Rewards Gone Wrong!

Think about how each of these examples could be perceived as either a positive or something undesirable to different employees or groups of employees. Would every one of your employees want to be invited to have lunch with the boss as a form of recognition and reward? Probably not. To some, this may seem like a great opportunity to spend one-on-one time with the boss to highlight their accomplishments and potential with the company or organization. However, for others, this may make them feel very uncomfortable and fear that they might say something wrong or even career-derailing. The point is that you need to give some forethought to the rewards you offer employees to ensure that they will be positively received.

Reward programs can have disastrous results if not designed without consideration, given how they might backfire. At one manufacturing facility, the operations manager began a program to reward the crew with the highest production during their shift for one month. However, shortly after the program began, the results were opposite of what was expected. In this continuous operation, each crew took over production from the previous crew. However, according to the program’s rules, each crew only received credit for the production that began during their shift. Thus, crews began scrapping any production started during the previous shift, not wishing to help the previous crew’s production numbers. This resulted in higher scrap rates and overall lower production numbers. Hardly what the operation manager had in mind when he announced this reward program! The solution was to change the program design from rewarding the crew with the highest production to that of the entire operation’s production numbers for the duration of the program. The results were increased production and lower scrap rates for the entire operation and the goal of this reward program was finally achieved to the satisfaction of all the employees involved.

Many organizations have “Employee of the Month” programs to recognize their employees throughout the year. These programs may provide what is perceived to be a well-received form of recognition to recipients and should continue to be part of the organization’s overall reward programs. However, in other situations, being named the Employee of the Month may not always be considered desirable. How could this be the case? Well, depending on the organization and work environment, employees may not want this type of reward visibility. There may be peer pressure concerning being rewarded this publicly or even questions about recipients being deserving of this reward. This would be particularly evident if this recognition was simply rotated throughout the year with little no to consideration given to qualifications for this reward. All these factors can cause this type of reward to become devalued by virtually everyone in the organization.

There are many factors that can cause these reward-gone-wrong scenarios. These include:

• Right Person/Wrong Reward
• Wrong Person/Right Reward
• Right Group/Wrong Reward
• Wrong Group Rewarded/Right Group ignored
• Reward too Many/ Too Few
• Reward too Big/ Too Small

Reward programs should be designed with these considerations in mind. Most important is to understand what is perceived to be of value to your reward recipients. Lack of this understanding can cause even your best efforts to recognize your employees to fail to meet this objective.