 

5 Incredible Recognition Tools for Microsoft Teams

1. Teamflect

The best all-rounder in the industry when it comes to employee recognition tools is Teamflect. Our company promotes a positive work ethic that encourages the idea of working hard by providing a visual appeal to commendation.

Encouragement is not only going to be a few words in an email —we turn it into a badge that you can display proudly on your profile. 

Apart from that, Teamflect attempts to create a peer-suggestion system that allows your workers to offer suggestions on who should be receiving commendations for their hard work.

Based on their suggestions, you can conveniently commend people both privately and publicly.

Other than the innovative commendations tools, Teamflect also offers a bunch of amazing options like automatic 1-on-1 meetings, task overview, and assignment and feedback creation.

Teamflect is a revolutionary employee recognition tool that can increase the efficiency and work satisfaction of your workplace tenfold.  

It’s one of the best employee recognition apps in Microsoft Teams and it is completely free for up to 10 users with full functionality!

2. Bonusly

Bonusly believes that it’s not the job of just employers to do the appreciation. Sometimes, the most important words of endearment can come from your peers. 

Bonusly opens up the rewarding culture to the employees and allows them to celebrate the work of remarkable individuals who are putting in the efforts worth recognizing.

Peers can appreciate one another and continue the good vibes in a workplace using this employee recognition tool.   

3. Xoxoday Empuls

An HR department almost always has its hands full with managing its responsibility. Therefore, running a positive workplace with active employee engagement is practically impossible for them. 

Xoxoday Empuls wishes to connect employees while amplifying positivity in your workspace.

Their clients have different experiences with this employee recognition tool, but one common thing is that work productivity increased massively.   

4. Preciate

Preciate has a trademarked term, Culture Nirvana™, which explains the balance between cognitive culture and emotional culture.

The main purpose of this employee recognition tool is to promote a healthy workplace with the finest possible work ethics.

Preciate is extremely popular even amongst certain fortune 500 companies. Amazon and American Airlines are two of the most popular organization working with Preciate.

5. Kudos

Kudos is an employee recognition tool that promotes building positive work relationships between actively disengaged employees. It offers a fantastic amount of support for communication, feedback on tasks, and, most importantly, recognition.

You can even host entire events on Kudos TV that allow you to get the team together and recognize the efforts of top-performing individuals on video.

Quite a few organizations are using Kudos to increase workspace productivity. A couple of notable companies using this employee recognition tool would be Make-A-Wish and DHL.

The Importance of Employee Recognition

Organizations use a variety of strategies to attract and retain their employees, including workplace flexibility, longer breaks, and, competitive compensation.

But, employee recognition can be overlooked as a strategy to drive employee engagement. Employee recognition will not only increase engagement but also result in the following:

• Make your employees feel appreciated.
• Provide employees with a sense of belonging.
• Improve employee loyalty.
• Increase motivation.
• Boost employee retention.

When you implement employee recognition you will shape the internal dynamics of your organization in a way that creates a positive work environment.

Appreciating employees for their contributions will not only serve as a motivator but also increase job satisfaction.

Furthermore, employee recognition will bring intrinsic motivation and higher morale while positively influencing your employees to excel in their positions.

When employees feel valued, they will be more likely to stay in your organization which will reduce turnover and the potential costs of recruitment.

To finish off, employee recognition is not just for being nice but it’s essential for motivating, and increasing productivity to contribute your organizational growth.

What are the benefits of implementing recognition tools inside Microsoft Teams?

There are plenty of different avenues for virtual employee recognition. So what makes Microsoft Teams the best medium for you to exchange recognition in your organization?

Exchanging recognition in Microsoft Teams brings with it the unique benefit of integrating employee recognition into the place where your team communicates and collaborates. So here is why you should recognize employees inside Microsoft Teams!

Seamless Integration in Daily Workflow

Employee recognition for Microsoft Teams is inherently powerful due to its seamless integration within the platform.

Recognition is at its most powerful when it takes place in a timely manner. Having your employee recognition tool integrated into Microsoft Teams allows praise to occur in real time and in the flow of work.

Whether you want to deliver a shoutout to someone during a Teams meeting or recognize someone through chat, having a recognition tool for Microsoft Teams can let you do just that.

This allows the recognition in Microsoft Teams to be instant, meaningful, and easy to deliver, as opposed to switching to an external recognition software.

Visibility and Transparency

When employee recognition takes place inside Microsoft Teams, you have the option to make it visible to whoever you choose. This visibility of employee praise brings with it not only a culture of transparency but also a culture of recognition organization-wide.

When successes and milestones are celebrated publicly, the individual being recognized is more likely to be more empowered and driven.

There are multiple different ways of recognizing employees in Microsoft Teams publicly. For example:

Teamflect the best employee recognition tool for Microsoft Teams lets users:

• Assign points to each recognition badge and use those points to create public leaderboards.
• Lets users feed recognitions to their very own specific Microsoft Teams recognition channel.
• Create real-time recognition feeds.

After all, employee recognition is not just about acknowledging success; it’s about sharing it with peers, and this can be a significant morale booster and motivator.

Customization and Personalization

Everyone on your team will respond to different recognition types in a different manner. Beyond just wanting to get the best possible reactions, the aim of recognition should also be to feel genuine and sincere.

If everyone receives the same default recognition badge with the same message default message, it will grossly devalue the recognition sent in Microsoft Teams.

The best Microsoft Teams recognition platforms allow for the customization of recognition practices.

eamflect for example is a Microsoft Teams employee recognition platform where you can tailor your recognition program to fit your company’s culture and values, whether through custom badges, personalized messages, or unique recognition channels.

This particular flexibility ensures that the recognition feels sincere every single time and remains closely aligned with what your organization stands for.

Closing Thoughts

So, you understand precisely why employee engagement and strategic alignment in a workplace are essential. But, if you have failed to create this employee lifecycle in your company till now, don’t worry. It’s better late than never!  

You can conveniently use any employee recognition tool mentioned above to promote a positive culture within your workplace.

These platforms provide all the tools you need at your disposal to change the way your company functions.

And, if you’re looking for the best employee recognition tool amongst all the above, give Teamflect a shot! We’re an industry leader in the world of employee productivity tools and will be an absolute game-changer in your workspace that you didn’t know was previously possible. 

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