IT's NOT ABOUT THE AWARD

I was watching a news program on the 2011 BAFTA awards. Helen Bonham Carter won the award for the Best Supporting Actress for her role in “The King’s Speech”. Accepting the award, the bemused star joked: “'I'm so used to losing, it feels quite strange to win.” She continued to point out to her children that “it’s not about the winning” before adding: “I think I should thank the Royal Family frankly because they've done wonders for my career.”
How many people in your organization go through something similar? They are always a candidate for a promotion/big award, but do not make it to the final list. After a few years, they simply give up any aspirations for recognition.
I have been very surprised at how many organizations (even very large ones), still spend a majority of their R&R budget on one or two programs that only recognize the super achievers/top performers. The same employees then get the promotions, the plum assignments and the extensive training. While I am a big supporter of companies really investing in their top talent, when it comes to R&R, the scope simply needs to be much larger.
Think of it in terms of tennis – If the only competitions were the Wimbledon and the US Open, how many people do you think would be interested in playing tennis? Why do we have competitions at various levels – local club level, district level, city level, State level, National level etc etc. This really encourages the kids to pursue tennis and slowly graduate upto the super premium competitions. Even the ones who don’t make it to the big ones have collected quite a few awards along the way and are exceptionally proud about them.
Why then do we not follow the same method when it comes to Recognition in our companies and create opportunities for a larger employee population to receive awards and be recognized?

Recognition for Support Staff

I had a customer call me today asking me to help him design a reward program for the support staff in his organization. They currently had a very robust R&R program for the line staff, primarily based on business metrics – sales & profitability. He wanted to find out if we could use similar metrics for the support staff that would make the R&R program very transparent and easily understandable.
I heard him out and wanted to find out if there is data they currently measure for their support staff – maybe something like internal customer satisfaction scores, budget management etc. The response was “No” – nothing that is available to an extent that we could readily use the data. I then gave him the following inputs:

1) In the absence of a strong MIS for the support staff, do not try and create new reports for R&R purposes. In my experience, getting employees to generate new reports and data specifically for R&R does not work well. Making use of existing data and reports is a more viable option.

2) Given no specific metrics are available, the R&R program would have to be subjective one. But the subjective process can be made very transparent and clear. For example – the program criteria can be well defined, post which, nominations could be invited from all people managers. At the department level the nominations could be reviewed and shortlisted. Then at an organization level, the shortlisted nominations could be reviewed and further pruned down. The final set of nominees could then be interviewed by a committee and the winners chosen.

3) A weightage could be assigned to each stage in the process – e.g. 25% for the manager evaluation, 25% for the department level evaluation, 25% for the organizational level evaluation and 25% for the interview. The final award would be based on the scores in each of the 4 rounds.

4) An additional criterion they could add was around “Cost Management”. Whether the support staff likes it or not, they are invariably a cost center in the organization. So if employees do things that help the department control/save costs (e.g. implement a software tool to reduce manpower and improve productivity or negotiate with a supplier and reduce costs of a raw material etc.), these could have some weightage in the R&R program.

5) In addition to the big program, Spot Rewards seem to work well for support functions since they are normally based on subjective assessments. Plus a lot of the work the support staff do get forgotten easily – e.g. an admin could go the extra mile to get a hotel booking for an employee during a really busy period. Instances like this would be great for a spot reward, since it is unlikely that such behaviours, get captured in the larger evaluations.

In summary, designing an R&R program for the support staff is not easy, but a robust Spot Reward program coupled with one or two big department/organization level programs should work well.

The Role of In-house Magazines/Newsletters in Recognition

I noticed something common across a number of companies which have been around for a long time - since the pre-tech era (no computers and internet). They all had and still publish a quarterly/periodic in-house magazine/newsletter. The in-house magazines sit proudly along with newspapers/magazines in the reception area – some even have them available on their corporate websites available for anyone to download. The next common factor in these newsletters is a few pages dedicated to recognizing employees – those who have won internal awards, those who have completed significant milestones (10 years etc.), those who have had significant life events (marriage, kids), those who have won external awards (e.g. chamber of commerce award, a non-work related award such as an award in a significant music competition), those involved in active community work and even those who have joined the company in that quarter.

I asked an executive who was responsible for publishing the in-house magazine for an organization about his thoughts on the importance of the magazine and the recognitions showcased in them. He told me that other than their big annual employee event, the newsletter was the most significant recognition opportunity used in the company. In their employee surveys, they consistently received feedback that over 90% of the employees took the effort of reading the magazine, 85% indicated that they wanted the magazine to be published in print (they specifically did not want an online only version), 90% felt that showcasing employees and their achievements in the magazine was the most critical purpose of the magazine – even more than the corporate updates. Based on this kind of consistent feedback supporting the magazine, the responsibility for the magazine is now rotated among the executive leadership team on an annual basis, the budget available is virtually uncapped and the quality of the paper and printing is of the highest standards.

