Organisations that leverage strategic peer-to-peer programmes will benefit from improvements in employee well-being, collaboration, and values reinforcement.

By Simon Kent

A strategic recognition and rewards approach is key to getting the best performance from employees. However, recognition from others within the workforce, like fellow colleagues and team members, can go even further. Such schemes often don’t require traditional incentives, but peer-to-peer recognition does more for employees to help them foster connection to their organisation: appreciated, included, and seen by their fellow workers.

“Peer-to-peer recognition works because it makes appreciation a routine part of everyday working life,” says Suzi Lewis, HR director at static control and air cleaning technologists Meech International, based in the UK. “By encouraging people to look at what colleagues are doing well, we help people see how every function and team contributes to the success of our business.”

Enabling workers to recognise good work in each other offers a positive cultural hit for organisations. Lewis lists areas such as well-being, relationships, and values as all benefitting from these kinds of initiatives. But they need to be designed well and thoughtfully. Peer-to-peer recongition cannot be a free-for-all, unstructured slap on the back; it needs to be as considered and as targeted as any other reward programme HR uses.

“The key is to design your scheme to spread recognition across the workforce, otherwise you risk people feeling ignored or less valued,” explains Lewis, who notes that because of the nature of roles, some colleagues are more visible than others. “Our customer service team, for example, works across departments and with international colleagues, while production can have a lower profile.”

For Khadija Ben Hammada, chief people officer for Merck Group in Germany, peer-to-peer recognition offers something that top-down recognition simply cannot. She says it brings authenticity at ground level. “When a colleague recognises your contribution, it carries a different weight,” she says. “It means someone who understands your daily work has seen and valued what you do.”

Again, recognition is not a haphazard, off-the-cuff occurrence; there need to be reasons and a clear structure beneath the initiative. “We have explicitly codified our behaviours and values, such as curiosity, respect, integrity, and achievement,” Ben Hammada says. “We’ve incorporated how each of us lives these values as part of our continuous feedback culture. This helps ensure that these are not viewed as words on a wall, but as behaviours to witness and call out by colleagues every day.”

Just as Lewis sees peer-to-peer as part of everyday working life, Ben Hammada says it is part of their business’ continuous feedback culture. They encourage teams to come up with innovative and inspiring ideas to bring peer-to-peer recognition to life, whether it is through recognition cards, recognition walls (virtually or live), or sharing platforms.

“Like any cultural initiative, transparency and structure are key,” Ben Hammada asserts. “By which I mean having clear criteria for what behaviours merit recognition, visibility into participation data, and periodic reviews to ensure the programme is building inclusion rather than inadvertently reinforcing existing divides. Equally important is that the criteria doesn’t just focus on what needs to be done but also provides for recognising the how people work together.”

These initiatives are therefore more complex than might be first thought. With recognition comes responsibility and if colleagues are to have the power to boost each other, they must still do so within a framework that makes sense. This can help reduce the sense of favouritism which can sometimes come with such schemes, and it can also help manage what Ben Hammada terms as “recognition inflation,” where praise becomes so frequent that it loses meaning. “If everything and everyone is celebrated, nothing and no one feels special,” she says.

Peer-to-peer may essentially operate at ground level, but it still requires input from an organisation’s leadership.

“Recognition becomes more meaningful when leaders actively role model it,” says Fred Patitucci, group chief people and culture officer of Philip Morris International (PMI), operating from Switzerland. “When appreciation is timely, authentic, and specific, it encourages others to recognise contributions as well, creating a positive cycle that strengthens collaboration, trust, and engagement across teams.”

“Peer-to-peer recognition works because it makes appreciation a routine part of everyday working life. By encouraging people to look at what colleagues are doing well, we help people see how every function and team contributes to the success of our business.”

Indeed, if this kind of recognition is to become embedded within a business’ way of doing things, the importance and operation of such a scheme on a daily basis is clearly important. Moreover, the approach must follow developments in the business rather than being static while change occurs elsewhere. In the case of PMI, this means recognising behaviours around AI use.

“AI is reshaping how work gets done, making continuous learning, upskilling, and reskilling essential to remaining competitive,” Patitucci explains. “Through “AI Growth,” our enterprise-wide learning initiative, we are helping employees build AI literacy while strengthening the human qualities that become even more valuable in an AI-enabled workplace, including curiosity, sound judgment, adaptability, collaboration, and continuous learning. Recognising employees who embrace learning, apply new knowledge, share expertise, and help others grow reinforces these behaviours and encourages wider adoption across the organisation.”

And just as schemes may change due to the direction of the business, they should also evolve in order to stay innovative. “Theming is crucial,” Lewis says. “While a general ‘thank a colleague’ mechanism can be useful, it can become repetitive and lose a sense of meaning. When we ask people to think about specific values or behaviours, it encourages them to pause and think about the work of colleagues whose contribution may otherwise be overlooked.”

Meech International keeps the initiative alive through rotating themes and encouraging managers to prompt nominations across their teams. Judges are reminded to assess each nomination on the evidence provided, rather than their broader knowledge of the individual. “This change of emphasis has meant we’ve expanded recognition to different teams and different types of contribution,” says Lewis.

“You also need to listen,” says Ben Hammada. Data can be used around these initiatives to understand participation patterns and find out from employees what makes recognition more meaningful to them. Through this, the scheme becomes even more impactful. “At Merck, we measure belonging because we know that when people feel they belong, they engage differently,” says Ben Hammada. “Recognition is one lever that contributes to that sense of connection.”