Author: Bob Nelson

W hat has happened to recognition programs in our country today? Once a source of great pride and prestige, formal recognition programs are now perceived as stale and irrelevant by most employees, a by-product of a bygone era. While companies have been investing more money in such programs, their effectiveness in terms of improved morale and performance has steadily declined.

“Always have” doesn’t mean “always should”
    Let’s look at a few examples of formal recognition programs that tend to be out of step with the times and preferences of today’s employees:

    1) Years of Service. In stable, predictable times, in organizations where employees have a job for life, marking milestones toward retirement makes a lot of sense. Today few, if any, employees take jobs expecting to be there 20 or 30 years later. Some incentive companies are quick to point out that almost every North American company offers length-of-service awards. It’s as if this fact, in and of itself, is some sort of proof that they work.

Just because such recognition programs exist, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are a source of motivation for today’s employees. In one Fortune 500 organization with which I recently worked, over half of all surveyed employees didn’t view years-of-service awards as a form of recognition at all. In another organization, a long-term employee told me they had to go to personnel and demand their 20-year pin! (She showed it to me–it was still in the box.)

    In most organizations today, years-of-service awards have become more associated with endurance than performance. They’ve become a badge of honor that “I survived”–all the more so if the organization has experienced a merger or layoff in recent years. Sure, you want to retain your employees–especially your top performers–for as long as possible, but it’s increasingly not the clock they get on their 10-year anniversary that keeps them with the organization and energizes them to do their best work.

    Holding celebrations and giving gifts for employee retirements or new-employee orientation are versions of the same thing.

    2) Employee of the Month. An equally questionable, although widespread, recognition practice is the employee-of-the-month program. I know of one organization where management periodically announces the employee of the month at the managers’ team meeting, everyone applauds, and then the person in charge says: “If anyone sees George, tell him he was selected for this honor!” More often than not, no one ever does.

    We don’t need employees of the month as much as we need employees of the moment, and we need them each day, every day. To select one person from many employees tends to make the majority feel unappreciated at the expense of the one individual who is honored. As a result, the honoree may feel guilty or even embarrassed.

    Add to this the unwritten rule that you can’t be selected more than once for the honor, and management ends up scrambling to find someone who hasn’t yet received the award. The selection criteria become skewed and soon the focus is just on finding someone–anyone–to give the award to. Once again, this sends the message to employees that if they just hang in there, they too will eventually be recognized.

    3) Attendance Awards. With the onset of flextime, telecommuting and virtual work teams, work is increasingly what we do more than where we are. The technologies of cell phones, e-mail, pagers, Palm Pilots and faxes easily connect us all during designated “working hours,” whenever those may be. In some work environments, with some groups of employees, being physically on the job and on time is critical. These positions are increasingly fewer in number.

Where did recognition programs go wrong?
    How did we get to this state of affairs? Recognition efforts in the United States have lagged shifts in employee preferences for several reasons. First, companies look backward to “what we’ve done,” thus making their evaluations of programs historical rather than current. They don’t take the time and make the effort to determine existing employee preferences. Companies tend to be reactive rather than responsive to what motivates today’s employees, looking to change or improve things only when there’s overwhelming evidence that what they’re doing isn’t working. If other organizations are continuing with similar formal recognition programs, the status of such programs is perpetuated, even as they become stale, stagnant and irrelevant.

    Second, the $27 billion-plus incentive industry, with its focus on moving merchandise and promoting expanded expenditures on existing recognition programs, hasn’t helped the situation. The incentive industry has not picked up on what’s really important to employees today and is more focused on continuing to move and customize merchandise, awards and plaques than on motivating employees or improving performance. Once a program has been budgeted, it’s easy for an organization to continue that funding year after year. It’s difficult to stop and reassess whether the money is being spent wisely, or even if there is any return at all.

    Third, the fact that employee values and expectations have changed has amplified the disconnect that exists today. Today’s employees expect to have more meaning in their jobs from their very first day of work, more involvement in their jobs, more thanks when they do good work, more flexibility in their working hours and more balance between their work and personal lives. Recognition practices have not kept up with these changed employee expectations.

“Too many mugs”
    Consider merchandise awards. Often the stuff that employees are given to motivate them has become a joke. In other instances, it has become an outright insult. Sure, the first coffee mug you get for finishing a project is nice, but how many coffee mugs does one person need? Same with pens, T-shirts and even certificates of appreciation. Just yesterday I was reviewing employee focus group comments on the topic of recognition from a large client I am working with and noted that the employees were very clear about what they did not want:

• “No pens, pen sets or watches”

  
  

• “No clocks, paperweights or T-shirts”

  
  

• “Too many mugs”

  
  

    From the employee perspective, trophies, plaques, nominal gifts and mementos all fall into the same category. And printing your organization’s logo on the merchandise doesn’t magically transform it into something of unique value, especially if the object is something that the employees could have purchased themselves anyway.

    Incidentally, a note to the incentive industry: Please stop confusing automation with innovation. Offering “point programs” online helps more efficiently administer existing recognition programs, but it doesn’t make them more effective, nor mean that they should be done at all! It doesn’t help much to save companies time and money if what they’re doing are the wrong things.

Recognition: Not what it used to be
    Companies have to break the bad habit of recognizing employees only by occasionally giving them stuff. They must realize that for most employees, most of the time, how they’re treated on a daily basis matters more to them and most effectively communicates that they are trusted and respected, and that they are important.

