MARCH - APRIL 2026HR TECH OUTLOOK8Philip Altschuler, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Gables ResidentialByMy dentist used to tell me to brush the teeth I want to keep. The same applies to employees. Rewards and recognition are a critical part of the employee experience. Everybody wants to feel appreciated for their efforts and a paycheck isn't always enough.The challenge for most supervisors is that giving rewards, recognition, or some combination of the two can be a challenge in their organization, and ensuring it's done fairly and has meaning to the recipient can be even more difficult.Since most traditional recognition programs had little or no criteria behind who was selected as the Employee of the Month/Quarter/Year, they became popularity-based, not performance-based. This left our employees with no way to know which behaviors are rewarded and even worse, became disincentives and problematic when popular employees were selected over harder working colleagues.The solution gaining prevalence is online recognition systems that provide an easy way to deliver recognition as well as allow other employees to see, comment, and like posts, as they do on Facebook or Instagram. While social recognition is appreciated, employees generally like something extra along with that recognition. To address this, most recognition systems allow the distribution and awarding of points that can be saved and redeemed for gift CREATING A CULTURE OF EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION AND APPRECIATIONIn My OpinionPhilip Altschuler
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