We’ve
researched hundreds of employee recognition and incentive programs over the
years. We often have prospective
clients who say they have used employee recognition programs in the past and
the programs just don’t seem to work for them.
They say they get relatively little return for their investment and these programs are often the first budgets
to be cut when economic times are bad. Frankly,
in most cases executives are completely in the right to discontinue these
programs.
When
recognition programs don’t produce desired results for your company the reasons
why will typically fall into one of these categories.
Track Your
Performance
Lack
of measurement is without a doubt the biggest mistake companies make when they
implement an employee recognition effort.
Set the expectations of what you want them to do and then give honest
measurement of how you are performing.
Not all recognition will have objective measurement, but surely the
collective actions of employees against a set of values can be seen. You can virtually follow the line between
what was recognized and what happened because of that action. It does take some effort, but the results of
that measurement will be readily available when your executives ask you what
you’re receiving for the time and money spent.
Anyone who sat in a budget meeting to retain or increase a recognition
budget knows the importance of this.
Let Your Employees
Choose What They Want
Don’t
use awards that you think your employees want, or what appeal to you, or your
executives or what your award vendor says they want. Within reason, let your employees
choose. People are far more receptive
when the award is what fits their own needs and wants, and that want can change
constantly.
Keep Everyone
Informed
Good
communications is the heart and soul of any great employee
recognition/incentive effort. Showing what individual employees are doing to
receive recognition makes it easier to motivate more employees to do the
same.
Involve Upper
Management
We
are constantly perplexed when company executives are not as involved in these
efforts as much as possible. If it
wasn’t for the heartfelt work of the human resource professionals, many
programs would wither and die. Executives stand to benefit the most from proud,
enthusiastic engaged employees. Get your
executives to be your cheerleaders and provide ongoing involvement and
enthusiastic support. If you have any
kind of spot awards, make sure they do some of it.
