I’m generally not a fan of Employee of the Month recognition programs. They’re the recognition equivalent of the “just give everyone a 2% increase across the board” approach to pay-for-performance. In other words, the way Employee of the Month programs are typically implemented is lazy. Most employees who have experienced such programs tend to think of them as either “teacher’s pet” or “whose turn is it this month?” What do I mean? In the former, you get elected employee of the month because you’re the boss’s favorite. In the latter, “winners” are just rotated through the ranks with no real assessment of deservedness.
On his HR Capitalist blog yesterday, Kris Dunn concisely explained this challenge, especially in long-lived Employee of the Month programs.
“You've got an employee of the month program. It's lame. People are generally immune to it. Sure, the attempt at recognition is noted and appreciated, but once you try and spread it around, its effect diminishes.
“‘This month's employee of the month (month 59 in the program) is Johnny Ryall. What makes him special? We're not sure - but he's NEXT, people. Celebrate the life of Johnny with us, and make sure you stop by shipping to say hi to Johnny. He's introverted, so if he's looking down, it's not inappropriate, ladies, he's just shy. On second thought, just send him a note. He rarely checks email, but it will mean a lot to him.’"
Kris asks in his blog for ideas to refresh a long-lived Employee of the Month program. I have two suggestions:
1) Get rid of it. Instead of recognizing just one employee formally per month, open up the opportunity for recognition to everyone who demonstrates a desired behavior or a core value or contributes to success in a meaningful way. And don’t wait until some predetermined time in the future to recognize them. Celebrate their accomplishments in the moment. Doing so tells the recognition recipient why a particular action, contribution or result was valued by you or others. That recognition encourages the recipient to repeat those behaviors again and again.
2) Use recognition data as the primary selection mechanism. How are people typically nominated for employee of the month? I’ve seen many approaches, but the three most common are also the most egregious. Often, employees nominate others for the privilege and a name is randomly drawn from the nomination box. That means everyone else who was nominated for great work is now a loser. No one deserving of recognition should ever be a loser. Another approach is the manager simply designating their own personal choice as the monthly winner, which leads to scenarios I described at the beginning of this post. Finally, managers may look at a set of specific performance criteria to determine monthly designee. While this might seem most reasonable, rarely will the same list of criteria embrace all the job responsibilities of everyone, causing the same list of employees to continually rise to the top.
Instead, when a strong peer-to-peer recognition program is in place, the data accumulated from those recognition moments can reveal who the crowd has nominated through recognition as the person to be recognized for a special additional accolade of employee of the month.
What’s your experience of Employee of the Month programs? How would you recommend improving them?
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. He is the co-author of "The Power of Thanks" and 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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