Reimagining Employee Recognition: From Rewards to Meaningful Engagement | Sunitha Karthikeyan | Sr. VP & Head of HR | Quess Corp Limited

There is a quiet but powerful shift happening in how Indian organisations think about their people. Recognition, the act of genuinely acknowledging contribution, is emerging as one of the most meaningful levers available to leaders. Not as a retention tactic, but as a reflection of organisational values.

For years, recognition in Indian workplaces took familiar forms: the best-employee award at an annual offsite, a certificate at appraisal time, a milestone gift on a work anniversary. These carry real warmth and purpose. But the workforce has expanded and diversified, and what resonates, particularly with younger professionals navigating dynamic, high-growth environments, has evolved considerably.

The Annual Recognition and Rewards Report India (2024–25) by Vantage Circle, SHRM and Aon, which surveyed over 250 companies across 10 industries, confirms this: recognition programmes are increasingly shifting from compliance-driven to culture-driven. The question now is not whether to recognise, but how to do it in ways that are specific, equitable, and genuinely meaningful. The report also highlights that organisations with effective recognition initiatives reported 31% lower turnover, reinforcing the growing business relevance of thoughtful employee appreciation.

Creating Space for Everyday Recognition

One important opportunity for organisations is to move beyond recognition frameworks that focus only on a few visible achievements each year. Increasingly, organisations are seeing value in “micro-recognition”: smaller, more frequent acknowledgements that recognise everyday contribution. This could be a manager appreciating a team member for resolving a client issue under tight timelines, or a colleague recognising cross-functional support during a product launch.

These moments may appear simple, but they help reinforce reliability, collaboration, responsiveness, and ownership; qualities that are essential for organisational performance but not always captured in traditional reward structures. Importantly, this also makes recognition more inclusive. It broadens appreciation beyond exceptional milestones and creates visibility for consistent contributions across teams.

Expanding Recognition Across Functions

In many large organisations, recognition naturally gravitates toward revenue-generating functions because outcomes are immediately measurable. Sales achievements, business wins, and growth milestones are highly visible and easier to celebrate.

However, enabling functions such as HR, Operations, Finance, Legal, Technology, and Marketing contribute in ways that are equally critical to long-term business success. Whether it is strengthening governance, building organisational capability, enabling large-scale hiring, or ensuring operational continuity, these teams create the foundation that supports sustainable growth.

As organisations become more interconnected, recognition systems also need to reflect ecosystem contribution rather than only direct commercial outcomes. Recognising collaboration across functions helps reinforce shared accountability and a stronger sense of organisational alignment.

Recognition in a Changing Workforce Landscape

Workforce expectations are also changing rapidly, particularly among younger professionals. The Quess Pulse H1 FY26 Report notes that younger workers across corporate India are moving through shorter job stints to gain skills, pay rises, and formal work records. With 87% of companies still operating tenure-based reward programmes, according to Josh Bersin’s 2021 research, there is a growing mismatch, when average stints run well under 24 months, a three-year incentive simply does not motivate. The opportunity is to reorient recognition toward value delivered rather than time served.

This makes real-time acknowledgement all the more important, during active projects, business transitions, and team successes rather than at distant milestones. In hybrid environments where informal appreciation is less visible, a timely acknowledgement after a difficult client presentation or recognition for delivery excellence during a period of change can do more for morale and engagement than a milestone award ever could.

Recognition as Organisational Design

Taken together, these shifts point to something larger than a culture initiative. Micro-recognition, equitable visibility across functions, and real-time acknowledgement tied to value, each of these is a design choice. They require intent at the leadership level and consistency in execution, but they do not require large budgets or complex systems.

What they do require is a willingness to treat recognition as a strategic capability, one that shapes how people experience their work, how teams collaborate, and how organisations build the kind of trust that sustains performance over time. Organisations that get this right will not just see stronger engagement metrics. They will build workplaces where people consistently feel that their contribution truly matters. And in a talent landscape as dynamic and competitive as India’s, that is one of the most enduring advantages an organisation can create.