EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION PROGRAM: A GUIDE TO CHOOSE EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION PROGRAM: A GUIDE TO CHOOSE EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH

Introduction

A company comprises of not only its CEO but of different teams and a number of employees. Each team plays a very integral part in the success of a company or any organization. If the teams or the workforce are happy and satisfied, then they can provide their best works which can help the company to reach its goal. And for that to happen, recognition of good employees is very important. A good company always recognizes their hard working employees who work for the success of the company. Employees and their continued labor is what make a company successful.  There are many employees who spend their precious time working for the company. The best way to show your appreciation and gratitude is to recognizing them for their hard work and dedication.

Often companies follow an employee recognition program that recognizes good and hardworking employees. The recognition program may include felicitating their hard working employees with incentives like a bonus payment or awards. These incentives not only help in boosting the morale of the employees but encourage them to work in more effective way leading to a greater rate of productivity of the company.

So in this article we will help you to know how to choose your employee of the month through employee recognition program. But first to make the program success we need to analyze and understand what not to do in this program. Below are some of the things that should be avoided by the manager while working on this program:

What not to do while choosing your ‘employee of the month’

1. Not updating:

There are several times when the managers fail to keep their program up to date due to hectic schedule. Research shows that recognizing your employees every 3 months is only 26% effective as rewarding them every month. Recognizing them every month creates a sense of healthy competition amongst the employees and they work with more zeal to get the title for themselves. This can help in increasing the productivity of the company.

2. Allowing employees to pick the monthly managers:

Sometimes due to unforeseen reasons, many managers allow the employees to choose themselves the employee of the month winners.

It is often noticed that the best employees are not that popular. Many of the best people of the company serve in silence or they are rarely noticed. In such cases if employees get to pick the employee of the month they would surely pick the most popular person. If that happens, then the entire program will become a failed attempt.

This will not only waste the money that is being put up for the award but will also bring disharmony in the workforce. Your best people will develop resentments on you and the employees who were picked over them. They would start thinking that their efforts are not being appreciated or recognized. This is one of the things that a company does not want to happen in their team.

Criterion for the selection of ‘Employee of the month’

Well, we got to know some of the things that a manager should definitely try to avoid doing while working in this employee recognition program but now the question arises how to choose the employee of the month winner. What are the criteria to choose the employee of the month of a company? Before defining the criteria for the selection of employee of the month, a manager should understand the end goal. A manager should choose and then recognize the things that they want to improve. They should be clear with the target for the next coming months because as it is said “what gets recognized gets repeated”. Meaning, if something is recognized, there are high probabilities and chances that those things would get repeated. And this is a good thing for a company to begin with. It is advised to the manager to show the employees the targets beforehand to make them understand their role and contributions that they can make to achieve the title of the “Employee of the month”

Try to focus the employees’ attention of your company like a laser on the things that matter to you (being the manager) and to the success of your company. Show them that thing like “above and beyond” are appreciated. Show them that they are free to think out of the box and can come up with plans and ideas which would be beneficial for the growth of the company. Make them believe that exhibiting the leadership traits before getting any leadership jobs is being recognized, because these employees are your leaders who are going to lead different departments of your company in future. Some of them will be taking your company to higher levels.  If you are not recognizing them on time, many employees would leave for another company where another manager would appreciate and recognize them for their good work. They would leave for a better place where they would be valued and appreciated. According to Gallup poll, “65% of the Americans reported that they did not receive any recognition for the good work they did”. Eventually many of them had to leave the company because of the dissatisfaction and betrayal they felt from the company. It is important to understand that to maintain and engage the workforce pool of your company it is very important to recognize and appreciate their work that they are doing for the growth of the company.

Now, coming to the ranking part of the employees, there are few things that are needed to be kept in mind while ranking your employees. First, it is not advised to compare employees of different departments. Different departments need different types of skills. So comparing employees with different skills and potentials is not a good thing. Therefore rank the employees within their own departments. And second, do not be biased to anybody. There will be many employees who are in good terms with you (the manager) so it is natural to choose a favoring side of someone. But since this is to appreciate someone’s hardwork ot is important to be unbiased. Analyze everyone and every minute detail without having a favor side.

