The New Playbook for Employee Recognition

Last week, we broke down Google's latest guidance around employee mentions in reviews. The big takeaway was that employee recognition isn't going anywhere. Businesses just need to be more thoughtful about how recognition and public reviews connect.

So, where do you go from here?

For businesses that have historically celebrated employees based on customer reviews, the answer isn't to stop recognizing great work. It's to look at all the other ways employees contribute to a great customer experience and make sure those contributions are being seen, too.

Google reviews can still be part of that picture. They just shouldn't be the whole picture.

Start With What Google Actually Says

Google still allows businesses to ask customers for reviews. It even provides review links and QR codes to make the process easier.

What businesses shouldn't do is influence what customers write. Google's current policy prohibits merchants from requesting specific review content, including content that identifies a staff member. Businesses also shouldn't offer incentives for reviews, selectively ask only happy customers for feedback, or ask employees to solicit reviews containing specific content.

So instead of:

"Loved your service today? Leave us five stars and mention your stylist!"

Keep it simple:

"We'd love to hear about your experience."

If a customer wants to rave about their stylist, trainer, technician, provider, or front desk associate, they can. The difference is that the decision to mention them belongs to the customer.

That's an important distinction, but it doesn't require businesses to rethink the value of employee recognition. It just creates an opportunity to rethink what gets recognized.

Great Work Shows Up in More Places Than Google

An employee's name in a five-star review is an obvious signal of a job well done. It's visible, specific, and comes directly from a customer.

But think about everything that happens before that review is written.

A stylist builds a relationship that keeps a client coming back. A fitness coach helps turn a first-time visitor into a long-term member. A front desk employee catches a problem before it becomes a bad experience. A provider makes thoughtful recommendations that genuinely help a customer. A team works together to keep a busy location running smoothly.

Those contributions may show up in a review. They may also show up in retention, rebooking, customer satisfaction, membership growth, sales, service recovery, or dozens of other places.

They're still worth recognizing.

And there's a business case for doing so. Gallup and Workhuman found that employees who receive high-quality recognition are 45% less likely to have turned over two years later.

Recognition isn't just about celebrating a win. Done well, it helps employees understand which contributions matter and gives businesses a way to reinforce them.

Build Recognition Around the Work That Matters

There doesn't need to be one universal replacement for review mentions.

In fact, there probably shouldn't be.

What great performance looks like depends on the business, the role, and the outcome you're trying to drive. A salon may care deeply about rebooking. A fitness brand might prioritize memberships and retention. Another organization may be focused on customer satisfaction or improving performance across an entire location.

Recognition programs can reflect those priorities.

Rebooking and retention can highlight employees who build relationships that keep customers coming back.

Customer satisfaction can surface people and teams consistently delivering strong experiences.

Revenue, unit sales, or average transaction value can recognize employees contributing to growth when those metrics are appropriate for their roles.

Membership or program enrollment can reward employees who successfully connect customers with ongoing services that fit their needs.

Team and location goals can recognize collaborative performance instead of turning every achievement into an individual competition.

And organic customer feedback still matters. If a customer independently writes a glowing review about an employee, celebrate it. Nothing about Google's policy makes genuine customer praise less meaningful.

The important part is that the business didn't tell the customer what to write.

A Broader Approach Can Make Recognition Fairer

There's another benefit to looking beyond reviews: not everyone has the same opportunity to be mentioned in one.

Some employees spend most of their day directly with customers. Others contribute to the same experience without being the person whose name the customer knows.

Even within customer-facing roles, review behavior varies. One employee may serve customers who happen to write a lot of reviews. Another may be doing equally great work with a customer base that rarely does.

If public mentions become the primary measure of recognition, some great work will inevitably be missed.

Using multiple signals gives businesses a more complete view. Customer feedback can sit alongside retention, sales, rebooking, satisfaction, team performance, operational goals, and other measures that make sense for the organization.

That doesn't diminish the value of a great review. It puts it in context.

Recognition Gets More Complicated at Scale

For multi-location businesses, all of this matters even more.

At one location, a manager may know exactly who's excelling. At 100 locations, leadership needs more than instinct to understand where great work is happening.

Different locations may also have very different review volumes, customer behaviors, staffing models, and business goals. A recognition program that relies heavily on one metric can miss a lot of that nuance.

A broader framework allows brands to establish consistent standards while still recognizing the things that matter locally.

Maybe customer satisfaction is measured across every location, while individual teams compete around rebooking or memberships. Maybe an organization celebrates company-wide service achievements while local managers recognize individual wins. Maybe customer praise is one signal alongside several performance metrics.

There's room to make recognition fit the business rather than forcing the business to fit one recognition model.

Don't Stop Asking for Reviews

One thing we don't want businesses to take away from Google's guidance is that asking for reviews has suddenly become risky.

It hasn't.

Google continues to give businesses tools for requesting reviews, and customer feedback remains incredibly influential. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses.

Keep asking.

Just keep the request neutral and let customers decide what they want to share.

That's better for the integrity of the review, and it gives businesses more useful feedback because customers are talking about what actually stood out to them.

Where Edge Is Going With Recognition

Employee recognition has always been a big part of Edge because employees have such an outsized impact on the customer experience.

That hasn't changed.

What we're excited about is making it easier for businesses to recognize employees using more of the information they already have about performance.

Reviews and organic employee mentions can still be part of that. So can customer feedback, retention, rebooking, revenue, memberships, sales, location performance, and other metrics that matter to the business.

For our customers, that means recognition can become much more flexible. Businesses can build programs around the outcomes they care about, give different roles meaningful ways to succeed, and make great work visible even when it never appears in a Google review.

That's ultimately the opportunity we see in all of this.

Google's guidance may change one way businesses have historically connected reviews and employee recognition. It doesn't change the reason recognition matters in the first place.

Your employees are still creating the experiences customers remember. They're still building relationships, solving problems, driving results, and giving people reasons to come back.

That's the work worth recognizing.