Dogs. Chimps. Humans. We’re a lot alike. In addition to our four-chambered heart and love of social interaction, advanced mammals share the need for positive reinforcement. Managers have used this trait to motivate employees since the first sales organization crawled out of the water to attend its inaugural awards dinner.
But if sales are the only metric, under the right wrong circumstances loyal lieutenants will do anything to achieve their goal, including cheating. In 2016, Wells Fargo managers opened tens of thousands of fake or unauthorized accounts when pressured to increase the bank’s stock price through sales activity. In 2014, it was discovered that Volkswagen created algorithms to cheat emissions testing so they could sell more diesel cars in North America.
For decades, “Sell more and you’ll be rich” was the charge. Today’s version might be “ship faster” or “capture clicks,” but the message to the employee is the same: the organization has only one immediate need and it’s your job to get us there. Solely rewarding behaviors that drive short-term corporate wins over long-term customer benefits can cause serious damage to a company’s reputation. How can leaders avoid these PR nightmares? Simple: Reward behaviors connected to company values.
The problem with most recognition programs is that they reward the wrong things. Of course, sales is important, but every business outcome is the result of how people work. The best way to achieve those goals consistently (and honestly) is recognizing behaviors that lead to those results, not the results themselves. Attempting to shortcut the cycle by rewarding only the outcome leads to dangerous choices and dysfunctional cultures. Incentivizing employees to directly influence the result is like paying babysitters for how much food they get your kids to eat. It might be effective at first, but eventually how they do the rest of their job suffers.
For culture design to take hold, leaders must recognize and reward values-driven choices. Pointing out an individual or team will make employees proud of what they did and continue that behavior. And because of their mammalian tendencies, others in the organization will see this positive recognition and emulate that behavior, too.
Rewarding values hoists the carrot further up the cause-and-effect chain and away from outcomes. But be careful not to go too far. For all its inspirational power, purpose isn’t useful here. Individuals and teams can’t be rewarded for something only the organization as a whole can achieve. That, and reaching your purpose doesn’t happen frequently enough to be useful. Remember the story of Adaptive Path from Chapter 2? It took them 10 years to achieve theirs—and that was quick. The best we can do is reward the behaviors that will help get us there.
Believe it or not, there are more effective ways to recognize people than the usual cash, trips, and trophies. And while some companies think they’re stepping up their rewards with new improvements to old methods like team-based “pro-social” awards, they’re missing a bigger opportunity. Four opportunities, actually. For a team, business unit, or organization to live a company’s values beyond awards nomination month, leaders need to identify and fulfill all four types.
To understand the different kinds of recognition, I split them along two axes. The first axis is defined by the person doing the recognizing. Is he or she a leader or a peer? The second axis is defined by the person who created the program. Did the program spring from the head of an HR manager, or was it from an employee? Map the two axes and you get four kinds of recognition: (1) formal recognition from leadership; (2) formal recognition from peers; (3) informal recognition from peers; and (4) informal recognition from leadership. Let’s start with number one.
Congratulations. You’ve done it, and now you are being recognized by a manager or executive through a program that was created by the company. These are the most common kinds of initiatives and they can include old standbys, like awards dinners. But they can also get more interesting.
In the early 2000s, I was part of a team that ran a global recognition program for Hewlett-Packard called The CIRCLE Awards. Its goal was to incentivize design and innovation in all forms. We would help HP put out a call for entries, film the judges, host a celebratory dinner, and bestow the trophies. Marketing, products, partnerships—if it was a new approach that could prove some benefit to the company, it was celebrated. Participation in the program grew as year after year, winners became case studies, which would inspire others to enter, ultimately spreading the word that the company fully supported new ideas and experiments.
HP awarded cash bonuses and stock for the first few years, but even when those perks were curbed the excitement and impact remained intact. The awards were an exciting opportunity to elevate and share the best stories, and it happened every year for almost a decade.
Formal leadership recognition doesn’t have to be on a grand scale like HP, though. David Kahn, former VP of Human Resources at Rendina, a small healthcare real estate developer in the Southeast, shared one of the most important parts of the recognition program he ran. Leading up to the Core Value Awards, or CVAs, every employee at Rendina votes for a coworker who has embodied one of the corporate values from the past year. Once selected, winners are announced publicly by the CEO at the State of The Company Address.
David points out that during the event “we share all the ways each winner has personified the core value” which is equally as important as the CEO pronouncement from on high. This piece of Rendina’s CVAs creates a domino effect of engagement. Employees are part of the selection process, which nudges each person to think about and internalize the meaning of the core values, and that results in the sharing of the behaviors that support the values. Being an organization under 200 employees, Rendina’s CVAs don’t have the pomp of MTV’s Video Music Awards, but they don’t need to. The process of getting to the awards is designed to work as hard to increase awareness and engagement across the company as the awards themselves.
Formal leader-driven recognition programs are great because they give the company heads a lot of control over what is rewarded and how, but they also have their challenges. Designing a companywide program that doesn’t come off as fake is tough. The goal when designing any large-scale initiative created for employees is that the majority of the community embraces it.