    Even traditional forms of recognition such as achievement awards, cash substitutes (such as gift certificates or discount coupons), nominal gifts or food, and public perks (such as parking spots) have diminished in importance for most of today’s employees. These all ranked at the bottom of employee preferences in research I’ve conducted across industries. As one participant commented in the focus group mentioned above: “Employees no longer hang up their certificates.”

How do you recognize employees?
    Employees’ faith in institutions has drastically declined; they view themselves as working more for other people than for organizations. It’s those people they work for–and with–that can most make recognition meaningful and special. In a recent study I conducted, 78 percent of employees indicated that it was “very” or “extremely” important to them to be recognized by their managers when they do good work, and 73 percent said they expected that recognition to occur either “immediately” or “soon thereafter.”

    So what is most important when it comes to how employees prefer to be recognized today? Ironically, it’s the simple forms of sincere thanks that still mean the most. In fact, of the top 10 recognition factors that employees indicated were important when they did good work, four were types of praise–personal, written, electronic and public–each typically generated by those individuals they hold in high esteem at work, given in a timely, sincere and specific manner.

    Other top-ranked motivators were support and involvement, that is, providing the information that employees need to do their jobs, involving employees in decisions (especially those that affect them), asking employees for their opinions and ideas, and supporting them when they make a mistake. Autonomy and authority, such as allowing them to decide how best to do their work, allowing them to pursue ideas they might have for improving things, and giving them a choice of work assignments, also ranked high for employees. So did flexible working hours, learning and development opportunities, and the availability and time of their manager.

    What do these factors have in common? They are all intangible, interpersonal and highly situational. Granting the above items in response to good work when it occurs is the most desired form of recognition cited by today’s employees. These actions say, “I’m here as a person, not just a manager, when you need me the most.” One employee recently told me that she was having a tough time with some personal issues, and during a meeting her manager said: “Mary, I want you to go home, take care of what you have to there, and come back when you’re ready.” She took a few days off and came back to work ready to dig in. “That happened over seven years ago,” she told me, “but I think about it and the courtesy and consideration that manager extended to me almost every single day.”

The shift to informality
    Caroline Strumbly at Progressive Insurance illustrates the shift she’s seen in her organization: “My group within our company is starting to lean toward less formality around recognition. Recognition is being pushed into the managers’ hands (along with the budget). Managers will be responsible for coming up with individual programs to recognize their team members, moving away from structured recognition to more personalized forms of recognition.”

    This shift toward less formal recognition makes sense because that is what employees today say they most value. More personal, “here and now,” sincere thanks and forms of recognition are preferred over more formal programs, which are less frequent and less personalized, and often have lost relevance, meaning and excitement in most organizations today.

A balanced approach
    You don’t have to do informal recognition to the exclusion of formal recognition. My recommendation is that you ask employees (via a survey, assessment, focus groups or all of the above) what they value from a list that includes current programs and practices and potential new items, activities and practices. See how they respond. Then, once you have a motivation baseline of your employees’ preferences, systematically move away from those things that your employees no longer seem to value and toward those things they seem more excited about.

    This allows you to discontinue programs and practices that are not valued with a minimum perceived “take away” loss, because you’re acting on their feedback (which itself will be motivational to most employees) and adding things that they have indicated they value more highly. This process will also validate those things that are currently working and provide an energy surge to your overall recognition efforts, making them more fresh, fun and dynamic.

Joint effort
    There’s no substitute for the personal touch, and for real-life communication with your employees about what they value, need and want in order to be more effective contributors to you and the organization. Effective managers today know this and realize that it’s what you do with your employees more than what you do to them that counts.

You’ll get the best from your employees and keep them the longest when you show them that you personally care. And the best way to do that is through your daily efforts in recognizing and thanking employees when they do good work, not through any number of formal recognition programs.

Whenever you decide to take initiative at work, it’s important to first weigh the impact of doing so against all the other alternatives available to you. While some initiatives can have tremendous impact on the organization’s bottom line, others may have little or no impact on the company or your co-workers. Use the following guidelines as you decide where to concentrate your own efforts:

1. What effect does your initiative have on the organization’s bottom line, mission, or strategic objectives? Rank your initiatives based on how strongly they contribute to increasing your organization’s revenues and profit. If you work for a nonprofit organization, consider which initiatives will help you most directly achieve your organization’s mission in the most timely and cost-effective way. Initiatives that approve working conditions and employee morale are also important because they lead to improved financial performance.


2. Urgency does not necessarily equal importance. Assess urgent tasks first to determine their relative importance and to see where they fit in the overall scheme of your responsibilities. Only then should you react.


3. Is your initiative someone else’s responsibility? Although you may be tempted to take initiative throughout your organization, in some cases it is best to defer your efforts to the person who is responsible for the particular product, service or process that you wish to address. If this is the case, bring up your ideas or concerns with that person, and then let him or her take the ball and run with it.

Study after study has shown that praise and recognition tends to build employees’ loyalty. People want to feel what they do makes a difference. Money does not do this; personal recognition does. Employers often fail to realize that some of the most effective things they can do to develop and sustain motivated, committed employees cost very little or nothing at all.

Consider the power of “the five I’s”:

• Interesting Work—No one wants to do the same boring job over and over, day after day. And while there will always be boring, repetitive tasks to accomplish in any job, everyone should have at least a part of their job be of high interest to them.

• Information—Information is power, and employees want to be empowered with the information they need to know to do their jobs better and more effectively. And, more than ever, employees want to know how they are doing in their jobs and how the company is doing in its business. Open the channels of communication in an organization to allow employees to be informed, ask questions, and share information.

