Revitalise your Rewards Program

The power of Peer to Peer Recognition and Effective Communication.

The key question asked in any exit interview is ‘why are you leaving?’ Numerous studies have shown that it is rarely about the money. More often it’s about poor management and not feeling recognised or appreciated. It follows, therefore, that a company’s policy on reward and recognition is a critical factor in the battle to retain an experienced, talented and engaged workforce. The burning question arises – if recognition is so important, how do you do it properly?

As a consultant at RedBalloon I spend a lot of time speaking to the HR teams of organisations large and small. Most companies have some kind of reward and recognition program. The vast majority use a structure where an employee or team is recognised once a month based on ‘living the values’ or ‘going above and beyond’. The decision as to who will be acknowledged will be decided by a management team and then a presentation will take place at the next month’s company meeting. This is a useful and necessary form of reward and recognition and shows the organisation’s commitment to its people, its values and achieving a high level of performance.

The structure I have mentioned above generally involves canvassing the entire workplace to collect either peer to peer or manager nominations. It is a common complaint that either there are not enough nominations coming in or that it is the same people being nominated time and time again. The result of these trends is that the program can lose relevance, become outdated and ultimately fail to deliver on its purpose.

So the question inevitably gets asked - should the program be continued? The answer is a DEFINITE YES, but not in its current form because the program is intrinsically valuable but is just not functioning properly.

Faced with the above situation there are two elements I would explore. The first is communication and the second is the possibility of revitalising your program through the power of peer to peer recognition. Let’s look at each separately.

Communication

There is a tendency to only approve spending on the actual rewards themselves. I have visited too many companies that readily admit that most of their staff don’t know what their rewards program is called or how it works. They then scratch their head when no nominations come in. If this sounds like your company then my advice to you would be the following:

• Give your program some personality! Calling it ‘The Company X Rewards Program’ is hardly going to capture the imagination of your people. I still remember a conversation I had two years ago with a manager who called his program the GOAT AWARDS, which simply stood for Going Over and Above Targets. The award was a bronze goat that sat on the winner’s desk. The fact that I can still remember its name two years later suggests to me that this award will never be forgotten in his workplace.
• Support your program with effective and well produced marketing collateral. Constant reminders in the office that a program exists, such as posters, brochures, flyers, mouse pads, customised post it notes etc will reinforce the programs existence. I often recommend that a company spend 10% of their program budget on communications and marketing.

Focus any communication on the three key messages:

• Why are the program goals important to the organisation?
• How does the program work?
• What can I win?

Include an introduction to your rewards program in any new employee induction so that you ensure that your program is not just a one off phenomena, but an ongoing event that lives on throughout the life of the organisation.

The Power of Peer to Peer recognition

The fact is that the average employee is going to be interacting with peers much more than with his or her direct manager. As such peers are uniquely situated to catch someone doing something right. In addition numerous studies have suggested that for the majority of employees the most meaningful recognition they can get is from their peers. So it makes perfect sense to try and harness the power of peer to peer recognition to complement an existing rewards program.

A creative and effective way that I have observed companies harnessing this potential is to create formal systems for peer to peer recognition that enables individual episodes of recognition to pass through the recipient’s manager such that at the end of each month the manager has a wealth of nominations with which to make a monthly award determination.

We have seen this work for our clients time and time again. A great example of this has been with RACQ, who have recently implemented a RedBalloon Online Points Program. In their program they have set up four awards that correspond to their company values. Employees are empowered to log into the program and nominate their peers based on these values. The nominations then travel to the inbox of the nominee’s manager where it is either approved or rejected. An approved nomination results in an immediate e-card being delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

The result of this simple yet powerful system is that the volume of peer to peer recognition has improved dramatically, managers have an abundance of ‘nominations’ when distributing monthly awards and HR have tangible stories of the great achievements that are going on within the business. So in conclusion....

Reward and recognition is not a box to be ticked but something that needs to be continuously reinforced and reinvigorated in your organisation. If the program is feeling tired or irrelevant consider making some changes to how you communicate it or how you structure it. If you are looking for some great ideas on how you might reinvigorate your program (or start one from scratch) please do not hesitate to contact the Corporate Team here at RedBalloon.

Author: David Berger, RedBalloon

Date: 13/07/2010

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