Managers & Employees

I have wondered what goes through an employee's mind when they get a phone call from their manager, when they are not in the office. Are they eager to pick the call or do they wonder "what the hell does the id**t want now?". The same probably holds good when the manager stops by the employee's desk or calls them into their office.

I quizzed a dozen people managers on the interactions they have had with their employees lastweek (the last 5 days). Everyone said that they spoke with their most of their employees a few times during the week. The nature of the conversations were all very work specific - what is happening with customer A's issue? What is the status of Project X? Have you received the payment from Customer B? Did you meet with C? etc. I asked them if they spoke with them on anything that wasn't a status update or specific work query? Yes, we spoke the weather, a new restaurant which has opened, the new movie that was released etc.

The purpose of each of those conversations with the employee was to enquire about the status of a work activity. Everything else was meaningless chit-chat. The employee knows why the manager was really talking to him/her and the manager is also pretty clear about the purpose of the conversation. If this is the case, why are we even surprised if an employee does not really look forward to a call from his/her manager.

If an employee receives a call from their manager and the purpose of the manager's call is to inform the employee that he will be getting a spot reward for a specific activity he did last month, or if the purpose is to just say "Thanks" for something the employee has done, would'nt the employee's attitude towards the manager change over a period of time. Would'nt these simple acts on a consistent basis transform the Manager-Employee relationship over a period of time?

What can the HR organization do to support this? Create a easy to use Recognition program that incorporates no cost "Thank You" Cards, low value spot awards, which can be used by a manager at his/her own discretion.

Designing a Service Awards Program for your Organization

How do you go about designing a Service Awards program for your organization?

The 3 big factors you need to consider are:
1) Which anniversary milestones do you want to Recognize?
2) How should the employee be Recognized for each of those milestones?
3) What should be the Award and how much should you spend for each of the milestones?

The easy answers to the 3 questions are:
1) Which anniversary milestones do you want to Recognize?
a. Use 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 & 30 years (and so on in multiples of 5) as the milestones for which an employee would be recognized and receive some sort of an award.
b. For the other anniversaries (2,4,6,7,8,9 and so on), you may want to introduce an automated anniversary advisor sent o the employee and/or the manager. So the recognition would come from the manager.

2) How should the employee be Recognized for each of those milestones?
a. For the minor milestones (upto say 10 years), the recognition could be at the team level, with the employee’s manager speaking a few words about the employee and handing over the award to the employee.
b. For the major milestones (10 and above), the recognition could be at a large organization wide event, with a member of the senior management handing out the award to the employee.
c. For the non-milestone anniversaries, the Recognition would come from the manager sharing a few words with the employee one-to-one and handing out a voucher if applicable.

What you define as “Major” and “Minor” milestones need to be based on what you can sustain from an budget/administration perspective, even 10-15 years later. So it is better to be conservative when you launch the program rather than pullback on the recognition at a later stage.

3) What should be the Award and how much should you spend for each of the milestones?
a. For the milestone awards, I would recommend an emblematic award of progressively increasing value alongwith a material gift/cash award/voucher, again of progressively increasing value. You can start with a budget as low as 250-500 bucks for the Year 1 anniversary and progressively increase the budget for each additional milestone year.
b. For the non-milestone anniversaries, you can send a voucher for say, 100-400 bucks for the manager to take the employee out for coffee/lunch. Even if your budget won’t allow for vouchers, I would still recommend that the manager atleast call the employee and wish him on the anniversary date.

For service Awards, I would strongly recommended forecasting a budget for 10-15 years and ensure that you don’t make changes for that period.

Like I mentioned, the answers above are the easy ones – you need to use them as a guide for creating something that will work within your organization and culture.

More Recognition Money for managers who use Recognition better

During a recent conversation with a CHRO of a 25,000 employee size company, the CHRO made a very interesting point. In his company's recognition program, he wanted to give more recognition budgets to those managers and teams who use Recognition more effectively in a consistent manner. The logic and the reason behind his idea were sound. But how do you practically do this? I am an advocate of consistent Recognition and recommend clients to do Recognition even in bad years. But why do you waste money with managers who do not use Recognition meaningfully. Thinking about a practical way to implement this, here is what I came up with.

Rather than providing different Recognition budgets, what can be done is to link the Recognition event spend to how well a manager/team uses Recognition. This will serve 2 purposes - Every employee gets access to the same Recognition opportunities and the award budgets are consistent. But the ones who use Recognition better get more money for the Recognition events, allowing them to create more excitement, better food, maybe hiring a professional performer etc. With a better event, other teams are going to question their managers/leaders on why their team can't do a bigger event and this will force the leaders/managers to try and use Recognition opportunities available to them more meaningfully.