Recognition Programs That Rock!
By Nancy Ahlrichs Raichart, SPHR, EOC Strategies, LLC
Eighty-seven percent of companies use length of service as the foundation of their recognition programs.

If service length is not the criteria that your customers use to decide whether to increase their orders for 2005, it is time to re-align your recognition and reward programs to deliver on your promised brand! Employees are valuable ONLY if their performance meets the needs of external and internal customers.

Chances are good that your 2004 strategic plan contained at least one new goal based on changing marketplace needs. After listening to your customers, your senior management staff refined the usual targets to address new, intense competition. The problem: getting your employees to refocus on the new targets (what) and the new tactics (how) to deliver customer-defined “quality” that not only meets this year’s goal, but puts in place the actions needed to continue to meet evolving customer needs.

Chances are also good that long-term employees have deep knowledge of your products, services and customers. Customer relationships bring value to the services or products you sell. Even internal relationships are valuable because of the potential for reinforcing cultural values and for the extra willingness to assist each other when the going gets tough. Long-term employees are very valuable assets—if they have been “kept in the loop” about marketplace changes, trained on an ongoing basis and promoted based on capability--not longevity alone.

Senior management must focus on ways to increase high quality/high margin sales. No company ever cost-cut its way to the Number One marketplace position, or to long-term financial growth. Without the ability to raise prices, companies must find other ways to meet customer needs at lower costs. This is not just a sales function responsibility. Customers interact with individuals in many capacities and base their purchase and renewal decisions on their overall experiences with sales, service, accounting, the website, call center, etc.

Your employees’ actions make or break your company’s ability to deliver on your brand and create the long-term customer relationships that result in repeat sales, referrals and lower costs of doing business.

Employees at all levels do what they are rewarded and recognized for doing—no more and no less. If speed of response, creativity solving customer complaints, zero defects and/or repeat sales are the goals, develop recognition and reward programs that put a positive spotlight on the goals getters—and reward them with the type of reward that motivates them to do it again and again.

If old reward and recognition processes and programs are getting little or no participation, it is time to motivate high performance by creating a culture of recognition.

1. Create a cross-functional team to review and update reward and recognition programs. Invite management as well as non-management to participate. Share the strategic plan and ask that company-wide as well as division or department recognition programs align with and support the goals. Develop both types of programs so that employees can be recognized more frequently within their work groups to reinforce appropriate short-term goals while still having an opportunity to win at a higher level on a quarterly or monthly basis. It is the latter that builds the overall culture of high performance.

2. Develop a budget on a company-wide basis as well as a division or department basis. Read Bob Nelson’s two books on low cost, no cost ways to ignite performance: “1001 Ways to Reward Employees” and “1001 Ways to Energize Employees.” Remember, time off (even an hour) can be more effective than cash!

3. Train your managers. Recognition programs may be mentioned in your handbook and during Orientation, but a surprising number of managers and supervisors do not know the criteria or deadlines for recognition, nor do they understand their role in using this tool to boost performance. Include recognition training in their Orientation as new managers.

4. Hold managers accountable for submitting appropriate employees. Poor people managers tend not to nominate their direct reports. They are “too busy” to show appreciation or to fill out a form. Their lack of interest transfers to their employees who soon determine that it does not matter whether they meet stretch goals. These are your minimally performing departments.

5. Communicate recognition program(s) frequently. Publicize deadlines. Create competition among divisions or departments to get nominations completely filled out and turned in on time.

6. Put recognition programs and winners on your website and in local newspapers. Appreciated employees are most likely to put forth discretionary effort. Employers who appreciate their employees attract Top Talent. Top talent is more likely to strive to achieve. It is win-win-win for all.

Nancy Ahlrichs Raichart’s two books, Manager of Choice: 5 Competencies for Cultivating Top Talent, and Competing for Talent: Key Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Becoming an Employer of Choice, may be found in large bookstores and on www.amazon.com.