Best practices and lessons learned needed for Motivation Show presentation

[Carol Wain]

I am co-presenting a seminar at the Motivation Show in Chicago this September on the topic of global employee recognition and how technology helps. It's really 2 topics in one, which we hopefully can blend seamlessly! We are looking for examples of best practices and lessons learned from people that (a) run centralized global recognition programs and (b) run recognition programs regionally in as many different countries as we can get. If you can provide insight to us, we would be very appreciative. We need to know which country you live in and whether you are running a program in that country or globally.

The goal for our presentation is for our audience to understand what works and what doesn't work for employee recognition around the world... and at the same time, how technology can help (as I said, 2 topics in one session, it will be interesting putting this presentation together!) Thanks in advance.

[Carol Wain]

Please, please... can you help us? Our goal is to have the best presentation at the MoShow and we really need your help.

[Andrea Vienet]

Hi Carol. I don't run our programs here at my company but am across them certainly. We are based in Australia - and not a global company - so is that still relevant to you?

[Carol Wain]

Absolutely... please share!

[Suvana]

Hi Carol,
Not sure how useful it will be to you but an employee's perspective on recognition.. we used to run a program at my company for peer recognition - you could nominate someone for an award. You would need to give a reason - "made all the difference to getting my project in on time" - "went the extra mile when App X crashed" - whatever it might have been. All the ones I ever saw were kind of event based (ie not "is the most inspirational person in Dept X" - although I guess they could have been) but were personal - not management backpats. You'd get a nominal giftie (£10 voucher) but that wasn't really the point; you also got a paper award signed by the CIO (it's an IT shop) and recognition at the Divisional meeting ("Award winners this month..." and a few words about why :)) The program has now stopped (nobody's really sure why), which is disappointing; not because I like collecting them (although it's amusing to do so) but because I feel frustrated that there's really no significant way to tell one of my colleagues "thank you, you really made a difference to my work". You can say it; you can mail their manager; but it's not the same, and nobody else knows.

For my money, recognition from my boss is nice, but should really be an ongoing thing as part of our work relationship. Special effort recognition from HIS boss is pleasant, but often feels rather like a keep-em-happy maneuver, and to be honest usually only comes when we've made some huge effort to extricate from some disaster we warned them was coming. (We'd rather they listened up front, and put in the effort to avoid it!) Recognition from HR or remote, senior management is completely meaningless, as I don't believe they have any idea what I do (although I did think it was useful to have them see the awards go by and note that effort was being made, and what mattered to people). Recognition from my peers (whether "customers" or teams in my department), on the other hand, really makes me feel like I'm making a difference and that my efforts have not been in vain.

Thinking about it further - part of the "well done Department B you've done a great job this year" has always seemed faintly insulting somehow. What, we're usually a bunch of useless slackers? We *always* work hard and praising us for it feels inappropriate (at a "special recognition" level, anyway - we expect to get standard encouragement and strokes from our line manager). I guess I'd say recognition needs to be specific; it needs to be personal; and the person giving it needs to really understand what's been done and how hard/inconvenient/insurmountable/whatever it was.

Make of that what you will! :)

[Carol Wain]

Thanks... and I completely agree. We ran a program for a company (that unfortunately went into receivership) that had offices throughout Canada. They used an online recognition program that we created based on their specs. Employees would nominate each other for core values and an email would be sent with a letter-sized recognition certificate attached as a PDF. A copy of the email would be sent to the recognized employee's manager. The "good" managers would print a copy of the certificate on their colour printer and deliver it to the employee. Others did varying degrees of recognizing the contribution (there was no financial reward attached to the peer recognition). Managers could also nominate employees for the same core values and assign a point value, which equaled a dollar amount, and the employees could then pool their points and redeem for items in the catalog. The managers were typically quite generous giving recognition and rewards that started at $50 and, I think the highest I saw was $1,000 for a cost saving suggestion. I believe, for the bigger amounts, they were publicly presented (because I recall the client contacting us to ask that we hold the emails until a certain time, so that the employee wouldn't receive it before the presentation). The other recognitions were presented personally by some managers, while others let them be delivered solely by email.

The impact of these certificates didn't really hit me until I went to visit our client and I saw that the employees proudly displayed (in frames) their recognition certificates. Some people had many all over their workspaces and I almost pitied the employee that had few or none :-)

The reality is that bosses don't know what is going on most of the time and, my opinion is, that fostering peer recognition is not only a great way to build camaraderie in a team and gently push those who aren't doing their part to shape up but also to give management some insight into what is happening so that they can coach, develop, thank, promote and reward his/her team.

thanks for sharing... and I'm glad this topic is finally getting some replies (I was getting a bit concerned because the deadline for our presentation is coming up very quickly!)
Carol

BTW, if anyone has any "I can't believe they did THAT" stories, let me know... sometimes we learn more from mistakes.. and besides they generally add some humour to our day

[Rocky]

Some of the greatest motivators are having a sense of Belonging, Achievement, and Recognition. Napoleon said it best when he stated that men are willing to die for a few pieces of ribbon. It is not the monetary gain as much as it is for a sense of belonging, achievement,and recognition. People want to feel valued and important. The sense of status remains long after a monetary or material award. That is why people cherish emblems that symbolize an accomplishment. People want to feel special. They want to be recognozed for their efforts. Everything you can do in line with this strengthens your culture.

[Carol Wain]

My deadline is looming and I'm still needing content for my presentation. I have set up a survey at Survey Monkey (only 10 questions... well really 12 questions because I put 2 questions in one space twice :-) Can you please take 5 min or so to respond. There are only 2 required questions: permission to use your responses in our presentation and your country, so it's about as user friendly as I can create. That being said, by responding to all questions I will have a lot more content to present. For those of you who do not run programs for your company, you can still answer the questions based on your experience THANK YOU so much for your help...

Click Here to take survey

[Maria Tendencia]

I'm interested to know your findings about employee recognition that works around the world. If you can share this info, I would really appreciate it.

Maria