My esteemed Compensation Cafe colleague, Stephanie Thomas, recently wrote about slugs in your employee ranks and what you should do with them. Stephanie particlarly noted the differences between your garden variety slug and the highly unconventional sea-slug, which is part animal and part plant in how it functions. Stephanie rightly noted such a unique creature must be expected to bring a unique perspective to the work environment, perhaps contributing in unconventional (but highly necessary) ways.
It's Stephanie's second point about the sea slug that is more intriguing to me, however. As she points out:
"By munching on decomposing plant matter on the sea floor, they help to maintain the delicate balance of the marine ecosystem. Sure, they're not the stars of the sea like breaching whales or frolicking dolphins. They don't inspire fear in competitors like the Great White Shark. But without these tireless caretakers who often work in the shadows, the whole operation is at risk of failure."
In the context of compensation, recognition and reward, how do you acknowledge and honor these tireless, necessary efforts, completed day-in and day-out, by those employees who do make it possible for your stars to shine?
Bob Sutton, Stanford University professor and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and The No Asshole Rule, cited James March when he addressed this important question recently in his "Work Matters" blog:
"James March, perhaps the most prestigious living organizational theorist, frames all this in an interesting way, arguing that the effectiveness of organizations depends at least as much on the competent performance of ordinary bureaucrats and technicians who do their jobs well (or badly) day in and day out as on the bold moves and grand rhetoric of people at the top of the pecking order. To paraphrase March, organizations need both poets and plumbers, and the plumbing is always crucial to organizational performance."
That middle 80% of your performance bell curve - the people who come in every day and get the job done - are critical to organization success.
Watson Wyatt (now Towers Watson) pointed this out in their 2008/2009 WorkUSA report, encouraging investment in the core, noting that working to increase the productivity of this middle 60% can help improve the productivity of the high performers as well. And Jack Welch, long misunderstood in his approach to differentiation, actually said, “Everyone in the middle 70% needs to be motivated and made to feel as if they truly belong. You do not want to lose the vast majority of your middle 70 – you want to improve them.”
The bottom-line: your middle-tier, average performers make it possible for your stars to shine. How are you recognizing and rewarding them for those efforts and achievements?
As you plan compensation recognition and reward practices, ask yourself these questions:
- Does our MBO structure include options for those who grind out the work every day?
- Do we recognize and reward progress on critical projects, not just end results?
- Are all employees, at every level, empowered to praise and appreciate the efforts of their colleagues that make their own success possible?
As Globoforce’s Head of Strategic Consulting, Derek Irvine is an internationally minded management professional with over 20 years of experience helping global companies set a higher ambition for global strategic employee recognition, leading workshops, strategy meetings and industry sessions around the world. His articles on fostering and managing a culture of appreciation through strategic recognition have been published in Businessweek, Workspan and HR Management. Derek splits his time between Dublin and Boston. Follow Derek on Twitter at @DerekIrvine.
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