Short blogs | 5 MIN READ TIME

How to pick quality employee recognition software you can depend on

by

Employee recognition software merits the same careful consideration you would give to finance or sales management software.

Your employees’ engagement is important enough to justify priority on that level. You might feel a little bit overwhelmed by the providers, features and modules competing for your affection.

That’s no cause for panic. Refer to our checklist when you’re comparing and contrasting the field.

12 tips to pick the right employee recognition software

Supplier credibility

By credibility, we mean demonstrating a wider understanding of recognition and the role it plays in engaging employees.

If the supplier’s material is nothing but an unfiltered list of platform features, there’s a decent chance the developer is more enamoured with the software itself than how it actually helps your business and staff.

Ease of use

It’s unlikely your entire company is made up of tech wonks and millennials.

Employee recognition software should rely on familiar user interfaces, so staff will slip in and get to grips with minimal adjustment.

Reward options

Recognition doesn’t have to be led by cash-value rewards, or even use them at all, but your employee recognition software should come with the power to incorporate them.

It gives you an extra string to your bow for truly excellent performances.

Non-financial perks

Not everyone has the budget to indulge staff with cash-value rewards on the back of a recognition platform. That’s where you need a bit of creativity from your supplier.

Ask yourself how the platform rewards top performers without having to use financial rewards.

Peer-to-peer features

We talk all the time on this blog about the benefits of employees recognising each other.

Worthwhile employee recognition software absolutely has to include the ability for employees to recognise one another. Manager-led recognition has its place but peer-to-peer is just as vital.

Public noticeboards

Recognition, especially peer-to-peer recognition, gets a boost from being public.

Your staff’s achievements are held up for their peers to see, and they become little trophies on a shared digital space.

Administrator options

A birds’ eye view of what’s happening on any platform you use is vital.

Keeping track of who is recognising whom, for what, and when, gives managers insights on how your teams are interacting.

That kind of understanding can drive managerial decisions to bring teams together or capitalise on already strong relationships to make projects succeed.

Security

You don’t want a GDPR nightmare to ruin your brand new employee recognition software.

Make sure you know where your data gets stored, what kind of back-ups are in place, and how the supplier will respond to any outages.

Moderation features

While your staff will mean well when interacting with your employee recognition software, even good intentions can bleed into tricky areas.

Take a careful look at what kind of power your managers have to intervene in the software if it’s ever used in bad faith.

Support

Suppliers will do everything they can to idiot-proof their software. But someone always builds a better idiot. At some point, you’ll have a problem and need help.

What happens when, despite the best efforts of all and sundry, the software falls over? You need to ask who will respond, what they’ll do, and what kind of time frame you can expect that to be in.

Live demos

Never, ever buy or licence software based just on screenshots.

Insist on seeing a live demo and getting a chance to interact with the software live before even entertaining the idea of parting with your money.

Transition schedule

Ask about a transition or implementation schedule before you buy.

Not only will it smooth the process if you have it ahead of time, but seeing that a company has navigated implementations and transitions before is a good sign of their competence.

Now it’s up to you

Run through our checklist, but most importantly use your own common sense and intuition.

If it’s too good to be true it often is. HR software is a buyer’s market; you can afford to shop around make sure you’re completely confident before making a decision.