Reward and Recognition

Are your demotivated staff unintentionally undermining your strategic goals?

Your strategy is well-conceived and you’ve built a solid business plan but your business is not achieving its goals. You revise your strategy and tweak your operations structure but still no progress. So you call for another strategic rethink. This becomes an iterative process but one that does not yield success. You’re puzzled. What’s missing?

There are 2 sides to building a successful business: the ideas and the execution.

Could it be that the issue is neither the strategy nor the business plan but that your team is not turning the ideas into reality? Without a capable, empowered and motivated team to execute your plan, company performance will never match the expectation.

Let’s look at an important area of execution that is often overlooked: your staff.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION AND REWARD

Current circumstances have forced businesses to change (a lot!) but can yours answer the new needs of your employees (spoiler alert - it's not just about salary and hours)? Engaged, empowered employees who are recognised and rewarded are more likely to deliver the results your strategic plans call for.

People take pride in building or creating things and are generally inclined to do a job well when they know their efforts are appreciated. They feel great when they know they are doing their job well and helping others, and will feel motivated to do more. They know they are doing a great job when their deliverables are clearly understood, and their managers regularly acknowledge good performance. This is great performance team culture see (https://www.bridgingstrategy.net/post/performance-based-teams.

So how do we motivate and engage employees?

Recognition - Employees are not always looking for financial reward, at least not beyond a “hygiene” level. Recognition is more important and motivating for many employees than reward. Recognition is certainly more cost-effective, when given frequently and authentically.

Recognition should be offered on three levels: corporate, team, and individual; it can take several forms:

- Ad hoc verbal praise at the time of great performance, large or small, by managers, peers and/or subordinates. Encourage all team members to give a “shout out” to anyone else who’s doing a great job;

- Frequent (weekly, monthly) planned catch-ups with teams or individuals by line managers should recognise great performance. Frequent (often) is different from regular, which could be once or twice a year! We all need to hear we’re doing well as often as possible.

The continuous, ongoing use of recognition should be done in real-time and whenever appropriate. These moments of appreciation/recognition need to be encouraged at all levels in the organization. Above all, praise needs to be genuine to be appreciated.

Reward –Tradtitional rewards such as money, promotions and higher holiday allowances have their place but non-traditional rewards can also be highly motivating.

- Non-Traditional Rewards

o Benefits that fit your company culture such as group/team outings or activities

o Personalised rewards. People have diverse wants so ask employees what benefits motivate them and then offer those rewards to those individuals (making sure they fit the corporate culture). By making the process interactive and engaging the employee to discover their personal motivations you can tailor your reward solution to maximum effect for both the company and the employee.

Rewards can be implemented on daily, weekly, monthly and annually frequencies, and also at the individual, team and company level. Demonstrating that you are authentically attentive and invested in your staff backs up your company culture.

A considered and well-implemented recognition and reward system will build positivity within the team/organization, staff will feel supported and appreciated, and will usually be motivated to deliver their best work. Your people are a major reason your company will or will not achieve its strategic goals, so spend some time seeing if you can implement a recognition and reward system which increases employee satisfaction and strategic results.

Contact us for a complimentary conversation about your performance management challenges.