Cultural differences in Recognition

[Anja Schuetz]

Recently I traveled to Florida and attended the RPI “Certified Recognition Practitioner” course as the only European delegate there.

During one of the seminars, the participants were asked to name ways to reward employees. One person mentioned “a Pizza lunch”. And while I was wondering, “What’s a pizza lunch?” I noticed everyone else nodding and agreeing, so I kept quiet.

Back in the hotel, I asked my Dutch friend (who I was on vacation with), “Have you ever heard of a pizza lunch?” – “What’s a pizza lunch?” – “I don’t know, seems to be a way to reward people here.” She made the same confused face as I had probably made in the seminar.

Now, we both know what pizza is and also what lunch is, but our confusion lay in the question, “Where’s the reward in it?” so we started collecting all the things we associate with pizza:

“When I’m too lazy to cook, I order pizza.”
“When I want to go out, but want to stay cheap, I go and have pizza.”
“The only time we have pizza in the office, is when we have so much to do that we can’t break for lunch, or when we’re still in the office at 9pm and know we won’t be finished any time soon.”

So, “Pizza” to us means, “Cheap”, “Lazy, no effort”, “Loads of work & overtime”. Not really positive words that we would want to have attached to a reward.

My friend is a PR manager and used to lots of fancy dinners with clients. The company she works at was recently taken over by an American company. Like in other companies, money’s a bit tight there at the moment. After our conversation she said, “Anja, you know our new marketing director took us all out for pizza the other day. We were all complaining afterwards and said, ‘This is how far things have come! Now all we get is pizza!’ Are you saying he was trying to reward us?”


I hope this post does not offend anyone. I do think that we in Europe have a lot to catch up when it comes to recognition and as I get deeper into the matter I’m really looking forward to spotting all the differences, because I do hear people say, “Oh, but that’s very American!” a lot.

I found this little anecdote quite funny and wanted to share it here. It might be a cultural or a personal thing. It might even be that both my friend and I were spoiled in the past due to the industry we worked in, and other Europeans on this forum might totally disagree with us.

In any case it proves that recognition is individual and can’t really be approached in a “one size fits all” way. And this is one of the big challenges of the Recognition professionals, as I realized in the course as well.

Has anyone experienced mixed results or responses from their American, European or other international branches, when rolling out *one* recognition program? What worked in one country (or continent) that didn’t work in another?

Thank you,
Anja

[maggie chicoine]

Hi Anja,
Your story is very funny! It's always about "Clarity of purpose", isn't it!

Thanks for sharing,
Maggie Chicoine

[Roy Saunderson]

Hi Anja:

So sorry we missed each other and being formally introduced in Naples!!

Your comments are SO true and show the unique variations and interpretations of recognition as well as the "value" placed on various food items. I did chuckle at seeing things through your eyes.

I have been working a lot in Switzerland lately and I don't believe I even saw ONE pizza restaurant in Zurich whereas in Lugano the Italian influence brought at least pizza on the local restaurant menu. In Canada or in the U.S. you will not only have pizza-take-out and delivery but family and upscale restaurants serving pizza - I guess we do like our pizza over here!!! Hence, pizza is a little more rewarding than you might think it is in Holland.

Interestingly I do see and hear the perception from my new European friends that the North American overt expression of recognition as being insincere and phony. Everyone there thinks we are doing employee of the month in all companies - which we are not.

One Swiss-German manager shared an old Swiss-German saying that summed up their cultural difficulty they experience in speaking praise and expression of recognition to one another, which roughly translated states - "To not shout loudly is enough praise."

What I am finding universal is the need for recognition with its unique variations and preferences per individual. Then there are the cultural differences of expectation for and expression of recognition by different groupings of countries.

The key to recognition is in your message that "one size does not fit all" - some like medium versus large pizza - others vegetarian versus meat lovers!!

No matter how you slice it - recognition is an individual expereince. Our job as recognition professionals is to know each person's tastes and preferences and serve up recognition just the way they like it.

Best regards,

Roy

[Anja Schuetz]

Thank you, Roy, especially for sticking with the pizza metaphor :)

“insincere and phony” – if that’s the same as “superficial” and “not real” yes, I’ve heard those opinions, but then in Europe we maybe come across as being too stiff and serious because we like authenticity and genuineness?

