The Shonkys of employee recognition.

8 Nov

Written By Eliza

Choice have just released their annual Shonky Awards for the worst rated consumer products on the market. They are the products that promise a lot, are well marketed but don’t actually deliver on expectation. They leave consumers feeling deflated and underwhelmed.

This got us thinking about the ‘Shonkys of employee recognition’ – the things we see companies do that seem like a good investment but actually don’t drive the desired behaviours. While most companies do parts of recognition well, we have seen these common factors come up time and time again, leaving employees feeling underwhelmed, undermined and undervalued.

Here they are, the Shonkys of employee recognition.

Recognition Shonky #1: Thinking recognition is set-and-forget.

Recognition software that is easy-to-use and well integrated makes recognition simple. That’s why we do what we do. However, taking it to the level of launching and hoping for the best, is about as shonky as they come.

While great recognition software will do a lot, it’s only one element. To deeply embed recognition into your culture, it’s important to communicate frequently about the program, build recognition into your people processes, monitor the metrics and adapt with the dynamic nature of your company.

Like any new initiative, employees need to get into the habit of giving recognition. Just because you have a program, does not mean employees will automatically know what is expected of them. Any half-decent platform will do a lot of automated communication for you, keeping the program in the spotlight. However engaging your team through other channels is vital to program uptake.

We’ve seen well intentioned but incredible busy HR execs undermine their team potential with this approach and that’s why it’s #shonky.

Recognition Shonky #2: Expecting managers too just run with it.

Managers play a critical role in an employee recognition program. But they also play a vital role in lots of other initiatives too.

While manager-led recognition is imperative to a impactful program, you can’t expect managers to be entirely responsible for the program. Modern managers have a lot on their plate so need both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to harness the potential of recognition. They need to have a deep understanding of how the program will help them, how they can use it to help reach their own personal goals and what you expect from them.

Some managers will naturally take a new recognition program on-board and use it on the daily – those with intrinsic motivation. They will see the value in it and just ‘get it’ from day one. Others may be more sceptical.

Managers may have had a bad experience with a poorly executed program previously. They may see it as just another thing on the long list of expectations placed upon them or just another ‘head office initiative’ that they have to try and make work. They need extrinsic motivation that over time, as they see results, will become intrinsic.

Have realistic expectations on managers and lead them to loving the program. Don’t force it on them and get frustrated when they don’t engage.

Recognition Shonky #3: Recognition as a competition.

Competition is something anyone with a sales bent loves. Encourage employees to compete with each other and they will drive each other to perform better – right?? Wrong!

Competition works well in sales because salespeople by nature are competitive. However, this does not translate across the whole organisation. Many employees see a competition and switch off before launch as they think they can’t win. Others will shy away from it because they are in fact shy. Then there are those that can win - and will do whatever they can to get to the top of the leader board including gaming the system.

For recognition to be impactful it needs to be in the moment and authentic. The problem with making it a competition, is while you might see lots of recognition flowing, it will lack authenticity so is somewhat pointless.

It’s easy to look at the number of moments being recognised as the single measure of success but quality counts. Don’t fall into the shonky trap of driving numbers with a competition at the expense of the incredible changes recognition-done-right can deliver.

Recognition Shonky #4: Rewarding with cash.

Some of us love cash and we all need it to survive. It just has no real place as a reward for effort unless you like giving money away for nothing (in which case, your CFO wants to chat 😬)

Giving cash as a reward for behaviour is inherently flawed when it comes to changing people’s actions. They are less likely to take action for cash they are for a non-tangible reward. People put a cash reward through cognitive evaluation to determine if their effort is worth the money on offer and this can start to drive a feel of being devalued – ‘you want to pay me $10 to do that?’. Your team are also likely to continue to expect the cash bonuses in future, even when they have not repeated the actions. This is known as mental accounting. Mental account is the cognitively allocation of money into ‘buckets’ based on what we will spend it on. Once in the ‘bucket’, it’s spent or accounted for in our mind. When we do this one quarter, we expect the same the next quarter as our holiday bucket, for example, had an extra $1,000 last quarter. What mental accounting does not take into consideration is the behaviour required to earn the extra cash. It’s just in the bucket so we think it should be in our account.

There is a place for cash incentives for sales, but when it comes to recognition, it can be problematic. That’s why cash as a reward for behaviours is on the shonky list.

Recognition Shonky #5: Rewards that are overpriced or undesirable.

Rewards are an important part of a recognition program – if you get them right.

Too many programs offer rewards that employees can never redeem because they are too expensive. Or rewards that employees don’t want to redeem as they are grossly overpriced. Even if an employee is earning points from the company, they still want to see a fair value exchange for their points. When they don’t see this equity, it undermines the whole program. Why would employees go the extra mile to be rewarded with something that is not really rewarding at all?

We have seen many programs where rewards are 30 – 50% over retail price - and the results are not good.

Some rewards providers will try and mask price gouging by offering a small selection of bargain rewards. These items are likely to be end of line or overstocked items from suppliers. But this does not change the fact that overall, the rewards do not offer good, or even fair, value.

Choose a partner who can give you all the stats on rewards and how much margin they are making on them. That way you know your budget will go further to rewarding your employees rather than lining their pockets with profit. Yep, it’s shonky!

Recognition Shonky #6: Picking winners out of a hat.

This one is about as shonky as they come. You set up a program, people are recognised for their effort, then rewarded on chance. If you are considering picking winners out of a hat, choose a different rabbit.

Any game of chance will see half the audience switch of from day one. Why focus on going above and beyond, to have your name in the same hat as the guy from the back cubicle who you know does not put in any discretionary effort? And if an underperformer who just happened to get lucky wins, your top performers will let you know just how shonky this approach is.

Picking limited winners by chance is a way to control a very small reward budget – a shonky way. Instead, consider how else you can reward your team that does not require big budgets. A tool like manager perks is designed for exactly this scenario. You can tailor the perks to reward your team appropriately, empower your managers to personalise how they reward and the best part? Perks can be low or no cost.

If you are not onboard with perks, consider no rewards at all. Recognition is inherently powerful and while reward amplifies moments of greatness, the impact of recognition will see long-term behaviour change.

Recognition Shonky #7: ‘Saving money’ running a program on spreadsheets.

Or worse, post-it-notes. And yes, there are large organisations out there still doing this!

You have budget sign-off for a program and you really want to put all the money you can get into rewards. So you decide to do employee recognition in-house with the help of Bernie from the IT department and a few well-crafted spreadsheets.

Sounds like a budget saving idea right? Well, no.

It’s a total false economy. All that time and effort you put into setting up the spreadsheets, going through recognitions, who was nominated, what for, reviewing who did what, who hasn’t participated, communicating this back out company-wide then months later, giving out the reward – it’s all wasted time. Not only that, it’s incredibly ineffective.

The power of recognition comes from it being timely, authentic, and public. Social recognition programs allow recognition to be given in the moment when it is most impactful. They encourage the authentic sharing of gratitude for everyday actions and extraordinary achievements. They amplify great moments and increase the impact on the person giving and receiving. Social recognition delivers a level of transparency that drives trust amongst the team.

No spreadsheet can do that for you.

Whether it’s that software providers just don’t deliver what you are looking for or a perceived budgetary constraint, it’s a pretty shonky and time consuming approach. Instead, look for a software provider that offers value for money plans, configurable features and transparent reporting and tell Bernie his services are no longer needed for this project.

If you have a sinking feeling in your stomach because this post describes your program, it might be time to look for a new way to deliver recognition.

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Eliza https://www.workpointsplay.com