• Involvement—Managers today are faced with an incredible number of opportunities and problems and, as the speed of business continues to increase dramatically, the amount of time that they have to make decisions continues to decrease. Involving employees in decision making, especially when the decisions affect them directly, is both respectful and practical. Those closest to the problem typically have the best insight as to what to do. As you involve others, you increase their commitment and ease in implementing new ideas or change.

• Independence—Few employees want their every action to be closely watched and monitored, or for their every Most employees appreciate having the flexibility to do their jobs as they see fit. Giving people latitude increases the chance that they will perform as you desire–and bring additional initiative, ideas, and energy to their jobs.

• Increased Visibility—Everyone appreciates getting credit when it is due. Occasions to share the successes of employees with others are almost limitless. Giving employees new opportunities to perform, learn, and grow as a form of recognition and thanks is highly motivating for most people.

SOURCE: Bob Nelson of Nelson Motivation, Inc., San Diego, California. Nelson is the author of the books 1001 Ways to Energize Employees and 1001 Ways to Reward Employees.

Motivation is often used to describe the feeling that prompts people to do what they do. There are numerous ironies of motivation that make the topic more difficult to understand. By examining these ironies more closely—highlighting the truths—we can avoid their pitfalls.

Irony #1:
Most managers think money is the top motivator—but, it’s not.
More than anything else, employees want is to be valued for a job well done by those they hold in high esteem. “People today are looking for much more than a paycheck,” says Mitchell Thall, President of Epicure. “They want to be treated like human beings. That may sound obvious, but a lot of employers don’t get it.” Sure compensation is important, but most employees consider it a right—an exchange for the work one does. Recognition is a gift that is truly valued—especially because it is not required by the manager.

Paul M. Cook, Founder and CEO of Raychem Corporation, supports this belief. “The most important factor is individual recognition—more important than salaries, bonuses, or promotions. Most people, whether they’re engineers, business managers, or machine operators, want to be creative. They want to identify with the success of their profession and their organization. And, their greatest reward is receiving acknowledgment that they did contribute to making something meaningful happen.”

Study after study has shown that praise and recognition motivates employees to put forth their best efforts and to perform at higher levels. Getting the most out of workers is above all else, a product of the “softer side” of management—how individuals are treated, inspired, and recognized. People want to feel they are making a contribution at work, and for most individuals this is a function of having the respect of peers and colleagues, having managers who tell them when they do a good job, and being involved and informed about what’s going on in their department or organization.

There are countless ways to show appreciation and that add meaning to employees’ jobs. When paychecks go out, write a note on the envelope recognizing an employee’s accomplishment. Feature the employee in the company newsletter or videotapes. Have the company president or manager’s manager call an employee to thank him or her for a job well done. Create a pass around award. Leave a voice mail praising. Distribute a positive e-mail. Read positive letters from customers or clients in your staff meetings. The list is almost endless; the principle is clear: People want to feel what they do makes a difference. Money does not do this; personal recognition does.

Irony #2:
“You get what you reward” is common sense, but not common practice in most organizations.
Everyone likes to be appreciated. Results of a recent survey by the Council of Communication Management confirm what almost every employee already knows: that recognition for a job well done is the top motivator of employee performance. Yet, how many managers consider “appreciating others” to be part of their job responsibility? Not many. Most managers fail to use the potential power of recognition and rewards. This is true despite that fact that 33% of managers themselves report that they would rather work in an organization where they could receive better recognition.

At a time when employees are being asked to do more than ever before, the resources and support for helping them are at all time lows. What used to be common courtesies have been overcome by speed and technology in today’s businesses. Managers tend to be too busy and too removed from their employees to notice when they have done exceptional work—and to thank them for it. Because of technology, interfacing with one’s computer terminal has replaced personal interaction between manager and employee.

In his decade-old book Megatrends, John Naisbitt predicted this change would happen. He said that the more our work environments become highly technical, the greater the employee need would become to be more personal and human. He called the phenomenon “high-tech/high-touch.” And all this is happening at a time in which employees are seeking greater meaning in their lives—and in their jobs. The irony of the situation is that what motivates people the most takes so relatively little to do—just a little time and thoughtfulness for starters. Whatever your situation, start today to build on what’s being done to make employees feel valued for the work they do.

Irony #3:
Things that are the most motivating to employees tend to be relatively easy to do and cost the least.
Personally recognizing employees’ accomplishments can be easy to do as well. In a study of potential workplace motivators by Dr. Gerald Graham, professor of management at Wichita State University, three of the top five incentives ranked by employees had no cost, even though they were seldom done by employees’ managers: (1) a personal thank you from one’s manager for a job well done; (2) a written thank you from one’s manager for a job well done; and (3) public praise. When these forms of recognition are done in a timely, sincere, and specific manner, employees feel valued and appreciated.

Most companies overlook the power and possibilities of no-cost recognition and rewards. Yet, many of the following methods can be done within the context of most every job in the workplace.

Irony #4:
What motivates others is often different from what motivates oneself.
Classic studies about what workers want from their jobs were conducted by Lawrence Lindahl in the late 1940s and repeated with similar results in the early 1980s and 1990s. When workers and supervisors were asked to rank a list of motivators from 1 to 10 in order of their importance to workers, workers rated “appreciation for a job well done” as their top motivator; supervisors ranked it eighth. Employees ranked “feeling in on things” as being #2 in importance; their managers ranked it last at #10. Managers selected good wages, job security, and promotion/growth opportunities as the primary reasons why they felt their employees worked. Employees, on the other hand, identified intangibles such as appreciation for work done, feeling “in” on things, and empathetic managers as what they most wanted from their jobs.

