Benefits from Employee Recognition Program

The employee recognition program has got to be one of the greatest inventions since the coffee break. Besides separate incentive plans, the employee recognition program keeps workers motivated, progressively changing and improving, and steady on their course with a high sense of self-worth and company devotion. Simple movie, concert, or sporting event tickets will direct and focus some. A plaque emblazoned with a valued worker’s name will generate activity for others. A bonus of an extra 100 bucks will engage and drive most.

In one respect, there are those like Alfie Kohn who say that rewards are likely more punitive than praiseful, as they are insulting to people who have an innate desire to learn, to grow, to work—and who do not need to be tempted or bribed. But in another respect, those like the experts at The Business Research Lab find that productivity goes hand in hand with rewards, incentives, and a decent employee recognition program. As they put it, “…In the employee satisfaction studies we have done, we've never found a firm with low employee recognition scores and high employee satisfaction scores.” In other words, the only outcome of an employee recognition program is a positive one.

Further arguments in the corporate world hold, on one hand, that money is the best motivator and subsequently the best reward, while on the other hand, non-material or money rewards have more intrinsic value and staying power. Regardless of the success of either option, what is bottom-line important is that an employee recognition program include numerous imperative components:

The program should be appealing, should be effective as a motivator (should be cash if they need cash or creative rewards if they have enough cash, for example), and in turn should reward and compensate positive behavior and positive results gleaned from that employee action/behavior.

The program should be fair. This caveat seems like a no-brainer, but if an employee recognition program leans in the favor of an employee who gets along better with the boss or rewards better the higher up on the ladder the employees are, the whole system will achieve an opposite (unwanted) effect. Instead of competing, there may be maligning. Instead of cheerful, forward-looking attitudes, there will be resentment and dread.

The program should be consistent. Again, this is an obvious characteristic of the employee recognition program. Clearly, if the system is implemented only part of the time, or begins strong and then is neglected, the attitude toward work will follow suit: employees will likely become apathetic (as their bosses don’t care anyway) or will do work to the same standards that the program meets. This calls to mind the old practice what you preach cliché: if the supervisors model good, fair, consistent ethics and actions, the employees will have respect, will take pleasure in their jobs, and will find the employee recognition program a bonus, actually, in an environment that they find already rocks!