4 Nelson Formal Recognition

7/30/2019 4 Nelson Formal Recognition

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Formal recognitionprograms do not work

Bob Nelson

The author

Bob Nelson is the President, Nelson Motivation Inc., San Diego,

CA, USA.

Keywords

Stress, Organizational culture, Employee development

AbstractMost employees at present feel overworked and under-appreciated. During times of change when we are asking them

to do more with less, they report feeling less valued and morestressed for their efforts than ever before. Recognition

represents the single most validated principle for driving desiredbehaviour and performance in the present work environment.

This paper looks to question common approaches to recogniseand motivate present employees and how you can better and

more frequently recognise those you work with even with littletime, resources or budget to systematically leverage, build and

sustain a culture of recognition at work.

Electronic access

The Emerald Research Register for this journal isavailable atwww.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal isavailable atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0019-7858.htm

What happened to recognition programs in the US

today? Once a source of great pride and prestige,

most formal recognition programs in organizations

today are perceived as stale and irrelevant by

employees, a byproduct of a bygone era. While

companies have been investing more and more

money in such programs, the evidence of their

effectiveness in terms of improved morale and

performance has steadily declined.

Always Have Doesnt Mean AlwaysShould

Let us look at a few examples of formal recognition

programs that tend to be out-of-step with the times

and preferences of current employees:

Years of service

In stable, predictable times, in organizationswhere employees have a job for life, marking

milestones toward retirement makes a lot of sense.

But what employee takes a job today that really

expects to be there 20 or 30 years later? Few, if any.

Some incentive companies are quick to point out

that allout 93 percent of North American

companies offer Length of Service Awards as if

this fact, in and of itself, is some sort of proof

that they work. They infer that if so many

companies are using such programs, you probably

should as well.

But just because such recognition programs

exist, it does not necessarily mean that they are

motivating the present employees. In one Fortune

500 organization with which I recently worked,

over half of all surveyed employees did not view

years-of-service awards as a form of recognition at

all. In another organization, a long-term employee

told me they had to go to personnel and demand

their 20-year pin! (She showed it to me it was still

in the box).

In most organizations currently, years-of-service

awards have become more associated with

endurance than performance. They have become a

badge of honor that I survived all the more so

if the organization has experienced a merger or

layoff in recent years. Sure, you want to retain your

employees especially your top performers to

stay with your organization as long as possible,

but it is increasingly not the clock they get on

their 10-year anniversary that keeps them with

the organization and energizes them to do their

best work.

Holding celebrations and giving gifts for

employee retirements or new employee orientation

are versions of the same thing. Although these

things can be nice to do, if they form the

foundation of what your organization is doing to

Industrial and Commercial Training

Volume 36 Number 6 2004 pp. 243246

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited ISSN 0019-7858

DOI 10.1108/00197850410556685

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http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisterhttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/0019-7858.htmhttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/0019-7858.htmhttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister


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show it values its employees, you are in trouble.

Any organization that primarily relies on such

programs to motivate its employees is guilty of

reinforcing presence over performance, which can

be a costly mistake in most competitive markets

today. The result is apt to be a culture of

entitlement in which employees performance

really does not seem to matter.

Employee of the month

An equally questionable, although widespread

recognition practice is employee-of-the-month

programs. I know of one organization where

management periodically announces the

employee-of-the-month at the managers team

meeting, everyone applauds, and then the person

in charge says: If anyone sees George, tell him he

was selected for this honor! More times than not,

no one ever does.

And why would any organization want to place a

quota on performance? We do not need employees

of the month as much as we need employees of the

moment, and we need them each day, every day.

To select one person from many, often thousands,

of employees tends to do more to make the

majority feel unappreciated at the expense of the

one individual who is honored. As a result, they

may feel guilty or even embarrassed. Add to this

the unwritten rule that you cant be selected more

than once for the honor, and suddenly you have

management scrambling to find someone who has

not yet received the award. The selection criteria

become skewed and soon the focus is just on

finding someone anyone to give the award to.Once again, this sends the message to employees

that if they just hang in there, they too will

eventually be recognized.