Employees will be motivated only if this gap in perception is closed. Managers must be sure to reward the behavior they desire with recognition that is valued and meaningful to their employees—not just themselves. To do this, ask employees what they want! This can be done in one-on-one discussions or by conducting a survey to discuss what would be meaningful recognition with your work group or in a staff meeting.

Some managers at BankBoston in Boston, MA give employees an index card to list items they find motivating. One financial analyst there told me that she listed “time off,” “lunch with her manager,” and “Starbucks coffee,” on her index card, returned it to her manager and promptly forgot about it. She was elated, however, a month or so later, when after finishing a project she found a coupon for Starbucks coffee on her desk with a personal note of thanks from her manager. The fact that her manager took the time to find out what would be meaningful to her and then used that information in a timely way left quite an impression.

By involving those you are trying to motivate, not only are you likely to be more on the mark, but others will more likely take ownership of the recognition program or activities. Involvement equals commitment and the best management is what you do with others, not to them.

Irony #5:
Simple, fun, and creative rewards work best to motivate employees.
As Richard File, partner at Amrigon points out, “The way we see it, spending $1 on something clever and unique is better than spending $50 on something ordinary and forgettable.” Yet, fun and simple ideas are often not used in businesses that view their use as inappropriate—somehow undermining the seriousness or credibility of the business.

But, it is typically the fun aspects of a celebration that make recognition a positive and motivating experience. The simpler and more creative the better. For example, a Hewlett-Packard Company engineer burst into his manager’s office in Palo Alto, California, to announce he’d just found the solution to a problem the group had been struggling with for many weeks. His manager quickly groped around his desk for some item to acknowledge the accomplishment and ended up handing the employee a banana from his lunch with the words, “Well done. Congratulations!” Initially, the employee was puzzled, but over time the Golden Banana Award became one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on an inventive employee in that division.

Irony #6:
The greatest impact in using formal awards comes from their symbolic value.
The recognition value, that is, the intangible, symbolic, and emotional value, of any award is by far the most motivating aspect for employees. Formal awards are useful for acknowledging significant accomplishments, especially as they span a long period. They can also lend credibility to more spontaneous, informal rewards used regularly by management.

Yet, recognizing employees with money, merchandise, or plaques to motivate them can have negative effects. When emphasis is placed on the award, rather than the performance, employees are often given the wrong signal. Cecil Hill, corporate manager of improvement programs at Hughes Aircraft Company, claims, “I have found that certain aspects of the cash awards approach would be counterproductive at Hughes Aircraft. For example, cash awards would reduce teamwork as employees concentrated primarily on individual cash gains. We have also found instances where ‘pay’ for certain types of intellectual performance tends to denigrate the performance.”

To maximize the effectiveness of formal awards, and to make sure that the focus of the award remains on the performance and achievement—not the award itself—managers must be skilled in how they present such awards.

• Present awards in a public forum. Awards are not meant to be presented in the privacy of an employee’s office. Tag onto or schedule a special meeting for the occasion to place an employee “in the limelight.” Besides honoring the individual who performed well, recognition is also a message to other employees about the type of performance that gets noticed in an organization. As management consultant Rosabeth Moss Kanter points out, “To the rest of the organization, recognition creates role models—heroes—and communicates the standards: These are the kinds of things that constitute great performance around here.”
• Provide a context for the recognition. Managers need to provide a context for the accomplishment and explain how it ties to the organization’s overall objectives. Will this achievement lead to enhance client satisfaction, ongoing cost savings, or other significant goals? How will the achievement potentially impact the overall success of the organization and each person in it? Providing a broader context adds significance to the achievement and to the person being honored.
• Share your feelings. When presenting an award, emphasize your personal feelings about the achievement or the individual who has achieved. Comments such as “I was excited by your success,” or “I’m proud that you are part of my team” gives energy to the presentation. Positive feelings that are honest and sincere, add power to the moment that everyone present can feel.

Irony #7:
Recognizing performance will result in more of that behavior—and that’s also when it means the most to employees.
One of Dr. Graham’s conclusions to the study referenced earlier is that the most motivating incentives as reported by employees are based on performance. People want recognition for a job well done. When someone you hold in high esteem at work notices when you performed well and does something to acknowledge your efforts and results, that’s when it means the most to us—especially when the accomplishment directly affects the company’s bottom line. Robert Hauptfuhrer, chairman and CEO of Oryx Energy points out that “Give people a chance not just to do a job but to have some impact, and they’ll really respond, get on their roller skates, and race around to make sure it happens.” Other examples abound:

At Levi Strauss & Company, based in San Francisco, employees nominate one another for the company’s Koshland Award for showing initiative, taking risks, generating cost-saving measures, coming up with creative ideas for promoting products at the retail level—anything that gives the company a competitive edge. Winners receive the plaque at an annual awards ceremony and a cash prize.

In Today’s Way Giveaway at Dallas-based Todays Temporary, every time a temporary employee exceeds a client’s expectations, he or she is entered in an annual drawing for prizes. Clients rate temporary employees on evaluation cards, which are then submitted to the company. Approximately 950 prizes have been awarded to employees over three years.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, headquartered in St. Louis, posts the financial results of every branch office and region in plain view of all employees. A friendly rivalry between branch offices ensues, which translates into motivated employees who want to perform at their best at all times. New Jersey manager Woody Erhardt holds his fingers an inch apart and says, “We’re this close to beating out Middlesex.” He continues, “If they lose, they have to throw a party for us, and we get to decide what they wear.”

