2012 - The Year of Employee Recognition in India

My best wishes to all of you for a great 2012.

My Recognition Prediction for 2012: 2012 could be the YEAR for a large number of companies in India to launch a robust & structured Employee Recognition Program. We wish them all the best with their efforts.

It's Just a Certificate

"User Experience", "User Interface", "Branding", "Good Design" etc. are terms which mean only one thing to a typical HR manager running a Recognition program - doing this will cost me money. In our approach and intent to do everything at the lowest possible cost, I believe that we end up being "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish" in a number of occasions. Let me give you an example:

A number of companies have a Recognition program which includes certificates of some kind. If you have ever received one of these certificates, how did you really "FEEL" about the certificate. I have been terribly disappointed with the quality of the certificates that companies use - even the really large ones which are so fussy about branding when it comes to their products. I will not be exaggerating if I say that majority of these certificates are very poorly designed by some guy who installed Coreldraw or Photoshop in his computer just a day before or decided to use Powerpoint/Word for designing the certificate.

If I was giving a certificate to anyone, I would want them to feel good (Real good) about the certificate. I want them to take the certificate home and show it to their family, show it to their colleagues and possibly keep it in their desk for everyone to see. For this to happen, the certificate needs to look GOOD. In most cases, the recipient takes the certificate, thanks the giver, and then shoves the certificate in a file in his draw.

It's time we start spending money on designing great quality certificates - for about 1000-5000 bucks, we can get a freelance designer to do a real good certificate using paid images available on istockphoto.com, imagesbazaar.com etc.

Employee's Date of Joining - Just another day in "Paradise"

For the last several weeks, I have been asking a simple set of questions to the clients I met with:

1) Do they remember the exact date on which they joined the company?

The answer has been "Yes" 100% of the time.

2) On any of your anniversary dates, has your manager called you and acknowledged the fact that you have completed "x" number of years by saying "Thanks"?

The response rate drops to a dismal 10%. A few did mention that they got an email from an automated system and some even said that they received a gift in the mail on one occasion.

3) Do they believe that every employee in the organization remembers their date of joining? After a quick thought the response has been "Mostly / Majority / Yes, I think so".

4) Do you believe that your employees want to be atleast acknowledged on their service anniversary - whether it is year 1,2,3 or whatever?

Again the answer has been "Yes, I think so" in 90% of the cases.

Here we have a day/date that is very meaningful to the employee "year-on-year", but it is just another day in the calendar for the company.

From an other perspective, isn't this a great opportunity which does not cost anything, for the manager to build a relationship with the employee and show that these occasions are important and meaningful? If the company can support this with a meal voucher for 2, to allow the manager to take the employee out for lunch, won't the Manager-Employee relationship be significantly strengthened?

By missing out on this easy opportunity, the employee's date of joining ends up being "Just another day in Hell - oops sorry - Paradise".

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.

The HR Showcase - Public Recognition for work done within companies

I had the opportunity and the honour to design and anchor the "HR Showcase" event at the recently concluded NHRD Network's National Conference 2011 (www.hrconference2011.com). The idea behind the Showcase was simple - Rather than providing learning opportunities only through PPTs, monologues (Speaking sessions) and dialogues (Panel discussions), why not create an exhibition style setting, where companies can showcase their best HR practices in a creative manner using the space available in an exhibition booth. Visitors could spend as much time as they wanted at each of the booths, interact with the HR folks who have designed and implemented those practices within their organizations and learn what they specifically want to.

Preparations for the Showcase started about 2 months ago, when we received 105 applications. A jury comprising of academicians, industry stalwarts and business media professionals shortlisted 56 of the most impactful best practices, out of which 42 HR practices were actually showcased during the event. The enthusiasm with which companies set up their booths coupled with over 1200 visitors (HR professionals) made the 4 hour event hugely popular, with enough feedback that the event needed to be longer.

At the end, the jury selected 8 of the most impactful practices (best among the best) for an award. In addition, awards were given to the 3 most popular exhibits - through an SMS polling mechanism, where the visitors voted for the exhibits they liked, through an SMS.

The enthusiasm with which the companies participated in the event surpassed our expectations and I chatted with a few of the participants and asked them about the motivation behind their energy and enthusiasm. The response from the HR heads was universal - the event gave us an opportunity to rally our HR team together and help them understand why the work they are doing is very meaningful and has a high business impact.

For me, the event threw open a whole new dimension to Recognizing employees using external opportunities. It became apparent to me that most of the companies who participated in the Showcase now need to do very little to keep their HR folks who participated in the event, motivated and engaged for the next several months.

NHRD Network's National HR Conference 2011 - Bangalore

The NHRD Network's National HR Conference 2011 in Bangalore between Nov 17 and 19 promises to be a cracker of an event with over 1,200 HR professionals expected to attend. Here are some key highlights of the conference (www.hrconference2011.com)

1) HR Showcase on the 17th: An exhibition style setting where the 50 most impactful HR Practices will be showcased by companies that have been selected through a rigorous application process. This unique event will give visitors an opportunity to interact and learn directly from the company representatives involved in designing and implementing the HR practices being showcased. The Showcase is an open event - so even those not attending the full conference can visit the Showcase.

2) Pre-Conference Workshops for Free: All conference delegates are entitled to attend a world class pre-conference workshop of their choice. Workshops includes sessions by DDI, the Hay Group, CCL, Aon Hewitt etc.

3) Inaugural notes by Sam Pitroda & Sri Sri Ravishankar: Will be a cracker of a session.

4) Dave Ulrich & Ed Lawler Keynotes: Clearly a big highlight of the conference

Hope to see a lot of you out there.

What should you Recognize Employees for?

The typical response to this question is "For things they do above and beyond their normal work". Here is the problem with this response.

Let's take a company which has a stated 3 year focus to cut costs and drive efficiency in their processes. Now let's take an example of a sales rep who is dealing with a customer whose order has been botched up by the fulfillment department. To satisfy the customer, the sales rep reorders the products (express mode), personally picks up the products ordered by the customer and delivers it, again personally, to the customer. At the end of it, the customer is OK to some extent with the situation. Now the Sales Rep's manager recognizes the employee for "Going Above and Beyond" his normal work and gives him an award in the monthly team meeting.

Here is the problem with this. You are recognizing an employee for fire-fighting a situation which should have really been something taken care of by the fulfillment department without any fuss. So what you are communicating to the employees is that "If things get messed up and you come up with a band-aid solution, you will get recognized and awarded". Instead of this, given the focus of the company on cost cutting and improving efficiency, the manager should have urged the employee to find out what caused the problem and why he had to spend so much time and effort in fire-fighting. If the employee actually did that and this episode forced the Fulfillment department to get their act together to prevent such occurences in the future, then that is something where Recognition could be used very effectively. Now you are recognizing the employee for helping the company improve efficiency, collaborating with other departments and while doing the recognition, the manager could narrate the fire-fighting story as an example and tell employees how these type of situations could be avoided in the future. Now the Recognition is aligned with the company's stated business objectives and the manager is reinforcing this and encouraging employees to exhibit behaviours that will support these business objectives.

So the one line answer to the question we started off with should really be the following:

"You should Recognize employees for exhibiting behaviours that are aligned to the company's business objectives". You can add Values, Vision & Mission to this.