Attendance awards

Another recognition award program that often

does not make sense today is attendance awards.

With the onset of flextime, telecommuting and

virtual work teams, work is increasingly what we

do more than where we are. The technologies of

cell phones, e-mail, pagers, Palm Pilots and faxes

easily connect us all during designated working

hours whenever those may be. Granted, in some

work environments, with some groups of

employees, being physically on the job and on time

is critical, but again, these positions are fewer in

number and shrinking.

It is not showing up that matters the most

today as much as what employees do once they

show up that counts, or what they are able to

achieve from wherever they might be working.

After all, there is a big difference between getting

employees to come to work and getting them to

do their best work. You seldom get employees

best work as a result of a formal recognition

program.

Where did recognition programs gowrong?

How did we get to this state of affairs? It seems

to me that recognition efforts in the US have

lagged shifts in employee preferences for several

reasons. First, companies look backward to

what weve done, thus making their evaluation

of programs historical, rather than current,

taking the time and effort to determine existing

employee preferences. This is to say, companies

tend to be reactive rather than responsive to

what motivates todays employees, looking to

change or improve things only when there is

overwhelming evidence that what they are doing

is not working. If other organizations arecontinuing with similar formal recognition

programs, the status of such programs becomes

perpetrated, even as they become stale, stagnant

and irrelevant.

Second, the $27-billion-plus incentive industry,

with its focus on moving merchandise and

promoting expanded expenditures on existing

recognition programs has not helped the situation

much either. The incentive market has lagged the

reality of what is really important to employees

today and are more focused on continuing to move

and customize merchandise, awards and plaques,

not necessarily on motivating employees or

enhancing performance. Once a program has been

budgeted, it is easy for an organization to continue

that funding year-after-year and difficult to stop

and reassess if the monies are being spent wisely, or

even if there is any return at all.

Third, the fact that employee values and

expectations have changed has amplified the

disconnect that exists currently. At present,

employees expect to have more meaning in their

jobs from their very first day of work, more

involvement in their jobs, more thanks when they

do good work, more flexibility in their working

hours, and more balance between their work and

personal lives. Recognition practices have not kept

up with these changed employee expectations.

It is what you do more than what you givethat matters

Consider merchandise awards as an example.

Often the stuff that employees are given to

motivate them has become a joke to many

employees, in those instances in which it has not

Formal recognition programs do not work

Bob Nelson


Volume 36 Number 6 2004 243246

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become an outright insult. Sure, the first coffee

mug you get for finishing a project is nice, but how

many coffee mugs does one person need? Same

with pen sets, T-shirts and even certificates of

appreciation. Just yesterday the author was

reviewing employee focus group comments on the

topic of recognition from a large client I am

working with and noted employees were very clearabout what they did not want:. NO pens, pen sets or watches. No clocks, paperweights, or T-shirts. Too many mugs

Trophies, plaques, nominal gifts and mementos all

fall into the same category from the employee

perspective. And printing your organizations logo

on the merchandise does not magically transform

it to something of unique value, especially if the

object is something the employee could have

purchased themselves anyway.

Note to the incentive industry: Please stop

confusing automation with innovation. Just

because you can offer point programs online and

can more efficiently administer existing

recognition programs, does not make them

more effective, nor mean they should be done at

all! It does not help much to save companies

time and money, if what they are doing are the

wrong things.

Recognition: it is not what it used to be

Companies need to break the bad habit of onlyrecognizing employees by infrequently giving them

stuff and realize that for most employees, for most

the time, how they are treated on a daily basis

matters more to them and most communicates

that they are trusted and respected, and that they

are important. Even traditional forms of

recognition such as Achievement Awards, Cash

Substitutes (such as gift certificates or discount

coupons), Nominal Gifts or Food, and Public

Perks (such as parking spots) have diminished in

importance for most of todays employees. These

all ranked on the bottom of employee preferences

in research the author have conducted of employee

recognition preferences across industries. As one

participant commented in the same focus group

referenced above: Employees no longer hang up

their certificates.