Irony #8:
Managers don’t tend to focus on employee motivation until it’s lost.
Managers are often too busy focusing on what’s urgent and forget about regularly motivating and recognizing employees. That is, they forget about it —- until motivation is lost. Morale sinks, employees quit—and then management must scramble to figure out ways to energize and motivate employees. At this point, regenerating poor morale is much more difficult than doing little things along the way to keep it high.

The same type of scenario is often played out as smaller companies grow. Smaller businesses have a lot of inherent motivators—variety of jobs, more direct contact with top management, more room for advancement, etc. But, as a company grows, these types of motivators disappear and management often fails to supplement them with other forms of recognition. The situation is often made worse by the increase of demotivators, such as more bureaucracy, policy manuals, approval processes, and the like.

In either situation, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Don’t wait until motivations and moral is lost to value what you have. Management should strive to consistently keep motivation and energy high. For example, whenever they achieve a major success, employees at Atlanta-based Corporate Resource Development, a sales and marketing services company, set off a siren to let all their coworkers know about it. Douglas Aircraft Distribution and Services Company in Long Beach, California, takes a similar approach. When employees generate $10,000, they are encouraged to ring a large brass bell.

Vice presidents at Nobel/Sysco, a food distribution company in Denver, conduct regular employee appreciation lunches where they cook and serve the food. As employees pass through the serving line, the vice presidents tell them how much they are appreciated. Ideas like these, and hundreds like them, help maintain a high level of employee motivation.

During stressful times at Maritz Performance Improvement Co., in St. Louis, MO, they use the “Thanks a Bunch” award. Someone brings in a bunch of flowers to give a hardworking employee who keeps one flower and card and passes on the bunch to another performer who, in turn, repeats the process. At the end of the day, they collect all the cards, and host a drawing for prizes.

Irony #9:
It takes less effort to sustain desired behavior and performance than it initially does to create it.
Recognition need not be as immediate or as frequent once you have achieved the desired behavior. Reinforcement theory tells us that after new behavior has been established, it can best be perpetuated through intermittent reinforcement. This means don’t forget the behavior you wanted just because a program to promote it has ended. Selective ongoing emphasis on the behavior can perpetuate results—and at a fraction of the original time and cost.

Keep communicating about performance and achievement. Carry articles about continued results and examples of successes in your organization’s newsletter or call them out publicly in meetings. For example, employee suggestions can continue to be highlighted by noting company savings from each suggestion or by interviewing top suggesters to encourage role modeling. And, have management individually thank employees who have continued to perform as desired. In the hallway, on voice mail, on a post-it note—keep saying “thanks” and “good job.” You don’t have to do it as often, but you do have to continue doing it is some way to perpetuate ongoing results.

Ideally, you want to make changes to your systems to help perpetuate desired behaviors, such as hiring, orientation training, evaluation and promotion guidelines. For example, at Disney they place a high value on service and assure this value is integrated into their culture, by how they hire, orient, train, and promote people based in part on one’s service attitude.

Tektronix, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic instruments located in Beaverton, OR, instituted a simple way for mangers and employees alike to focus on recognizing others for doing something right. Simple memo pads were printed that had a cartoon and the heading “You Done Good Award,” which could be given to anybody in the company from anybody else in the company. On it, individuals state what was done, who did it and when, and then give the memo to the person. By providing this vehicle for employees to thank one another, praising happens much more often. The idea has caught on and is now part of life at Tektronix. Says Joe Floren, former communications manager for Tektronix, “Even though people say nice things to you, it means something more when people take the time to write their name on a piece of paper and say it. Employees usually post them next to their desks.”

Irony #10:
The more you help employees develop marketable skills, the more likely they are to stay with your organization.
The very definition of marketable skills implies that those who have them can be paid more in the market. Yet, I’m convinced that as you make it a priority to help employees learn and grow, they are more likely to want to stay with you because they know they are in a very special place. If you are not providing such an interest in employees—what skills they want to learn, where they want to be in five years, how they are growing in their jobs—then there is nothing that is keeping employees from wanting to stay if they get job offers elsewhere. When you make it clear that you have their best interests at heart, the payback from employees is tenfold.

According to Adelle DiGiorgio, Corporate Employee Relations Director at Apple Computer, “The message we give employees is that they’re responsible for their career development, but we’ll help them figure out which paths are the best for them to take.” Employers like Apple Computer, and others that are supportive of employee attempts to better themselves—even if it means that they lose good workers—energize their workforce by demonstrating that their first concern is the overall welfare of the employees.

Management at Novartis (formerly Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corporation) based in Basel, Switzerland, lets its employees know that it does not consider them disloyal for considering career paths that lead outside the company. Novartis believes that offering employees ways to enhance their future employability alleviates the anxiety connected with losing a job and demonstrates that the company truly cares about them as people.

Skill development is especially motivational for today’s younger “Generation X” workforce. This generation constantly wants to learn new skills, both to keep the job exciting and challenging as well as to increase their marketability. In the words of Liesel Walsh, a consultant with Big Picture Marketing in Charleston, MA, and a Gen-Xer herself, “Manage me by teaching me things. Young workers today see themselves as marketable commodities, as an item for sale. So, if management can help them to see how an assignment we give them today makes them more marketable, how it builds their resume, that really motivates them.”

Summary
It’s ironic —- “motivation” is a term that is so widely used, yet many managers know little about how it really works. But the concept doesn’t have to be confusing—in fact, it’s quite simple. “It’s up to you to decide how to speak to your people,” says Mary Kay Ash. “Do you single out individuals for public praise and recognition? Make people who work for you feel important. If you honor and serve them, they’ll honor and serve you.” Remember, treat your employees as if they are your greatest assets—and, you will reap the rewards.

