Capturing Employee Recognition Effectively

Link Property Management is a quickly growing property management company out of Ohio, with offices in Columbus, Toledo, and Jacksonville, Florida. Established in 2015 as a real estate management firm, today they serve over 50 communities, helping people manage housing through the Midwest and South East. They place a strong emphasis on internal accomplishments, adherence to company values, and look to motivate employees through an engaged company culture. They hope to foster feelings of camaraderie, connection and excitement in a time when burnout is the common trend.

Previously, LINK nominated employees that embodied their cultural values through Google’s chat feature, but it was challenging to track. It was difficult to refer back to specific recognition messages and valuable information was lost in the shuffle of day-to-day business communications.

To minimize burnout and generate excitement, LINK needed to ensure employee recognition was being utilized to its fullest potential. To achieve this, they had to step up and improve their ability to track recognition messages across company locations. Additionally, they needed to capture employee recognition in real time and highlight the team acknowledgments.

To do so, LINK revived their employee recognition program. They transitioned the process from Google chat to a designated spot on their LMS, creating easy to use processes, and instilling fun incentives. They aptly call this program Actions That Inspire.

To nominate someone for LINK’s Actions that Inspire, employees login to the LMS, and click the large ‘Submit a Nomination’ button on the sidebar. They are then taken to the nominations page, where they will see the quarterly countdown clock for nominations, a section for individual nominations, and another for team nominations.

Clicking into individual nominations allows someone to pick from one of five badges based on LINK’s culture code: Actions that Inspire, Always Ask Why, Make Authenticity a Daily Practice, Own the Outcome, and Play for Each Other. Clicking into each category allows employees to see previous nominations, and make nominations themselves. Nominees of this recognition program receive a badge for the company value that they embodied.

By relocating their recognition program, these words of affirmation are no longer lost in a chat thread. Appreciation is captured on an employee’s profile with a badge that represents one of LINK’s five core values. These snapshots of recognition allow employees and management to refer back to remember accomplishments.

Since this recognition program is built into LINK’s LMS, their management team can readily track data associated with this page. They can pull reports instantaneously to see who was nominated for what and when, and determine engagement rates. Additionally, since the badges are reflective of their cultural values, they can even determine which value they need to represent more effectively as a company.

As a final hurrah for the end of the quarter, directors pull a report based on these badges and nominations, and announce winners at their quarterly town hall meeting. To further incentivize and gamify the experience, badges equate to points that employees can either save for the next quarter, or spend at the employee swag shop in exchange for fun prizes. These prizes range from company swag and apparel, to even a PTO day. Since these rewards are for those that comply with and embody company values, LINK effectively incentivizes their employees to uphold their company culture.