Staff awards in the business sphere have a bad habit of becoming “habituated”. Someone becomes Employee of the Week mainly because someone has to be. This “business as usual” approach tends to devalue the incentive for staff. Accusations of nepotism are as likely as praise, if the award isn’t respected. The fact is that awards and recognition are very much undervalued by employers.
Defining Incentive Issues
The respect of staff is more likely to be generated by a real achievement which is fully understood by all employees. The achievement needs to be seen as a meaningful accomplishment.
For example, compare these awards:
- The Salesperson of the Year sells half a million units of a product in a sales team where a traditional good performance is selling 50,000. This is a real achievement, and it’s appreciated by staff on its merits. You can’t sell half a million units of anything unless you have skills and talent.
- The Employee of the Year is a time-server who does nothing remarkable but being the longest serving admin clerk. Other people are major achievers and hard workers who actually contribute a lot to the business, but this person for some obscure reason gets the award. The reaction to this award is at best an annoyed yawn, to put it mildly.
Not exactly the same results are they? The salesperson is an actual achiever; the employee is close to being office furniture. The net result of the two awards is that the sales team is highly motivated and the employees start looking for other jobs, understandably enough. Management has done absolutely nothing to provide any incentive for the employees. Quite the opposite, it’s proven beyond doubt that it doesn’t recognize employee efforts.
Creating Incentives in the Workplace
Grim as this may seem, it happens, all too often. Even supposedly high status corporate awards can fall in to the trap simply by lack of appropriate recognition where it’s deserved and overlooking the incentive factor. The fact is that it’s easy to demotivate staff, if you’re not careful.
There’s a serious risk here- Incentive drives performance. People can do extraordinary things for rewards and they always appreciate proper recognition. Take away the incentives and performance is directly affected.
To create an incentive requires:
- Defining a System of Recognition- It shouldn’t have been possible to overlook the hard working employees in the example above. Those who deserve awards should get them.
- A Clear Status Given to Awards- An award should mean “You’re on the way up”, with obvious benefits. The Salesperson of the Year above should also get a promotion in the sales team.
The Benefits of Recognizing Staff for Business
There’s another message for employers here. The real achievers and hard workers are your business. They’re the people that drive performance, and achieve the goals. They not only deserve to be promoted, they’re the people who can grow and expand your business. Remove the incentives and you get time-servers who do only what they’re paid to do. Add the incentives and you get a business flooring it to success.