Is recognition wrecked?
Even with new technology behind them, employee recognition schemes often fail to workEmployee recognition schemes are pretty much everywhere.
From ‘Employee of the Month’ certificates to lavish annual awards ceremonies, many UK companies appear to agree that some form of firm-wide acknowledgement of your best workers motivates everyone to perform better and stick around for longer.
With the launch of new online recognition tools, more organisations are likely to join the fray too. These promise to not only speed up the recognition process but also, with some platforms, to improve workplace collaboration too.
Yammer for instance is not alone in now offering a ‘professional recognition’ app as part of its business social networking platform. Colleagues can use it to publicly recommend each other, democratising the process by giving a strong voice to a broad employee population.
But for all this, does any of it actually work to motivate and engage employees?
Engagement is off
Recent research, conducted by ORC International, suggests not. The ‘Global Perspectives’ survey of more than 7,000 employees conducted over 20 countries placed the UK a pretty dismal 18th out of 20 for employee engagement, trailed only by Japan and Hong Kong.
Not only that, but in every category measured, UK employee engagement actually decreased over 2013.
Of course, statistics tell a pretty superficial story at best. No doubt firms with solid recognition schemes in place would argue that they are bucking the trend. Otherwise, why would they bother in the first place?
But then you look at specific schemes and you wonder.
Take UK City Councils, for instance. A quick online scan suggests a huge number have well-entrenched staff recognition schemes. Some, such as Glasgow City Council’s Flourish Team Excellence Awards, include prestigious (and costly) annual award ceremonies. The obvious rationale is increased motivation leading to better public services.
And yet according to ‘Employee Outlook’ research from the CIPD, staff engagement in the public sector is falling – and sharply if the figures from mid-2012 to early 2013 are to be believed.
Yes, there could be lots of reasons for this – not least years of financial cut-backs. But given that some councils have taken considerable flak for the perceived extravagance of ‘back-patting award ceremonies’ it seems fair to wonder whether such programmes really are worth the aggro.
And there’s not much evidence that implementing the latest tools will help.
Spotlight on failure
Financial services giant Aviva has the kind of tech-savvy staff recognition scheme that suggests a pretty forward-thinking business when it comes to winning over employees. The system, entitled ‘Spotlight’, operates via a website that allows all 22,000 employees to send ‘thank you’ e-cards to each other as well as recommend teams and individuals for further rewards including gift vouchers and experience days.
Sounds great until you hear that ‘poor scores for staff engagement and customer satisfaction’ have resulted in Aviva’s chief executive taking a hefty six-figure bonus cut this year.
It may be a one-off. For sure, the news follows a challenging year in which 2,000 employees lost their jobs as part of a cost-reduction programme. And the fact that the company knows engagement levels are low (and has responded) puts it a fairly big step above many other organisations.
But it’s hardly glowing testimony for a recognition scheme that we have to assume was specifically designed to improve staff engagement.
Even the most acclaimed models using all the latest tools provide some room for debate – once you get beyond the hype.
Make me wanna shout?
Virgin Media’s ‘Shout’ staff recognition programme has won awards for its innovative use of social media in creating a culture in which all 15,000 employees feel appreciated and valued.
Using Facebook-style profiles on the company intranet, it allows colleagues to post ‘Shouts’ on each other’s pages, delivering general notes of appreciation or more specific thank-you messages for a job well done. These can then be downloaded for use in career appraisals.
It addresses some of the challenges presented by more traditional systems. By taking the process out of the hands of managers, it brings workers together and empowers them – in itself encouraging more engagement.
In so doing it also kills two birds with one stone: reducing the likelihood of managers favouring a select few or, on the other hand, neglecting the process altogether.
But then you hear that in 2012, individual employees sent a whopping 250,000 Shouts to each other. According to press releases the company is delighted with this figure. No doubt the 200 employees a month who received £50 vouchers off the back of the system were pretty pleased too.
But it begs the question: how is anyone actually usefully recognised in a programme where everyone gets recognised, thousands of times over?
Virgin on ridiculous numbers
Some of this volume may well decrease naturally once the novelty element dies down. Even then, though, we have to assume that the organisation will have to monitor the system to ensure it doesn’t just benefit the most popular employees rather than the best.
And then it risks becoming just as unwieldy, time-consuming and costly as any other scheme – with still no-one really knowing whether it’s actually making any tangible difference.
No doubt companies will continue to compete to come up with staff recognition schemes that resolve any and all of these challenges. It seems to be too hot a space for organisations to ignore.
But for all the effort and money that will go into these things there probably remains an essential truth: by far the best way to motivate and engage an employee is actually through a truly great boss.
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