I recently watched a funny but very interesting TEDx Talk. Professor McCarty shared her thoughts on employee recognition. She drew a parallel between a dentist quoting "Ignore your teeth and they'll go away" and what that means in a business context. You have to pay attention to things that you value if you want to keep them!
Her Turkey Manager story
A company gave a turkey to its employees for the holidays. That's a nice thing to do right? Perhaps they all didn't care that much about a turkey but you can image the reaction of course. "If you offer it to me, sure I'll take a turkey." The next year, everyone was waiting for the holiday turkey. Again the year thereafter. But the third year, people started grumbling. "Well I don't eat turkey, why can't I have a ham?" And some people started thinking other people got the bigger turkeys. So you can have a manager of the turkey program to get the same exact size turkeys for all... Ridiculous right?
The lesson is that it's not whether such ideas are good or bad. But the thing is, recognition and appreciation should focus employees on their co-workers, on their own attitude, on their own behaviours, on customers. Whereas the turkey approach actually pulls people's attention away from what matters.
Many HR professionals ignore an obvious thing in their recognition and reward programs. It's not earth-shattering. It is the valuable feedback about our daily work. Reinforcing the good work people do. Telling people - in a very specific way - what they did and why it matters is important.
If you want to learn more of the wisdom she shared, take a few minutes to watch her TEDx Talk. It's well worth your time.
Koen Schreurs
