Recognizing the successes of Shared Services employees can have a widespread favorable impact on the entire Shared Services operation, typically with just a relatively small investment of time and capital.  There are a variety of approaches to employee recognition, depending on the culture of the company, that include group and individual recognition and formal and informal reward programs, with potential differentiation from the overall recognition programs for the company as a whole.

As part of recent research conducted by a Peeriosity on behalf of a major healthcare provider based in the United States, iPolling^TM technology was utilized to determine what other Shared Services organizations were doing to recognize the achievements of their employees. The first of two poll questions looked at the status of having a formal employee recognition program in place for the Shared Services organization.  Looking at the results, 38% of the participating companies indicated that they have implemented a custom employee recognition program specifically for Shared Services, with an additional 33% utilizing the same recognition program as the rest of the company.  20% of the companies are engaged in various phases of the evaluation process for this practice, while the remaining 9% of the companies have not yet evaluated having this type of program in place. 

Clearly, employee recognition is important to a significant majority of these companies, and they have deployed resources to implement a program to address this need.

The second iPolling^TM question then addressed the issue of how companies measure the success and effectiveness of their Shared Services employee recognition program.  Depending on the complexity of the program configuration, this can be challenging to measure, especially since the program can be multi-faceted in its approach.  Some aspects of the program, such as a rewards program in which employees can redeem points for merchandise, can be simple to measure while placing the value on a recognition luncheon might be more difficult to quantify.

Reviewing the results of the second poll question, the most popular response was that success was measured as part of the overall employee satisfaction survey, with 33% of the companies responding in that manner.  This was followed closely by the three remaining response key options, which were “Targeted measurement” at 27%, “Through actual usage and participation levels” at 20%, and “Company-wide program administered outside Shared Services” also with 20% of the responses.

Some of the poll comments made related to this topic include the following:

Manufacturing Member:  Our customized program is global, applying to all of our Shared Service center locations.

Software & Internet Member:  We have a program for the Chief Administrative Officer’s area in total.

Manufacturing Member:  We tried a non-monetary system of recognition. The program went well for the first 6 months and then people stopped using it.

Consumer Products & Services Member:  We supplement our corporate-wide employee recognition programs with custom programs for Shared Services. We have an employee-led engagement committee.

Real Estate & Construction Member:  Currently, we have a process for Shared Services where at our monthly Shared Services meeting (all employees) we have a Reward & Recognition program.  Generally, nominations come from either peers, managers, or internal/external customers, and the Shared Services leadership Team will review and identify the nomination that will receive the reward, however, all nominations are recognized and read out.

Manufacturing Member:  We recognize employees by their tenure in the company. They are done on 5-year increments. We have a get-together of the department in which they work and celebrate the occasion.

How does your Shared Services organization recognize employee achievements?  Are you measuring the success of that program and are there further enhancements that can be put into place with a reasonable amount of time and effort?

Who are your peers and how are you collaborating with them?

 “iPolling^TM” is available exclusively to Peeriosity member company employees, with consultants or vendors prohibited from participating or accessing content. Members have full visibility to all respondents and their comments. Using Peeriosity’s integrated email system, Peer Mail^TM, members can easily communicate at any time with others who participated in iPolling.