Recognize Good Performance with an Award, not a Gift

                

This may seem like splitting hairs to some and just semantics to others, but an award for performing well and a gift typically have very different meanings to both the giver and the recipient.

What is often common to both rewards and gifts is “Thank You,” although there are times when thanks are not even mentioned for either.  A gift is something you give to someone you care about.  When you give a gift to someone you are not rewarding them for anything you’ve asked them to do, you’re simply adding generosity to “thanks” in a meaningful way.  When you ask someone to improve on performance, and they do, they have earned an award. 

Everyone loves gifts for doing nothing other than being themselves.  Folks also take a great deal of pride in accomplishing something and being recognized for the achievement.  Gifts have no strings attached.  Recognition and incentive programs have lots of strings attached, some so sophisticated that they have to have computer programs to implement and sustain them. 

Incentive and recognition programs are all about changing behavior and producing results.  Without getting deep into the science and psychology of behavior modification, let’s just use this fundamental outline of the behavior model…

• Explain What You Want Someone to Do 
• Tell Them How to Do It
• Measure their Performance
• Provide a Positive Consequence upon Achievement
• The positive consequence you give them is an AWARD, it is certainly not a gift. 

Semantics?  We don’t think so.

If you want a real fun discussion, what is the difference between a reward and an award??  Many think it’s interchangeable, one a verb and one a noun and vice versa.  Webster defines it both ways, and I guess that’s good enough for us.  As long as you give us call when you want to reward some awards.  Then you can buy some gift card awards and present them as positive consequences for almost any objective.  

Thank you to Jennifer one of our most recent clients who asked the question that prompted this post.

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