Recognition in Government Organizations

Over the last week, I met with several officials from the Ministry of Finance, the Government of India, talking to them about the impact of Employee Recognition programs.

The government's HR issues are different from the private sector:

1) Employee Attrition: Their attrition rates are close to Zero. Their employee benefits are best in class, though compensation as a independent component is in the bottom 25percentile in the industry. Stability, Benefits (while on duty and post retirement), Pride and Power associated with government jobs and no real threat to the job due to poor performance / lack of performance makes a government job quite coveted. Essentially, once you have entered the door, life is good.

2) Role of a Supervisor: Being a middle manager in the government is probably one of the toughest roles - these are essentially the civil services officers (IAS, IFS, IPS etc.). Their bosses are typically the ministers / ministry officials who are quite demanding. The people they manage act in a manner that they are doing a favour by doing work. To manage a non-performing employee, the only tool the supervisor has is to write a performance note that goes into the employee's file for life. Given the serious implications of this note, it is used very rarely (covering probably 2-4% of the total employee population). In terms of carrots, the supervisor can influence promotions, postings to a small extent. They also currenrtly issue certificates to the top performersm typically signed by the minister responsible for the department - all this touches 2-4% of the employee population. So how does a supervisor effectively the remaining 92% employees? This, I believe is one of the moist critical HR challenges the government has today.

So what are some of the ways the government can address this (and they seem to really want to).

1) Using a Stick to manage performance: Typically, when a supervisor tries this approach, the employee write an interference not to the ministry which results in the supervisor getting transferred to another department. So using the stick is not easy.

2) Anything related to compensation is determined for the entire government by the Pay Commission. So again there is very little individual departments or supervisors can do about this.

3) Given the constraints with using the stick approach and differential compensation, the only real option for a supervisor to create a high performing organization is to make his/her employees genuinely want to do work and deliver their best. If the employees trust and respect the supervisor, I believe that they will give their best voluntarily. So how does a supervisor build this trust and respect.

Here is where a very simple and low cost Employee Recognition program can have a significant impact. If every supervisor had access to a set of tools he/she could use, then over a period of time, they can build this respect and trust, atleast with a small percentage of their employee groups, thus elevating performance.

The tools the government can start off with could be the following:

1) A set of Birthday cards, Thank You Cards, Anniversary Notification cards that the supervisor can use at his/her discretion.

2) A simple low value Spot Award program that comes with a certificate signed by a unit level head / representative from the ministry.

Infact, one of the government representatives we met, mentioned a practice the ex Chief Election Commissioner, N. Gopalaswami (2006-2009), followed diligently. His secretary was asked to track the birthdays of all employees within his group and he would take an effort to personally write a birthday note and mail it to the employee ensuring that the employee receives the card on his / her birthday at their home. It is apparent that a number of supervisors within the government may be using creative ways to build respect and trust with their employees even with the constraints of the workings of the governments. So if the government is able to formalize this practice, the impact can be far-reaching and will significantly drive positive behaviours.