When creating a Quadrant 1 recognition program, don’t just assume an awards dinner is the best solution. Think about the people in the organization. For a more buttoned-up organization, presenting a trophy in front of peers may work. But if your teams are more casual, maybe a round of drinks at a karaoke bar would do the trick. How might you recognize the behaviors you want in a way that fits your culture?
Peer-to-peer (P2P) recognition gives leaders a tool to encourage value-driven behaviors without fancy awards and dollar payouts. Not that bonuses are being refused, but people respond just as well to praise accompanied by symbols that hold no monetary benefit to the individual. Formal P2P recognition is a regular opportunity for colleagues to acknowledge one another. It’s not only cost-effective, fostering regular compliments on work across the team strengthens relationships and builds trust. The appreciator also gets something. People who practice appreciation tend to be more empathetic and less aggressive. Not a bad set of attributes for any workplace to have.
DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit that allows individuals to donate directly to public school classroom projects, has always made gratitude a major part of their culture. From the small DonorsChoose.org gift cards they send to teacher-volunteers to the handwritten thank-you notes they send to every staff member during the holidays, recognition is built into the culture. But a few years back they created a program that lets peers recognize one another.
It started when YouEarnedIt, an employee recognition-and-reward software company, asked DonorsChoose.org to create a customized experience for one of their customers. Together, they designed a process through which employees could earn recognition points and then cash them in for DonorsChoose.org gift cards. “We loved this idea so much we decided to use it internally,” explained Melanie Duppins, DonorsChoose.org’s former VP of People Operations. By translating their recognition from analog to digital they could scale the practice and make it easier for team members to thank one another more frequently.
DonorsChoose.org’s employees can now go to the YouEarnedIt platform and recognize a peer who has gone above and beyond, then tag that shout-out with one of their core values. Other people who see it can add their support through high fives (their version of a thumbs-up) and pile on additional points and comments.
Melanie told me about a time she was thanked through the program:
I received recognition when I shared our employee survey results at an all-hands meeting. Even though it was difficult, I was forthcoming about the areas where we needed to improve as an organization. A junior person on our team recognized me, saying that she appreciated my humility when sharing survey results. She tagged it with our core value of transparency.
This is a terrific example of a well-functioning formal P2P recognition system.
There are plenty of digital tools that facilitate P2P callouts like YouEarnedIt. And while more platforms are starting to enable philanthropic rewards like DonorsChoose.org, too often points can be redeemed for prizes, which sends the wrong message. (Do this, get that.) But even with extrinsic motivators these tools are still valuable; they track and tally patterns of employee choice revealing what might otherwise be hard to see. Help employees remember the intent of the program by pointing out behaviors that were rewarded on the platform in real life, too.
Software is tricky though, so if you go this route, here are some warnings:
1. People will be tempted to find work-arounds. In my experience, engineers, in particular, find gaming the system too tempting to ignore.
2. Watch out for point inflation.
3. When recognition becomes easy people may need guidance.
Melanie points out that in her experience employees tend to blow through their points too quickly. Do you authorize more to support ALL this positive behavior or encourage budgeting? Be cautious with your points. In our always-on lives, we become desensitized to regular digital stimulus (like your overflowing inbox, for example) in order to cope. Each additional point piled on has less value until eventually they mean nothing. What begins with good intention can end in point bloat and another digital tool that is willfully ignored. ::uninstalls app::
With the right intent and a well-executed rollout, apps can be a great addition to any suite of recognition tools. But when choosing a digital tool, make sure it plays the role of supporting strategy, not being the strategy.
I don’t know about you, but I never get tired of compliments. It’s a well of rewards that never runs dry. If someone at work is inspired to tell you how amazing your contribution to that last product launch was, well, that’s one of the best feelings in the world. Informal recognition from peers requires little forethought, and costs nothing. Of course, a pat on the back will work fine, but there’s no reason we can’t get creative. An anonymous note, a handmade certificate for coffee and scones, and a superlative-inscribed flag cut from card stock flying above a colleague’s cube are all cheap, all a thrill, and all incredibly effective. For those who are digitally inclined or have peers in more than one location, every one of these can be translated nicely over email, Slack, or even, gasp! by real mail.
A great informal recognition system emerged in the early days at Delivering Happiness. The team at this Zappos spin-off wanted a way to celebrate their culture and each other. They decided gifting a bacon-shaped pillow to the person who best lived a company value was the way to go. The bacon was passed from winner to winner, presented in front of the team so they could all celebrate the new owner. Originally the winner was chosen by the previous pillow-holder, but as the program evolved it became more democratic. They started an email address for nominations. If a member of the team saw his or her peer do something great they could shoot a note saying so to bacon@deliveringhappiness and it would be recorded.
I love the bacon pillow example for a lot of reasons, but mostly because the reward, if you can call it that, is so silly. Tchotchkes, meaningless tokens, have little tangible value but hold a lot in the way of social capital.
Earnest motivation is what makes informal P2P effective, but once the habit begins to have a positive effect, it might evolve. That’s great. Let it. The bacon pillow started as a simple low-key celebration but changed when voting became more systemized. In some ways it’s almost the point to prototype informal recognition and if it works, let it become a more formal initiative.