By the way, we looove pizza (in case that wasn’t clear from my initial post :). True to our nature, though, we wouldn’t have it in any other place than a genuine, authentic Italian restaurant :)
Quite limiting, isn’t it? If we wouldn’t take things so seriously we could have pizza anywhere, anytime! There you go, nothings right or wrong, we’re all just wonderfully diverse :)

[Rita Maehling]

Anja,

I giggled at your clever analysis of a pizza lunch, and as you point out, perception is EVERYTHING - particularly in the eyes of those who are on the receiving end of the intended recognition. Based on your observations, it appears as if this informal recognition option might indeed be more "acceptable" Stateside.

My corporate background - as an HR manager in a manufacturing facility - points to pizza lunches as a common practice. Yes, it's not fancy or "hands on," but in many cases, it matches the 30-minute lunch break, serves to build teamwork, and honors a milestone of some kind. Consider it as ONE option in a leader's toolbox. For most considerations, a food offering, combined with specific mention of the accomplishments is well received. But indeed, you need to know your audience.

Please let us know some ideas you may consider as alternatives. . .

Thanks for starting the conversation!

[Anja Schuetz]

Hi Rita,

you're right, I should offer some alternatives, when I'm stating what wouldn't work :)

I totally agree with the fact that lunch is contributing to team building and I also made this very important when I was a manager. We had the tradition to go for a "team lunch" together every Friday. Everyone paid for themselves, so it was not a reward kind of thing; it was just a way for people to get to bond beyond work, especially just before the weekend and especially when we had new people joining the team. Nobody was forced to join the lunch, but everyone has to eat, so we might as well do it together :) at least once a week.

For a while (under a very good boss) I had a 50Euro budget per month that I could spend on my team (of 6 people). 50Euros is not much and certainly doesn't pay for a lunch for 7 (including me :) in the center of Amsterdam. Still, you can make it go a long way. I'm a big fan of giving mini-budgets to team leaders/supervisors/managers, because I consider it sort of a recognition for them at the same time - to give them the freedom to spend it in any way they see fit for their team.

I can't remember what exactly I did with the 50Euros each time - sometimes I didn't even spent them (all) and kept them for the next month so I would have a little more and could afford a lunch or something noticeable that would make a difference.
The only thing I tried to make sure was to always do something unexpected, to make it a positive surprise. If people expect to get something, then it's not a reward, it's a trade. I really wanted to reward them.

So sometimes I would invite them for drinks after work, or I would get a few snacks and a few bottles of wine and we would finish an hour early on a Friday and spend the last hour chatting and drinking wine in the office.
Sometimes maybe candy or chocolate when the team had their afternoon dip and needed sugar :) They would all hang in their seats, asking each other, "Do you have chocolate?" and once in a while I could afford to throw a tenner on the table so one of them could buy sweets for the whole team. :)

My team didn't know that I had 50Euros available, which was important, so it didn't become an expectation. This also allowed me to spend it only on specific people when needed. I did try to use it for the whole team fairly, but if certain people really deserved it I would do something just for them. That could be a lunch, too. Or even just a cup of coffee.

One of the biggest rewards actually consisted of only a cup of coffee. We had a hotel next door, and the lobby was sort of like a meeting room for our directors & upper management. “Regular staff” who walked past, would think all the directors would do all day is sit in that hotel and drink coffee. What a life! Which of course was not true. For the directors who had to meet it didn’t make a difference to visit each other in their offices or in the hotel next door – same distance. But a fancy hotel lobby is of course nicer – and maybe even more productive than a dull office that you sit in all day.
The regular staff never got sit in that hotel as they were bound to their desks... So the biggest reward I could give to my team members was to say, “Let’s go next door” when I had scheduled a meeting with them. It cost less than 5 Euros for two cups of coffee for us, so I could do that 10 times a month if needed. My team members felt important (getting a “director’s treatment”) and they got a break from the office.

Anything that gives them a break from the office and gives them “time back” is considered a reward I think. People value anything that happens during office hours. And it’s not that they hate their jobs and want to be away from it as often as possible. It’s just that they do a lot of (unpaid) overtime and this is one way to sort of get it back. Dinners or events that are paid by the company but happen after office hours feel like a duty and overtime and are not as appreciated as management would like to think. Also a team building day should never be scheduled on a bank holiday!

But back to an alternative to "pizza lunch"... I believe people here value a free lunch most when it's
a) a little different from what they normally have for lunch
b) a little more expensive than what they normally treat themselves to

Whenever we had a "special lunch", as in "reward", we would go to a popular restaurant where we could see our CEO and CFO at the tables next to us and where the food was great and which was not just the pub or cafe around the corner where we had lunch every other day. We also would not watch the clock and if it took 1.5 hours, so be it; it’s a reward after all.
If we would have gone to the same place where we went every day, with the only difference that the company pays, people would have forgotten about it very quickly and not seen it as a reward.

Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here or make too big assumptions, but I’m suspecting that people value being respected and treated in the same way as their bosses or top management more than an actual “award” or open praise. It’s maybe a “Show, don’t tell” kind of thing; and it might very well be a generation related phenomenon. Which leads me also to a whole other topic, which I’ve been labeling “before-the-fact-recognition” since I came back from Naples :) but that would be content for a whole new post…

[Diane Desjardins]

I do agree with you. I would like to share an experience I had about the shared power to recognize.
As I was the general director of a small group of dedicated people, I would sometimes stop at a ice cream shop and buy treats to everyone who still was at work on a beautiful and hot Friday afternoon.

I would include the guys from Public works that had to endure the heat and drying sun. It was presented as a friendship gesture. Well, sometimes, one employee or another would do the same thing. And I received an ice cream goody too! These afternoon breaks were always joyful and friendly.

I think that not putting it out as "a reward for being there" was more potent. People felt appreciated enough that they also wanted to show their appreciation to their coworkers and their managers. Reciprocity is a beautiful thing.

It also show that there was trust there: nobody felt that I bought them with ice cream. Nobody was sucking up to the bosses.

It is in the way we are and act (congruence). Isn't it ?

[Roger Hurd]

All this talk about pizza, chocolate and ice cream is making me hungry!

Roy's metaphor, to serve up recognition the way the individual wants it, seems to me spot on. Rita's example of appreciation that is spontaneous, not expected, doesn't take on an "entitlement" waft. It's also interesting that you some of the cash tosses aren't memorable, thinking that, unless the appreciation is something very unique or special, that it's quickly lost (or in fact wasted in comparison). Unique and different something we all strive to offer, but it difficult to maintain the creativity, and provide it in a way that is unique for everyone ("Oh I've been there before... it's not bad..").

As leaders or managers, we place the burden on our own shoulders to design and be creative. This is a challenge to take Rita, Diane and Roy's creativity and instill this in all managers. Can it be done? Can all managers globally learn what would be unique and exciting for each person on their team?

Or, would another approach be to help each other look for recognition moments, and leave the choice of reward to the individual? It may not work well for a team social (everyone picks their favorite restaurant, and no one eats together!), but it may work well for personal thank you's for the behaviors we are looking to reinforce...

Thoughts?

[Mark Tisdale]

Anja,

You are brilliant! I loved this story and your perspective. I find that in my business of providing Health and Productivity Management solutions to global organisations, that so many companies don't understand their own culture, nevermind the differences between groups around the world.

I'll look forward to your next post!

Mark Tisdale
InfoTech Inc.

[Anja Schuetz]

Oh, you just made my day!
I was thinking how nice it would be to make a living from writing articles on recognition! Do you think I have a shot? :)

[Derek Irvine]

Anja, you are precisely correct. There is no one-size-fits all in recognition, either in WHAT is given as recognition or in HOW it is given. As you note, pizza is not a good recognition solution in many cultures and instances, just as public or solo recognition is not appropriate as Roy notes in cultures where private acknowledgement or team recognition is preferred. We've heard horror stories of recognition gone wrong including giving a vegan a gift certificate to a steakhouse restaurant, a fleece coat with the company logo to employees in Kenya, and clocks to team members in China. Horrifying at worst and unneeded/unwanted at best. In fact, we just ran a contest to get stories of "wrecked recognition" as David Zinger calls it. You can read those stories on my blog.

[Deri Latimer]

Hi Anja! I agree with your point. It reminds me of the many stories I have heard over the years of 'recognition' that felt to staff like something else - even 'punishment' in some cases. One workshop participant told me about her previous employer, who recognized staff by taking them out to a long lunch with him. She said it was definitely not received as a perk...the gentleman was tough to converse with and had some embarassing table manners. She said it got so bad that no one wanted to be the top performer!! Certainly, this leader had a positive intention with his recognition idea (I enjoy a long lunch with me...so others will too!!), he needed to check it out before making assumptions about the value of that particular recognition. Most people I meet each week, from a variety of organizations, tell me they want recognition that is tailored to them personally (make sure the reward is a reward to me). For team recognition, a group thing is great ... and staff want us to engage them by giving them a voice in generating potential ideas so the leader can have a variety of options from which to draw.

Regards, Deri