One more time: how do you recognizeemployees?

In the fast-moving, ever-changing times we live in

today, employees want more personalized forms of

recognition and they want them now. Their faith in

institutions has drastically declined; they view

themselves as working more for other people than

for organizations. And it is those people they work

for and with that can most make recognition

meaningful and special. In a recent study I

conducted, some 78 percent of employees

indicated that it was very or extremely

important to them to be recognized by their

manager when they do good work and 73 percent

of employees stated that they expected that

recognition to occur either immediately or

soon thereafter.

So what is most important when it comes to how

employees prefer to be recognized today?

Ironically, it is the simple forms of sincere thanks

that still mean the most to employees. In fact, of

the top ten recognition factors employees

indicated as most important for them to receive

when they did good work, four were types of

praise: personal, written, electronic and public each typically done by those individuals they hold

in high esteem at work, given to them in a timely,

sincere and specific manner.

The other top-ranked motivators

included support and involvement, that is,

providing information employees need to do

their jobs, involving employees in decisions

(especially those that affect them), asking

employees for their opinions and ideas, and

supporting them when they make a mistake.

Autonomy and authority, such as allowing them

to decide how best to do their work, allowing

them to pursue ideas that they might have forimproving things, and giving them a choice

of work assignments, also ranked high for

employees, as did flexible working

hours, learning and development

opportunities, and the availability and time of their

manager.

What do all these factors have in common?

They are all intangible, interpersonal, and

highly situational. Granting the above items in

response to good work when it occurs is the most

desired form of recognition cited by todays

employees. These actions say Im here as a

person, not just a manager, when you need me themost. By way of example, one employee recently

told me about how she was having a tough time

with some personal issues and during a meeting at

work her manager said: Mary, I want you to go

home, take care of what you have to there and

come back when youre ready. She took a few

days off and came back to work ready to dig in.

That happened over seven years ago, she told

me, but I think about it and the courtesy and

consideration that manager extended to me

almost every single day.


Bob Nelson



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The shift to informality

Caroline Strumbly, Manager of Rewards and

Recognition at Progressive Insurance illustrates

the shift she has seen in her organization:

My group within our company is starting to

lean toward less formality around recognition.

Recognition is being pushed into the managershands (along with the budget). Managers will

be responsible for coming up with individual

programs to recognize their team members,

moving away from structured recognition to more

personalized forms of recognition.

This shift toward less formal recognition makes

sense because that is what employees today say

they most value. More personal, here and now,

sincere thanks and forms of recognition are

preferred over more formal recognition programs,

which are less frequent, less personalized, and

often have lost relevance, meaning and excitement

in most organizations today.

A balanced approach

However, it does not mean you have to do informal

recognition to the exclusion of formal recognition.

My recommendation is that practitioners ask their

employees (via a survey, assessment, focus groups,

or all of the above) what they value from a list that

includes current programs and practices and

potential new items, activities and practices and

see how they respond. Then once you have a

motivation baseline of your employees

preferences, systematically move away from those

things your employees no longer seem to value and

toward those things that they seem more excited

about. This allows you to discontinue programs

and practices that are not valued with a minimum

perceived take away loss, because you are acting

on their feedback (which itself will be motivational

to most employees) and adding things that they

have indicated they more highly value. This

process will also validate those things that are

currently working and provide an energy surge to

your overall recognition efforts, making them more

fresh, fun and dynamic.

You cannot legislate excitement

There is no substitute for the personal touch today

and real-life communication with your employeesabout what they value, need and want to be more

effective contributors to you and the organization.

Effective managers currently know this and realize

that it is what you do with your employees more

than what you do to them that counts. You will get

the best from your employees and keep them the

longest when you show them you personally care.

And you can show that you care the best today

through your daily efforts and behaviors in

recognizing and thanking employees when they do

good work, not through any number of formal

recognition programs.


Bob Nelson



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