To help you with these we have listed a few criteria that could help you to recognize them:

1. What is their general attitude?

A display of good general behavior is very important in any organization. Analyze the general attitude and behavior of your employee. How do they behave publicly? Do they respect and work with honesty? Are they sincere about their job? These are some of things that could be analyzed.

2. How punctual are they?

Notice how punctual they are. Notice how often they come late to the office or how late they submit their assigned work. Punctuality is one of the key features a good employee should have.

3. Are they helpful to other employees?

Observe if they are helpful with other employees of the company. Observe whether they are rude. Are they sympathetic towards other staff and their colleagues?

4. Are they helpful to the clients?

Rank the employees according to their behavior with their clients as well. Clients and consumers play a very important role in every kind of business in the marketing world. If clients are not happy with your service then it may highly effect the reputation of your company as a whole. To make clients happy it is necessary for the employee to have a good repo with them. Analyze your potential employee of the month if he/she has build up a good cordial relationship with the clients. Analyze whether their clients are satisfied with their services.

5. Are they available to work on short notice?

There are times when there are important and sudden works to do. There are many employees who would run away from such works but there are some employees who would come at short notice as well to complete these works. Such people show not only dedication but they feel a sense of responsibility for the company. They understand the value of their contributions and the importance of doing such works. This could be a criterion to judge and rank employees for the employee of the month award.

6. How willing are they to work in other departments if needed?

Indeed there are times when one employee has to contribute in different departments in the company as well. Sometimes there may be shortage of staff for which they require staff from other departments. Notice willing the employees are to work in other departments. This would help you as a manager to understand that whether the employee has multi tasking capabilities or not. This would also help you to understand whether they are ready to take up opportunities in other departments where their skills are more enhanced.

7. How committed are they to the success of the company?

Another criterion could be their commitment to the company. Rank your employees on the basis of their commitment to the success of your company and to the growth of your company. Do they fully understand what their efforts contribute in the growth of the company? A good employee would always understand this fact and work accordingly. He would take his job seriously and even try to come up with innovative ideas for the development like collaboration projects to name a few.

8. Do they even care?

It is a known fact that people want to do job so that they could earn their livelihood. But there are certain people who truly care for the development of the company or the organization. They are fully invested in the growth of the company. They truly want to see these companies or organizations to reach apex levels and gain huge success. These are the people who work tirelessly and with great enthusiasm. Employees like these are a dream to many companies. Often companies require such talents who go out of their way to come up with futuristic plans for the companies. Analyze and observe those employees who genuinely care for the company. Analyze how often they come with plans that are beneficial for the future of the company. Analyze what action steps they make to see those plans getting worked out.

If you notice carefully, these are the qualities that a company wants to see in ALL of their employees. That is the reason why employee recognition program is important for every business, company or an organization, because this recognition would help instill a sense of responsibility amongst the employees. They would feel motivated to work more and more. They would understand how their contribution is helping the company to grow. They would want to do more and more for the company that understands their potentials and appreciate them for their work.

To make this even more successful, the managers should explain why a particular employee got the “employee of the month” award in a particular month. This would make them understand and would fuel them to work the same way to get the title themselves in the next month. This is a huge benefit for the company as it would increase the productivity of the organization. According to 80/20 rule, 80% of a company’s results come from 20% of their employees. Of only 20% of their employees kicked up their extra effort by just 10% in just one month, it will pay for the complete employee recognition program for the year. This is a huge difference that a small recognition of good employees can make.

Conclusion

Employees need to be appreciated for the time they had devoted to work for your company. These small recognitions help them to work more enthusiastically. For this enthusiasm many companies follow employee recognition programs.

So these were some of the ideas which you can try out to increase the quality of the workforce that you have in your organization. Hope this article helped. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more such articles.