Staff recognition can be as simple as a pat on the back, but a well designed reward and recognition program can take many forms. Karalyn Brown looks at how organisations can use such programs to effectively recognise and engage staff and reinforce company values
Staff recognition can be as simple as a pat on the back, but a well designed reward and recognition program can take many forms. Karalyn Brown looks at how organisations can use such programs to effectively recognise and engage staff and reinforce company values
Gone are the days when managers gave their staff a pat on the back and a couple of movie tickets for a job well done. Employers use formal reward and recognition programs for many reasons – to increase employee productivity, to create engagement and loyalty, or to reinforce their business values to ensure long term success.
A recent RedBalloon Day survey of 3,375 employees found they would contribute more to their organisation if they were rewarded for their service. But what does reward mean – a heartfelt “thank you”or the more tangible gift voucher? Is reward just visible recognition – a plaque on the wall or a company wide email from the CEO? And service – is it something the employee or the employer values, or a combination of both?
A successful reward program is meaningful to the employee and specific about the attitude, behaviour and performance it’s designed to reward. Well designed programs make it easy for managers to reward their staff, which is important for leaders who aren’t naturally ‘people people’. For long term business sustainability, reward and recognition programs also need to prove that they’re working.
Griffith University ICTS
Griffith University’s Information and Communication Technology Services (ICTS) division has 160 staff supplying support to the internal IT networks, underlying infrastructure and data storage of the University. For the last 18 months they’ve used a structured program which recognises and rewards employees at all levels, both informally and formally.
Nominations for informal rewards can be for any number of reasons including excellence in service to external or internal clients or significant systems improvement. Reward is discretionary, can happen at any time and is up to the nominee’s manager. Examples include morning teas, being taken out to lunch, a training program or a gift voucher.
ICTS offers four formal awards, twice a year for exceptional initiative or leadership, outstanding client service, outstanding client service or initiative by a team, and the director’s choice for special contribution to ICTS. Prizes include Myers and Harvey Norman gift vouchers worth $500.
It’s unusual for an internal service unit to have their own program. “Regular staff surveys highlighted recognition and reward as an issue over a number of years. So we decided to do something formally to ensure we are looking after staff,”says Bruce Callow, associate director of corporate information systems. “Staff wanted to be recognised for good work … and not sitting in a corner as just backroom boys.”
IT departments are not traditionally warm and fuzzy when it comes to people management. To gain support Callow used a consultative process. He set up a working party with representatives from all business areas who gathered ideas from their teams. “Some [teams] wanted formal recognition; some wanted something as simple as saying ‘good job’ and a cup of coffee,” he says. It was important that “informal recognition occurred at all levels”, Callow notes, and says the committee “took several cuts back to the teams” before formalising the policy.
Callow launched his program though newsletters, and managers also promoted it to their teams. “We had a fairly rigid process to make sure it was taken down to each individual,” he says. “While we thought the need to reward staff was understood by team leaders, we found they were hesitant to do it because they thought they were stepping out of bounds.” As such, Callow placed the policy on the website spelling out its intention and detail.
Callow says he didn’t need to develop a formal business case for the initiative, as his colleagues in management were aware of the importance of rewarding their staff.
While a formal return on investment is difficult to measure, Callow reviewed the program after the first round of awards and found “informally that recognition had started to occur. Team leaders and management are becoming aware of the need to say thanks for doing a good job.”
However, Callow acknowledges that there have been a few lessons in rolling out the program. “Don’t just assume that when people say they want to be rewarded that they want a pay increase. They may just want recognition in an email or newsletter,” he says. “Do it in consultation with staff so they feel they’ve contributed. You can do something that delivers to their expectations.”
Australian insurance giant IAG has an online rewards system for its workforce called ‘Reward Help’. Staff can go online at any time and nominate a fellow employee for helping others, for leadership, sustainability and innovation or other achievements.
A citation is emailed to the nominee’s manager for approval, and they decide whether the achievement is worthy of an award. Successful nominees receive a thank you e-card or are rewarded with help points scaled from 20 to 150. With each point worth a dollar, employees can bank points or cash them in for a gift. The mechanics of the program are run by an external provider and gifts can be anything that the employee chooses, from theatre tickets and toasters to trips to Sydney’s Blue Mountains.
Any company, especially a large one, needs to be careful about the values they reward. “The awards are driven off ‘help’ which the organisation tends to live by, so the link back to help is easy,”says Malcolm Green, IAG’s human resources manager. Also important are “transparency, honesty and meritocracy”.
The program was initially piloted in two units to create some champions who were keen to make it work and help in gaining buy-in from staff, says Green. “All staff have access to the intranet so it actually got its own momentum once people understood.”The launch was also important, he adds, with significant effort put into the initial communication and lots of face to face and large meeting groups.
Business buy-in for the program was easy according to Green, as IAG has a long tradition of rewarding its staff and have always set aside a percentage of their salary pool for reward and recognition. “[Our existing programs were] working quite well but we decided we needed to do something consistent across the group. On the communication side some managers did it better than others,” he says.
In order to measure effectiveness and return on investment, IAG conducts analytics around percentage of reward to salary bills, he says. “We can satisfy ourselves it’s working across the organisation.”
A big win for Green has been in employee engagement. “We measure staff around engagement scores. We’ve found in parts of the business that use ‘Reward Help’ effectively we’ve seen uplift in engagement scores. It may be due in part to some other factors, but there seems like there’s quite a strong link,” he says.
The bottom line, according to Green, is that “a clear link to a business objective is needed at the end of the day to do these things.”
Dunn and Bradstreet
Global business information provider Dunn and Bradstreet (D&B) have a company-wide program comprising 14 categories. The company recognises staff monthly, quarterly and annually for performance ethics and says it promotes, recognises and rewards on merit. Prizes include a certificate, gift voucher and CEO letter of commendation. D&B also flies winners from all over the country to attend the CEO’s gala dinner.
Rewards are both performance and recognition driven. “We try and have relative equity within the organisation and across job functions,” says Padam Chirmuley, D&B’s director of organisational development.
He says rewards within D&B are part of a clearly defined strategy: “It fits into our people and HR strategy to attract and retain staff who can be aligned with our culture and values. We have tried to encapsulate the culture with guiding principles,” he says. “It needs to be something aligned with the organisation’s culture, values and with the business. [Some] may think it’s just gift and vouchers, but it’s consistent with what people want.”
Chirmuley believes support from the CEO is critical to the rewards’ success. “They reflect the heritage of D&B … we have an ethos of very visible recognition of performance … we didn’t have to demonstrate continuing relevance as the CEO is 110 per cent behind the program.”
D&B have reviewed the awards to ensure they are relevant and meaningful. “Eighteen months ago we kicked off projects around enhancing the customer experience and how D&B was delivering on brand promise. Feedback said we needed to refine the awards and incentives,” Chirmuley says. As such, the company replaced plaques with a letter from the CEO and a gift voucher.
When a program has been in place for a long time there’s always a danger that interest may wane. D&B’s awards are delivered consistently and visibly on the third Friday of every month, and are backed up by a company-wide email sent from the CEO. “It’s an opportunity to publicly recognise high performers. State managers and general managers all present the awards and read out a list. It’s a tangible example of the CEO’s commitment to the program,” Chirmuley says.
While D&B have not undertaken formal measurement, Chirmuley believes they have strong anecdotal evidence that they work. “Indirectly, lots of people who have been successful award winners are promoted within the organisation. [If staff] perform well it is a big tick if you are looking to move on or get promotion” he says. “We can see informally by the level of attendees at the celebrations.”