To say that Starbucks Coffee has taken the country by storm is almost an understatement. It seems that anywhere you go—whether you’re downtown, in the suburbs, or even at the airport—a new Starbucks store has sprung up to sell its premium coffees and coffee accessories to a populace eager to partake. With more than 400 retail stores and 26 major airport locations, as well as a thriving mail order business and direct sales to businesses such as Nordstrom, Barnes and Noble bookstores, Delta Shuttle, and others, more than two million people drink Starbucks coffee each week.

So how has Starbucks become such a runaway success? Certainly, the high quality of Starbucks products, the ambiance of the stores, and the current trendiness of slurping steaming cappuccinos or mocha grandes out of bright white paper cups stamped with the famous green and black company logo have played a large part. However, of at least equal importance are Starbucks employees. And critical to this element is the way that Starbucks Coffee involves its employees in the business of making and selling coffee.

Starbucks builds the foundation of its commitment to its employees in its mission statement:

Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles as we grow. The following five guiding principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:

1. Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.
2. Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting, and fresh delivery of our coffee.
3. Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.
4. Contribute positively to our communities and to our environment.
5. Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.

And these aren’t just empty words or platitudes—Starbucks is a living model of employee learning, ownership, involvement, and communication. The result is a superior product, coupled with customer service that is truly caring and responsive. The icing on the cake is sales growth of 65 percent a year while net income skyrockets by 70 to 100 percent a year. If there isn’t a Starbucks near you yet, there will be soon.

All Starbucks employees—known internally as “partners”—start their careers with the company with 24 hours of classroom training at one of the company’s regional training centers. Partners can look forward to addressing a wide variety of topics including retail skills, coffee brewing methods, customer service, pouring the “perfect” shot of espresso (18 to 23 seconds), and many more. Courses are taught by district managers, specialists, and training managers who have all been through the courses already, and have worked in a retail store for at least two months. Managers have an additional 8 weeks of classes to choose from, including “Coffee Knowledge 101,” and workshops on conducting performance appraisals, recruiting, project management, and more are available on request. Starbucks also pays for worker attendance at outside professional seminars and workshops as necessary.

Since purchasing the company in 1987, CEO Howard Schultz long dreamed of instituting an employee ownership program. In 1990, an internal development team took on the task of creating a stock-option plan that would not only involve partners more deeply in the company, but that would give them a real stake in the company. In 1991, with the implementation of the “Bean Stock” plan, Schultz’s dream came true. The Bean Stock plan allows partners who are employed a minimum of six months, and who work at least 20 hours a week, to be eligible for stock options. The extent of options awarded to individual partners depends on several factors including their annual salaries, the grant price of the stock, and the profitability of the company. When Starbucks implemented the Bean Stock plan, it became the first private company to offer stock options to both full-time and part-time employees.

Since most partners are also owners, they are very interested in getting access to company information. To accommodate this desire, senior management conducts quarterly open forums in the company’s different sales regions. While a broad range of issues is discussed, typical topics include expansion plans, financial information, and environmental issues. Partners are encouraged to share their ideas and suggestions with senior management at these forums. In addition to these quarterly meetings, Starbucks distributes annual Bean Stock reports to all partners and the company publishes Pinnacle, a newsletter that spotlights company performance as well as the activities of individual partners company wide. Starbucks is also taking advantage of videos and teleconferencing to reach out to its partners.

In an effort to increase employee involvement, Starbucks has recently instituted self-managed work teams at its coffee bean roasting plants. Although plant managers and supervisors are responsible for the initial organization of the teams, partners are encouraged to take over the day-to-day workings of the teams including decision making. Cross-functional teams of partners and supervisors are used to make hiring decisions. Everyone on the team has a voice in the selection process and partners are encouraged to offer their views on the candidates’ potential compatibility with the company. The company’s “Mission Review Team”—comprised of partners from throughout the company—visits Starbucks outlets to review the consistency of the stores’ operations and the company’s guiding principle of providing quality service and products.

Employee benefits are another company strength—one that helps to keep employee turnover at approximately 65 percent—far less than the industry average of 150 to 400 percent. Starbucks led the pack when it decided in 1987 to give all employees, including part-time partners, full healthcare benefits. If a partner works at least 20 hours a week, then he or she is eligible to begin receiving these benefits after only 90 days on the job. The health plan—which pays 90 to 100 percent of medical costs with a $10 co-pay—costs employees less than $400 a year. Dental insurance and vision care is provided for free. Disability and life insurance is also included in the employee benefits package.

Partners are invited to join the company’s 401(k) retirement plan after serving one year with Starbucks. Employee contributions are matched 25 cents to the dollar. The company provides its partners with vacation time, two personal days off each year, price discounts on Starbucks merchandise, and a free pound of coffee every week. All employees have access to a benefits help line which partners can call to ask questions about their stock or other benefits, and the company also offers an Employee Assistance Program, dependent-care reimbursement accounts, and an employee recognition program.

All in all, Starbucks offers an amazingly diverse range of opportunities and benefits to its partners. It’s little wonder that new stores continue to open at the rate of three to five every week, and employees are making careers at Starbucks instead of dropping out.

SOURCE: From “1001 Ways to Energize Employees” by Bob Nelson.

Tips from lunch meetings to creative symbols:

1. Have managers pop in at the first meeting of a special project team and express their appreciation for the members’ involvement.

2. When a group presents an idea or suggestion, managers should thank members for their initiative.

3. Encourage a lunch meeting with project teams once they’ve made interim findings. Have managers express their appreciation. Encourage continued energy. Provide the lunch.

