3 Lessons on Creating a Culture of Employee Recognition
Employee recognition is a powerful tool to engage workers. Yet all too often recognition initiatives fail. One of the key reasons this happens is because employers tend to look at the process of creating a recognition program as a logical transaction — a “campaign” intended to keep turnover numbers down rather than a true holistic effort to value employee contributions.
While there is a strategic element that can and should be tied into organizational culture and values, creating a true culture of employee recognition is the only way to ensure long-term success. And changing culture isn’t as simple as turning on a system or kicking off a process — it requires careful, deliberate planning.
Creating a culture of recognition is something any firm can do to improve the employee experience, whether it has 10 employees or 10,000. The formula for success is identifying the key business objective along with the associated behaviors that roll up into that objective and then finding ways to recognize those behaviors consistently over time.
Recognition can support culture change by making it tangible and personal. Two key considerations for using recognition as an influencer of culture come to us in examples from two world-class CEOs — the power of reinforcement and the value of visual representations.
Using Recognition to Reinforce Behaviors
Behavior change is challenging, but recognition and appreciation help to shift behaviors in a nonthreatening way. If an employee exhibits the right behavior, make sure they and their peers know about it so that everyone can model the right behavior.
Alan Mulally, former Chief Executive Officer of Ford Motor Company, used this approach to guide his executives in the turnaround of the firm. As Optimity Advisorswrites, Mulally would highlight members of the leadership team with the courage to bring forth issues that needed resolution instead of trying to cover them up.
Leveraging Physical Symbols of Recognition Moments
David Novak, former CEO of Yum! Brands (parent company of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut), was known for more than just thanking his employees for a job well done. He would give them something special to remember the experience and cement it into their thinking. As explained in Forbes, when Novak recognized the efforts of an employee from the KFC brand, that individual would receive a rubber chicken to commemorate the experience. Workers at Pizza Hut locations would receive a cheese head hat for their good work.
Those workers not only received appreciation for their efforts — they had something fun and tangible to show for it to memorialize the occasion.
Using Cash and Cards for Immediate Impact
One of the easiest ways to offer recognition is to use gift cards or cash to thank employees for outstanding work or actions. When someone exhibits one of the company’s values, the employee’s boss can offer a small reward to cement the “thank you” for a job well done. In considering using gift cards or cash, it’s important to remember two things: the value of the cards or cash are taxable as income by the IRS, and money has been shown to have only minimal motivational power when offered alone.
That’s why the recognition aspects are so important to this equation: without them, you’ll have yet another “flavor of the day” HR program with minimal impact on the workers and the business. By making the focus on recognition first and reward second, you can boost employee performance and motivation while minimizing any negative side effects.
Originally published on the ADP Spark blog
Ben Eubanks is the Chief Research Officer at Lighthouse Research & Advisory. He is an author, speaker, and researcher with a passion for telling stories and making complex topics easy to understand.
His latest book Talent Scarcity answers the question every business leader has asked in recent years: “Where are all the people, and how do we get them back to work?” It shares practical and strategic recruiting and retention ideas and case studies for every employer.
His first book, Artificial Intelligence for HR, is the world’s most-cited resource on AI applications for hiring, development, and employee experience.
Ben has more than 10 years of experience both as an HR/recruiting executive as well as a researcher on workplace topics. His work is practical, relevant, and valued by practitioners from F100 firms to SMB organizations across the globe.
He has spoken to tens of thousands of HR professionals across the globe and enjoys sharing about technology, talent practices, and more. His speaking credits include the SHRM Annual Conference, Seminarium International, PeopleMatters Dubai and India, and over 100 other notable events.