One challenge to look out for: too much meddling or formalizing from corporate and the earnest quality may become hollow. How should a company encourage informal recognition without ruining it? The best thing outside observers can do is nod in approval and ask how they can help.
When changing habits of a team to encourage compliments, leaders can build momentum by sharing the importance of P2P recognition, the intention behind it, and then lead by example. When starting out, creating your own recognition triggers can help. It could be an arbitrary reminder like always telling someone different how much he or she is appreciated as you head out to grab that afternoon coffee. Or you can connect the trigger to accomplishments like starting and completing phases of work, creatively celebrating how a person contributed.
Informal P2P recognition is hard to start, but easy to keep up. The behavior is cheap. If Delivering Happiness can pass around a bacon pillow to reinforce behaviors, then anyone can design a good P2P recognition program.
Can I buy you lunch? There isn’t a better string of words in English. And coming from a manager makes it that much better. Any team leader can spend a little time and money acknowledging great work choices, all the while deepening trust and rapport. Even a quick coffee with a manager goes a long way.
These high-touch moments of recognition from leadership carry a lot of weight. They provide the time to be more explicit about a particular outcome or pattern of decisions. Once the latte is poured, chatting about an individual’s values-inspired choice and how it supported the team and company can fuel an employee for weeks. But the short-term morale boost isn’t the only reason to spend time listing an employee’s great choices. It’s a compelling way for leaders to reaffirm that values are important, not just in theory, but in a real way for the team. Informal recognition from a leader says to the employee that he is seen, appreciated, and that his choices matter.
It can be tough to find the time to continually take a team to coffee one at a time, so if you need to dial down the time commitment, even shooting out a quick but meaningful email can do. A friend at AppDynamics happily shares stories about the manager who sends thank-you emails to her team acknowledging their contributions. How easy is that?
Often, informal recognition from leadership like emails or a pat on the back happen away from others. These moments are private, and sometimes that’s appropriate. But realize when others don’t see it happening, the social power of recognition is muted. Managers should do their best to share callouts within meetings or in front of the group.
Here are some other ways to make informal recognition from leadership visible:
To activate its values, an organization should aim to create all four types of recognition. It’s more than likely your organization already has at least one of the four types in place; maybe more that aren’t as visible. It’s your job to figure out where the organization can do better, discover what kind of thank-yous need to start, and keep an eye out for the recognition that employees are doing all on their own.
When tied to values, recognition will help employees make better decisions, which will in turn lead to happier customers and improve the bottom line. Putting these programs into motion isn’t easy. But with effort and time, recognition will grow to become a powerful tool you can use to design a culture that creates results that the business will like and, like any mammal with a heart, employees will love.
Before you start rewarding values-driven behavior, take an inventory of recognition already in place, determine how to change what they reward, and identify which new types of programs need to be created. In this exercise, you will identify existing programs, determine how you might change each to recognize values-driven behaviors if they aren’t already, and design new initiatives for any quadrant that lack activities.
To start, recruit three to five culture co-conspirators from across the organization who have been around the company more than 30 percent of the life of the company. As always, this exercise can be completed remotely, but it’s better to do the work at the same time in the same place.
EXERCISE 1
1. Together, list all the recognition and rewards programs that already occur across your company. Write them down one per sticky note as you go and then post them to the board or wall.
Time: 20 minutes
2. List your values on the side so you can easily refer to them.
Time: 5 minutes
3. Of the programs listed, mark the ones that already reward values-based behaviors or those that could if they were changed.
Time: 15 minutes
4. Draw the recognition 2x2 on the board or wall and place any programs that were marked in the most appropriate of the four quadrants.
Time: 15 minutes
5. Ask the appropriate questions from one of the four Recognition Checklists for each program. Make a note of the number of “no” answers and any actions you might need to change to turn a “no” to a “yes.”
Time: 30 minutes
EXISTING PROGRAMS |
YOUR VALUES |
List existing rewards and recognition programs. |
Write your company values or value themes. |
1. |
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2. |
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3. |
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4. |
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5. |
What behaviors should be rewarded that aren’t? In the following exercise, list any value-aligned behavior that isn’t being rewarded but should be. Decide with your team which category of recognition might be most appropriate for that value. Can you come up with one example of an existing program in which it could be rewarded? If not, what other ways might this behavior get supported? Hint: It doesn’t have to be a companywide program. Start small within your team or sphere of influence.
EXERCISE 2
1. On the worksheet to the right, list your company values.
Time: 5 minutes
2. Fill in one example of an existing behavior not being recognized that aligns with each value.
Time: 15 minutes
3. Mark which type of recognition might be most appropriate for each value-aligned behavior.
Time: 10 minutes
4. Work with your colleagues to imagine a new type of recognition program that would reward that behavior. Are there any existing programs in which recognition of this behavior could be included?
Time: 6 minutes
If any quadrants were empty in the previous exercise, or were weaker than the others, focus on generating ideas for that type to help balance the organization’s portfolio of recognition programs.