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Launch Letters: Employee Recognition—More than Money

Employee recognition extends beyond dollars and cents. Today’s workplace requires more than gifting monetary rewards, gold watches, and restaurant cards. These isolated acts are important, yet need to be part of a comprehensive, results-driven program that is both meaningful and engaging for all team members. Supported by visual and digital communications that showcase each achievement, employee recognition programs are instrumental in helping to create and maintain a high-performance culture.

Defining Recognition

Recognition fuels employee motivation to increase productivity and teamwork. However, recognition can backfire if employees don’t understand the “rules of the game.” Even worse, it can be viewed as unfair if employees witness the same folks being regularly feted, while they never get toasted.

Therefore, it’s essential that every employee understands exactly what performance areas are recognized. The recognition should be clearly defined and reflect a key performance objective of the company.

To illustrate, a top corporate priority for a manufacturer is workplace safety:

• The production team is recognized for no accidents in the last 90 days
• A production worker is recognized for completing a forklift driver safety course
• Corporate communications produce a video on workplace accident prevention

All of the above actions exemplify positive behaviors that contribute towards the performance objective of workplace safety. Tactics that range from achievement certificates, special parking space privileges and bonus incentives, to pizza parties and president’s awards ceremonies could be deployed based on the type and level of performance achieved. All should be planned and executed consistently as to demonstrate the company’s commitment to a high-performance culture.

To read the full version of this column which appeared in the May 2017 issue of The PCB Magazine, click here.