If It’s Right – It’s Right

The incentive industry, or motivation industry, or award industry (call it what you want) has been discussing all the reasons why you should implement a non-cash employee award program for years.  Long before the term employee engagement became so fashionable, they were extolling the benefits of recognizing and awarding employees for their performance. 

The incentive industry has been trying to prove a hard dollar ROI for these types of programs since the beginning.  Why, simply because that’s what the financial management wanted to see before they would approve the budgets for the awards.  So the industry scrambled around for years and spent millions on research just to prove that hypothesis. 

Sorry, in all we’ve seen, you can’t draw a straight line from giving an employee a $50 gift card for superior performance and the fact that what they did resulted in $127 to the bottom line. Sure it can be part of it, but there are too many pieces to the profit puzzle interconnected with employee awards to show the empirical evidence.

So stop doing it!  As Paul Hebert, a friend and extremely knowledgeable in the awards industry and enlightened contributor on “Fistful of Talent” said not so long ago…

“If you’re looking for business rationale to recognize people in your organization, you’re doing it wrong.”

Start looking at employee recognition as something other than a way to give your employees more stuff and start looking at it as something to do because it simply the right thing to do.  It makes sense, it does engage your employees, it does make them feel good, it does keep them motivated and on the job and they will stay with your company longer than the disgruntled employees who won’t. 

Have you ever noticed an employee from a supplier you work with, or service person in a retail store, or the receptionist or nurse in your doctor’s office, or teller or assistant manager in your bank, that was always smiling and genuinely ready to provide you with great service?  Sure you have.  And when you did, did you thank them for their service, or remark on how nice they were or how well they performed?  Did you ask them if they were ever thanked and rewarded for their service by their management?  You might be surprised at their answer.  Some industry research would indicate that at least 50% probably weren’t.

If your management won’t take the time to recognize good performance it’s a shame, too many don’t.  But if you want to retain and grow your best employees you should, if not someone else surely will.

As Paul Hebert says…

”don’t worry about the ROI…worry about the ROH…the return on humanity.”

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