4. Promote writing letters to every team member at the conclusion of a project thanking them for their contribution.

5. Encourage creative symbols of a team’s work, such as T-shirts or coffee cups with a motto or logo.

6. Have managers ask the boss to attend a meeting with the employees during which individuals and groups are thanked for their specific contributions.

7. Suggest catered lunches or breakfasts for high-performing groups.

Workforce, February 1997, Vol. 76, No. 2, p. 70.

Today’s employees may not need a pay raise as much as they need a personal thanks from their manager for a job well done. Following, in priority order, is the top-ten things to do to motivate today’s employees.

• Personally thank employees for doing a good job-one on one-verbally, in writing or both. Do it in a timely manner, often and sincerely.
• Be willing to take the time to meet with and listen to employees-as much as they need or want.
• Provide specific feedback about performance of the person, the department and the organization.
• Strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting and fun. Encourage new ideas and initiative.
• Provide information about how the company makes and loses money, upcoming products, strategies for competing in the marketplace and how the person fits in with the overall plan.
• Involve employees in decisions, especially when those decisions affect them.
• Provide employees with a sense of ownership in their work and the work environment.
• Recognize, reward and promote people based on their performance. Deal with low and marginal performers so they either improve or leave.
• Give people a chance to grow and learn new skills. Show them how you can help them meet their goals within the context of meeting the organization’s goals. Create a partnership with each employee.
• Celebrate successes-of the company, of the department and of individuals in it. Take time for team- and morale-building meetings and activities.

Do you think money is the best reward? Many people do. After a recent presentation, I received some interesting feedback. I was discussing what motivates employees today with a management group from a Vancouver manufacturing company. After the session, the person who had invited me to speak pulled me aside. He claimed several people in the group didn’t agree with what I said about money: They believed it’s the top motivator for their people.

A sense of frustration overcame me. My experience has shown that money isn’t the main reason people work. Why is it so difficult for managers and business owners to believe this?

Certainly the research is convincing. In studies dating back to the 1940s, employees always have ranked other items-such as being shown appreciation for work done, feeling “in” on things and having interesting work-as being more important to them than their salaries. In the “1994 National Study of the Changing Workforce,” conducted by the Families and Work Institute in New York City, “open communication” was ranked highest by respondents asked to list items they had considered to be “very important” in choosing their current jobs. Everyone wants to know what’s going on-especially as it affects them-so simply sharing information is motivating. Salary was ranked 16th.

In a recent national survey conducted by Robert Half International, a staffing and recruitment firm based in Menlo Park, California, “limited praise and recognition” was ranked as the primary reason why employees leave their jobs today-ahead of compensation, limited authority and personality conflicts. Dr. Gerald Graham, professor of management at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas, also found that money wasn’t a top motivator. In a research study of 1,500 employees in a variety of work settings, personalized, instant recognition from managers was reported to be the most powerful motivator of the 65 potential incentives he evaluated. Second was a letter of praise for good performance written by the manager.

Money has its value.
I’m not saying money isn’t important-clearly it is. We need money to pay our bills and maintain the standard of living to which we’re accustomed. I’m also not saying money has no motivational value. It does, and the strength of that motivation will vary throughout a person’s life. If you’re about to buy a new home, have unexpected medical bills or have children in college, you’re going to be more keenly aware of your monetary needs.

But for most of us, most of the time, once we’re able to meet our monthly expenses, our attention turns to other factors that have much greater significance in our work lives:

• Feeling we’re making a contribution
• Having a manager who tells us when we do a good job
• Having the respect of our peers and colleagues
• Being involved and informed about what’s going on in the company
• Having meaningful, interesting work.

Granted, of the 16 employees who report to me, one clearly is motivated primarily by money. When this person finished a significant project for the company, I remember her response when I wanted to do something special to thank her. She told me she didn’t want a plaque or an award. As a token of thanks the only thing she desired was a bonus. Since people are motivated by different things, I gave her a bonus. But I also gave her a dozen roses at a company meeting-because recognition isn’t just for the person who performed well, it’s also a message to other employees about the type of performance that gets noticed in an organization. According to management consultant Rosabeth Moss Kanter, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts: “To the rest of the organization, recognition creates role models and heroes-and communicates the standards: These are the kinds of things that constitute great performance around here.”

Cash awards have some definite drawbacks.
The key point is that the money employees are paid for the job they’re hired to do is compensation, which should be a function of a company’s compensation philosophy as well as its market and geographic considerations. Increasingly, such economic incentives are becoming rights rather than rewards. In his book “Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices,” management guru Peter Drucker of The Claremont Graduate School in Los Angeles points out: “Merit raises always are introduced as rewards for exceptional performance. In no time at all they become a right. To deny a merit raise or to grant only a small one becomes a punishment. The increasing demand for material rewards rapidly is destroying their usefulness as incentives and managerial tools.”

In some cases, cash awards even have been found to have a demotivating effect. Cecil Hill, corporate manager of improvement programs at Hughes Aircraft Co. based in Los Angeles, claims in a Spring 1989 article in National Productivity Review: “I have found that certain aspects of the cash awards approach would be counterproductive at Hughes Aircraft. For example, cash awards would reduce teamwork as employees concentrated primarily on individual cash gains. We also have found instances in which ‘pay’ for certain types of intellectual performance tends to denigrate the performance.” In short, cash awards seemed to have a demotivating effect overall.

