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Employee of the Month Programs
Greg
Smith's
Navigator Newsletter 91 |
PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE CAPTAIN
HATS OFF TO BOSSES!
One of the hardest jobs
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EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH PROGRAMS DON'T WORK
Here is a question sent to me:
I attended your session in Philadelphia called, "The Care and
Feeding of Staff: Energize, Engage, and Motivate Your Work Force."
The timing was just right. Our firm is beginning an 'Employee of
the Month Award'. We hope this will be a morale booster.
I wanted to know if you could give me any pointers. Can you
suggest some criteria for such an award? Also, should the
employees decide what criteria will be used?
Our law firm is relatively small. We have five attorneys with a
support staff of ten. Several employees have over fifteen years
service with the company. Any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.
Thank You, Richard
My reply:
I applaud your efforts in wanting to create a reward and
recognition system, but being a small firm makes an Employee of
the Month program
that much more challenging.
Most of the Employee-of-the-Month programs I have seen rarely
work as intended. The results fall short, and in some cases the
program can do more harm than good. Why?
Fairness is the main problem. Any program that selects only one
winner is bound and determined to make others feel like losers.
Also, employees must be nominated to be considered. But what
happens to people who deserve recognition, but work for managers
who do not take the time to nominate anyone? What happens to
people who maintain nontraditional work schedules such as those
who telecommute or work remotely? Honoring one person a month also
defeats teamwork. Instead of only recognizing one employee, many
of my clients recognize the "Team of the Month."
The goal of any reward and recognition program is to encourage,
recognize, and show appreciation to those who work in your office.
However, the most important reason is to align behaviors with the
goals making your organization successful. Most organizations miss
this important point.
Since you are a small firm, your candidate pool is very limited.
You will fall in to the trap of giving the EOM only to a few
people--your top performers. Or on the other hand, you may be
forced to rotate the EOM award from person to person, whether they
deserve it or not, just to meet the requirement each month. Is
this your intention?
One organization we worked with was unhappy with the results of
their EOM program. Every month managers nominated one person for
selection. Part of the difficulty was that person had to compete
against people working in eight different locations. A committee
of eight senior managers, one from each building, selected only
one winner. The winner was awarded a savings bond.
There are several weaknesses with this program. First, the winners
felt uncomfortable winning the award. They realized there were
coworkers just as deserving as they. Second, there were others in
the organization who were never considered or nominated. They felt
"ignored" and not appreciated. Then there were those who felt the
managers were playing favorites--you had to "brown nose" your boss
in order to win. The program generated more negative feelings than
good. Something had to change.
The organization followed our recommendation to allow the
employees themselves the opportunity to redesign a better system.
We convened a problem-solving team consisting of one volunteer
from each location. At the first meeting, we outlined the options
they could consider. Then we let them go to work.
An hour or two later they came up with a brand new program. They
decided to create a peer selection process. They did not want
management to make the selection. Each building would run a
separate Employee-of-the-Month program. Then they decided to
collect money to buy a plaque for each building to display
winners’ names. Finally, the staff would take the winner out for
breakfast each month and provide them a reserved parking space
near the front door of their office.
Click on this link for Employee Suggestion Campaigns -- A superior
way to capture employee ideas and suggestions.
Here are over 230 different reward and recognition
ideas to motivate your employees and staff.
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