Opinion: When It Comes to Recognition, The Customer Is Often Wrong
This article isn’t designed to make friends among recognition managers and suppliers but rather to help organizations right a terrible wrong: most recognition programs ignore basic principles of effective implementation and are a waste of money and time. Here’s why and how to correct it. With a recession looming, human resources managers who wish to retain these programs can take some simple steps to make them better.By Bruce Bolger
No Clear Connection to Core Organizational Objectives
A Legacy Industry
What to Do About It
There is a simple reason why most recognition programs are not CEO-led strategic and systematic processes with a clear return on investment in both hard- and soft terms, or why many programs are often led with very few metrics by lower-level HR management with little to no training or experience in human capital management and metrics.
When is the last time anyone you knew took a college or business course in recognition, gratitude, and appreciation, let alone Human Capital Management or Stakeholder Engagement? How many recognition programs are seriously measured based on the value they create for the organization in terms of promotion of company values, enhanced retention, productivity, sales, quality, willingness to refer, wellness, safety, or DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)? How many CEOs or CFOs can rattle off their organization’s latest Human Capital ROI or Value Add metrics; or revenues, costs, profits, willingness to refer of customers and employees, or their health, safety, and DEI?
For that matter, how often is the CEO actively involved in making sure the recognition program gets baked into the culture of the organization and carefully designed to support the organization’s purpose, goals, and all the other initiatives used to engage employees? The answer to all the above is rarely. (E-mail Bolger@TheEEA.org if your organization is an exception or if you disagree and ESM will gladly publish a case study or rebuttal.
No Clear Connection to Core Organizational Objectives
Most organizations that use recognition programs leave significant value on the table because:
- There are no clear performance goals or measures related to corporate purpose, values, or other specific objectives, such as retention, willingness to refer, productivity, etc.
- The CEO, CFO, and CMOs, other senior management and sometimes even the CHRO are often largely detached and lend little support, with front-line managers left on their own.
- Vendor selections are made based on technology and reward features or perceived culture fit rather than on concrete performance-based measures.
- There is no serious audience research, worker involvement, program design or metrics to determine the best implementation strategy or the actual value to the organization, and often nobody genuinely cares, so the programs are mostly bright shiny objects that fizzle over time.
- Little to no attempt is made to use recognition strategically to support key customer or other corporate objectives or initiatives, such as recruiting, referrals, professional development, DEI, collaboration, and innovation, etc.
- There is more focus on what the recognition or technology looks like or the nature of the rewards than how the recognition program can promote the behaviors necessary for success.
A Legacy Industry
The reality is that 90% of recognition programs date back decades to the days of service, anniversary, and safety awards sold mostly by companies that used to manufacture jewelry, promotional products, or plaques. The programs are often maintained because the organization has always done them and someone thinks it would be disruptive to remove them, or because competitors do them. As a result, they are generally viewed as a sunk cost often managed by a lower-level human resources manager with perhaps some training in recognition, perhaps supported by an employee committee, but with little sustained involvement or support of the senior management team because there is little alignment with critical organizational objectives.
What to Do About It
1. Immediately reevaluate every recognition program to determine the degree to which it:
- Supports organizational purpose and goals with clear measures, not just of engagement, but of impact, such as retention, productivity, professional development, willingness to refer, etc.
- If you are using an employee engagement technology—what is the level of monthly participation and which features are people using.
- Has the passionate support of the CEO, CFO, and CMOs, who actively participate themselves in using and promoting the platform.
- Has a program design based on serious audience research, worker involvement, and science-based program design that supports all the key levels of engagement—i.e., culture, assessment and feedback, communications, collaboration and innovation, DEI, etc.
- Is regularly communicated and supported with ongoing manager and employee encouragement.
- Expresses appreciation in a way that is relevant, meaningful, and memorable to individual recipients.
- Explain to the employees that the recognition process is being redesigned to align it with the organization’s purpose and objectives.
- Until a new process is in place, give each manager a discretionary budget to select a gift appropriate to the “language of appreciation” of each individual commensurate with their years of service or other act supportive of organizational purpose, values, and goals.
- Redesign the recognition process, starting with ensuring that there is a clear organizational purpose, values, objectives, and goals in place with which to align it, and involve your employees in the design.
- Implement a holistic process that addresses all the levers of employee engagement and uses recognition to support them, rather than isolating recognition in a silo.
- If your organization lacks a clear purpose and strategic people management plan with ongoing reinforcement and communication, address those issues before designing a recognition process.
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance at TheEEA.org is the world’s first and only organization that focuses on outreach, certification and training, and advisory services to help organizations achieve their goals by fostering the proactive involvement of all stakeholders. This includes customers, employees, distribution and supply chain partners, and communities, or anyone connected to an organization’s success.
- Founded in 2008, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance provides outreach, learning and certification in Enterprise Engagement, an implementation process for the “S” or Social of Stakeholder Capitalism and Human Capital Management and measurement of engagement across the organization.
- The Enterprise Engagement Alliance provides a training and certification program for business leaders, practitioners, and solution providers, as well as executive briefings and human capital gap analyses for senior leaders.
- The EEA produces an education program for CFOs for the CFO.University training program on Human Capital Management.
- Join the EEA to become a leader in the implementation of the “S” of ESG and Stakeholder Capitalism.
- The ESM information portal and The Enterprise Engagement Advisors Network solution provider marketplace cover all aspects of stakeholder engagement, and the EEA information library lists dozens of resources.
- The RRN information portal and Brand Media Coalition marketplace address the use of brands for gifting, incentives, recognition, and promotions. The BMC information library provides information and research resources.
The EEA Human Capital Management and ROI of Engagement YouTube channel features a growing library of 30- to 60-minute panel discussions with leading experts in all areas of engagement and total rewards.
- Enterprise Engagement for CEOs: The Little Blue Book for People-Centric Capitalists. A quick guide for CEOs.
- Enterprise Engagement: The Roadmap 5th Edition implementation guide. A comprehensive textbook for practitioners, academics, and students.
- Organizations of all types develop strategic Stakeholder Capitalism and Enterprise Engagement processes and human capital management and reporting strategies; conduct human capital gap analyses; design and implement strategic human capital management and reporting plans that address DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and assist with managed outsourcing of engagement products and services.
- Human resources, sales and marketing solution providers profit from the emerging discipline of human capital management and ROI of engagement through training and marketing services.
- Investors make sense of human capital reporting by public companies.
- Buyers and sellers of companies in the engagement space or business owners or buyers who seek to account for human capital in their mergers and acquistions.