Recognition boosts employees’ esteem and performance.
Recognition, on the other hand, is what you do above and beyond what people are paid to get the best effort from employees. “Compensation is a right, recognition is a gift,” Kanter points out. “Recognition has multiple functions beyond simple human courtesy. To the employee, recognition signifies that someone notices and someone cares. What’s the point of going all out to do something special if no one notices and it doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference?”

To illustrate the power of recognition on individual behavior, Daniel Boyle, vice president and treasurer of Diamond Fiber Products Inc. in Thorndike, Massachusetts, tells an anecdote in a Harvard Business Review March-April 1987 article. The story relates the impact on an employee when she was presented with a nylon and cotton jacket as a special employee recognition reward called “The 100 Club.” “You might think this is a trivial thing, but it means a lot to the people who earn a jacket. A teller at a local bank told me once that a woman came in and proudly modeled her bay blue 100 Club jacket for bank customers and employees. She said, ‘My employer gave me this for doing a good job. It’s the first time in the 18 years I’ve been there they’ve recognized the things I do every day.’ During those years she’d earned $230,000 in wages, which had paid for cars, a home mortgage, food, other essentials, vacations, college educations. In her mind, she’d provided a service for her earnings. The money wasn’t recognition for her work, but the 100 Club jacket was.

Salary alone isn’t a motivator.
You might wonder why salaries aren’t enough to encourage employees to do their jobs. Why do you have to do more? People will do their jobs for what they’re paid, but money will do little to get them to do their best work or to go above and beyond what you expect of them. That extra effort is more a function of how they’re treated-the softer side of management-not what they’re paid. In the work of management theorist Frederick Herzberg, a fair salary is considered a “hygiene” factor-something people need as an incentive to do the jobs they’re hired to do. Hygiene factors include adequate work space, light and heat, and necessary tools such as a computer or telephone. Without any of these items, employees will be demotivated and unable to do their jobs. Having all of these items, however, will enable employees to do their jobs but will do nothing to help them do the best job possible. Getting people to do their best work is more a function of what Herzberg calls “motivators.” These include praise and recognition, challenging work, and growth and development opportunities.

Paul M. Cook, founder and CEO of Raychem Corp. based in Menlo Park, California, agrees with this belief: “The most important factor is individual recognition-more important than salaries, bonuses or promotions. Most people, whether they’re engineers, business managers or machine operators, want to be creative. They want to identify with the success of their profession and their organization. They want to contribute to giving society more comfort, better health, more excitement. And their greatest reward is receiving acknowledgment that they did contribute to making something meaningful happen.”

So, as people sometimes ask me, “If money isn’t a top motivator, then why is it all I seem to hear about from my employees?” I’ve had a chance to examine this question firsthand in several companies and have found a couple of explanations:

1. In some working environments, people are doing jobs they don’t enjoy for managers who never show their appreciation. These employees conclude that if this is what it’s like to work here, at least they ought to be paid well. Money thus becomes a psychological exchange for enduring a miserable job.
2. In other companies I’ve found that managers only use money to thank people-for example, bonuses for completing projects, on-the-spot cash awards for desired behavior or an extra percentage in the employees’ annual salary increase. Unintentionally, these managers send the message to employees that unless you get cash, your contribution to the company isn’t important. Essentially, they train employees to expect cash as the only true form of thanks.

It’s true some people directly correlate the amount of money they earn with their perceived worth to the organization. You need to be careful, however, that you don’t just respond to those individuals who constantly ask for more money, since you need to reinforce results, not requests. Also realize that you’ll never get the best effort from employees just by paying them more. For employees who just want more money, they’ll never be satisfied with what they’re paid. Their expectations always will rise with each salary increase.

Realizing that money is a basic need, managers might wonder if employees must be paid well before the nonmonetary factors become motivating. This question came up during a conference keynote presentation I was giving, and I was delighted to have another member of the audience interject his experience. He found that by using positive reinforcement he was able to increase the level of performance of his employees, leading to increased sales revenue, which ultimately made it possible to pay people better. In other words, the use of nonmonetary incentives allowed the boat to rise financially for everyone.

Motivation is its own reward.
Another way to look at the relation between money and motivation is that while on any given day most of us can’t significantly influence what we earn, a lot of things can have an effect on how excited and motivated we are about our jobs each day. How employees are treated by their managers is paramount to having them come to work energized and committed, bringing their best thinking and initiative to the job. The daily interactions management has with employees serve to either build and develop the trust and respect of employees, or to hinder and erode those factors. According to Donald Petersen, president and CEO of Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Michigan: “The leader needs to be in touch with the employees and to communicate with them on a daily basis.”

Ways to enhance this communication within an organization are endless. For example, each morning at Precision Metalcraft in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, management holds huddles to pass out the days’ work assignments. The huddles end in a cheer as people disperse to get to work. Security Pacific Corp. of Los Angeles has a Question Line with a toll-free number to respond to employees’ job-related problems and questions. And all Washington, D.C.-based Knight-Ridder publications have management coffee breaks, during which each publisher meets with 20 to 25 employees for an hour and a half over coffee. Employees can send questions in advance.

The focus of work used to be on renting employee behavior. In fact, in some work environments people even were referred to as “hired hands.” Today, it’s insufficient to simply rent the behavior you want from employees-you’ve got to find a way to elicit their best effort. To be competitive, each company needs to obtain extraordinary results from ordinary people. You have to make employees feel valued so they want to do their best work on a daily basis and to consistently act in the best interests of the organization. You can achieve this enhanced level of energy and initiative by focusing more on how you treat employees rather than how much more you will pay them. For the best results, pay them fairly, but treat them superbly.