Based on what he told me and what I have seen in a few other of these old-world companies, I am convinced that a good & highly credible in-house magazine/newsletter, supported by the leadership team, can be a very potent tool in showcasing & recognizing employees. Infact, this needs to be an integral component of a company’s recognition strategy.

Recognition for Remote Employees

For most people, the company we work for, is more than just a job – it provides us a community/a social group that we are a part of. Imagine employees who work out of remote offices (in a number of cases, out of their homes). These remote employees do not have a network during most of their active work hours. For most people who have always worked in an environment with colleagues/other employees, it will probably be impossible to imagine how being a remote employee feels like. To provide some context, one of the worst forms of punishment in prisons is “Solitary Confinement”.

This means that the management, HR and co-workers need to make the extra effort to make these remote employees feel connected to the mother-ship. Recognition can play a big role in helping build this connect. For remote employees, a simple call from someone in the corporate office wishing them on their birthday or even wishing them “Happy New Year” is a huge deal and is a basic form of recognition. Non monetary recognition such as e-cards can also be used very effectively with remote employees. I would urge you to pick up the phone or send a message to a remote worker you know - a "Happy New Year" wish is a great opportunity for you to make that call. Trust me - having been a remote worker for a significant part of my career, it will be a big deal for the recipient.

Get a copy of the Rideau 2011 Desk Calendar

Get your copy of the special Rideau 2011 Desk calendar featuring 12 great "Recognition Cartoons", similar to the one featured above, created by our in-house graphic designer "Richard Lytwynuk". Please email your mailing address to me at jayanthnarayanan@rideau.com and we will be happy to mail you a calendar.

Lucky 10

I recently met with a company which is completing 10 years (a very successful 10 years) in Jan 2011. The HR team is preparing a nice scrap book (with comments from a number of people) to be sent to all those who have been with the company since Year 1- i.e. those who joined on or before Dec 31, 2001. Good initiative and the scrap book looked great.

I asked the team some uncomfortable questions:
1)What about those who joined in Jan/Feb 2002 – have they contributed lesser because they joined a month later?
2)Do you think this tenure program is sustainable? Can you replicate this level of effort for all employees completing significant tenures?

My colleague S Max Brown, often talks about why a Recognition initiative/program is not just meant for the recipients, but also for those who observe the recognition initiative/event. The Recognition initiative communicates to everyone (including the non-recipients) what the company and the leadership team values. So it is imperative for the team planning a recognition initiative to evaluate how the program will be received by the non recipients as well.

Recognition for Small Enterprises

I have been getting enquiries from a number of companies with 200 to 1000 employees (the Small Enterprises segment, I guess), asking me if we could help them with the administration of their Recognition program. I met with a few of them to understand their requirements better. In most cases, they don’t do any recognition currently, but the HR person has been asked by the CEO to run a program and this person now wants an R&R platform. I want to avoid making a premature judgment of their requirements, but I am convinced that what these companies need is not a software platform for running their R&R programs. If they are serious about using Recognition as a strategic HR tool, they need to begin building a culture of Recognition. How can they do this? First, by helping the people managers in their organizations understand:
1) Why Recognition is important for the employees they manage?
2) What is the return on investment they can expect for the effort they put into recognizing their employees?
Once the managers have bought into the idea and concept of using Recognition more effectively, HR can provide a small budget and high level guidelines for each manager and let them design and run their own recognition and reward program within their teams. This way, managers can begin using recognition easily, without getting stifled by organizational processes around approvals & procurement. Given the small spend, I would advocate letting the managers determine and procure the award products directly, with some checks and balances to ensure that fair market value is paid for the reward products procured. HR can supplement the localized efforts by designing and running an enterprise wide formal recognition program.
I believe that for a 1000 employee organization, the effort around the administration of the programs will not justify any spend on a platform/system. Once the usage of recognition significantly increases, HR can evaluate investing in a simple system to track and manage the programs – I would actually wait till the people managers start complaining that they are finding it difficult to run their R&R programs. In most cases, the only real support managers need would be around the procurement of reward products (specifically those that require customization).
Going back to my interactions with SMEs, I have been urging them to evaluate if their real problem is not having a Recognition system or is it that their managers are still not on-board with using recognition.