How Are Your Recognition Programs Seen by Your Employees?

Having been in and around the incentive and award industry for over 40 years, (yep I’m that old) I got a big kick out of this post on Tech Republic site. It gives you a pretty clear picture of what employees are (or may be) thinking these days about those recognition programs that permeate the landscape of corporate America.

You can’t get away from them; they are as ubiquitous as the discussion on employee wellness within HR offices around the globe. Employee engagement is on the lips of every manager (well almost) in every conversation in every meeting in every business…unless of course your meeting is being run by those crusty old sales types who are simply telling their army of eager protégés to just “Sell baby Sell. The more you make the more I make, and when I make more I guarantee that you will be recognized accordingly…cuz I believe in that stuff!”

There’s no doubt in my mind that the thoughts and comments in this article are closer to reality than most in management would want you to believe. In my travels and in the planning and design meetings I’ve attended with clients on the subject I see a lot more programs that get this kind of treatment than those that don’t. When you bring in a professional on these programs, much of their experience falls on deaf ears. Programs get built and launched every day and seem to be pressed out with the same cookie cutter without any real thought to what they actually want to accomplish, how they plan on measuring it and a raft of other “must do’s” that are given short shrift, not the least of which is the budget.
There are a variety of reasons these programs fail, we’ve blogged on those in the past as mentioned below. Even with the best intentions of those who plan them, what your employees actually think about them will be up to you. How you communicate it and control their expectations will be how they perceive it and how successful the program will ultimately become.

Related Articles:

Do Incentive and Recognition Programs Really Produce Results?

Do Employee of the Month Programs Motivate of De-Motivate?

For Better Employee Recognition, think out of the Box.

Why Employee Award Programs Fail