The Safety Pin
November 19, 2009
Motivated employees can be an integral part of your overall business strategy. But when your recognition programs backfire, your employees can end up doing more harm than good.
Many companies have extensive and sometimes expensive employee-recognition programs that go a long way towards maintaining an aligned and motivated workforce. Other companies have similar programs that have no impact on performance whatsoever as you’ll see in the example below.
Several years ago, I was attending a conference in Charlotte, NC. As I checked into the hotel, I noticed that the front-desk clerk was wearing what looked like a large gold safety pin with about 15 round metallic discs threaded along one side.
After completing the registration process and receiving my room key, I asked the clerk about the interesting piece of jewelry she was wearing. She explained that the safety pin was part of their employee-recognition program. Each time the hotel received a positive comment card about an employee, that employee received one of the small discs to add to their safety pin.
It wasn’t surprising to me, then, that this particular clerk had so many discs; she had been very professional in her interaction with me during the check-in process and I mentioned this to her.
I was a bit curious as to whether these discs motivated her to provide outstanding service. When I asked her about this she looked around nervously, leaned over the counter and whispered, “No, not really. I’d be a lot more excited about this program if they offered some additional compensation or award for top performers like me.”
If you’re going to make the effort to develop, deploy, communicate, and administer a program to recognize and reward excellent performance, then be certain that it will actually motivate your employees. Otherwise, you might just get “stuck” yourself.
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