Communicating Authentically

Awards and recognition programs are a great way to award employees who create great results. A common complaint of corporate awards programs is that only the most conspicuous teammates are recognized. It’s somewhat demotivating to see the boss’ golf buddies win awards year after year, or when the top performance awards go to those who create the greatest amount of stress, drama and hurt feelings. If you want to inspire and motivate your employees, you want to be sure you’re not alienating those folks who create amazing results behind the scenes, laying the groundwork for success. Their accomplishments are not always high-profile, but your organization couldn’t survive without them. One of the best ways to shine a spotlight on those who support and sustain your strategic goals is an employee-nominated awards process.

Too often, however, these programs become popularity contests, in which the ones who get the most votes win. I’ve actually seen people “campaign” for votes! This can defeat the purpose and reward the wrong people.

You can find awards software or companies that specialize in running awards programs; however, these are usually accompanied by a hefty price tag. If your firm doesn’t have the budget (or even if you do), consider the process described below: it’s the best way I’ve found to recognize employees who are true role models to others for living the values and behaviors that drive success.

First, establish the criteria

Most companies have determined a set of values or guiding principles to define how employees should behave in order to achieve the firm’s goals. These are great standards for an employee-nominated awards program. Of course, you don’t want to simply reward people for being nice – you want to reward people who make an impact and/or achieve results. So you need to capture some additional information.

Second, require comments

Requiring word comments about how the nominee has achieved results or influenced success by living the company’s values is helpful in a few ways:

• It requires people to really think about who they are nominating and why.
• Sharing this appreciative feedback with nominees throughout the nomination process boosts employee morale and encourages even more nominations.
• Comments can be used by an awards committee to determine the most deserving award recipients.

Third, establish an awards committee

Your awards committee will determine the award recipients based on the comments. In this process, the recipients do not necessarily have to be those with the most votes; this is an important factor, but an equal factor should be the strength of the word comments supporting the nominations.

To help ensure that you’re not stepping into any cultural minefields, be sure the committee looks like a representative sample of your organization. It’s important to include someone from the top leadership team, who can represent the committee’s choices at that level. It should include people from all organizational levels, including the “front line” workers and middle management. You also want to be sure you have representatives from many different departments and include a balance of men and women, as well as people from different backgrounds.

I also strongly recommend convening the committee on a volunteer basis. Those who volunteer are more apt to take the role seriously. People who are assigned to the committee may lack the true commitment to the task. It may be tricky to recruit volunteers to create a good cross-section of your organization, but use your best negotiating skills to fill out your committee.

You can recruit new committee members each year, or you can maintain the same awards committee. Often, with attrition and changing job responsibilities, a “static” committee will change from year to year anyway so it may save some time to keep a long-term group.

If you convene a committee at the beginning of the process, they can help with awards tasks and serve as ambassadors to encourage participation. At the end of the process, the committee will review the nominations and word comments, and then meet to determine the award recipients. In my experience, in a well-moderated meeting, this can take as little as an hour.

Options

There are a few ways to set up the process: you can establish one award for each value. The benefit of this plan is that it creates living role models of what each value looks and sounds like on a day-to-day basis.

You may choose to award several award recipients who exemplify living all the values: or those who recognize their strengths, and are visibly working to address their challenges. This encourages a well-rounded, flexible approach to working together.

You may want to do both. For example, create one award per value, and then create another award for those individuals who were nominated in multiple categories.

The process

Step 1: Nominations

The nomination process should be six to nine months long, with monthly reminders. For instance, begin the nomination process in the first quarter of the year and ending in the fourth quarter (October or November).

At least once a month, send employees an e-mail requesting nominations for teammates who they feel are living the values. You can collect these manually, using a spreadsheet, or by creating an online survey (such as SurveyMonkey) Nominations must be required to include word comments describing why that individual should be considered for the category.

You may want to determine eligibility: should self-nominations be considered? Should top leadership be exempt? Full-time employees only (vs. contractors or part-time folks)?

Step 2: Reminders and sharing comments

During the year, send reminders to your firm on a monthly basis. As mentioned above, a great way to boost morale and encourage more votes is to collect the appreciative comments submitted and share them with the nominees throughout the year. When you do, be sure to include a link to the survey and encourage them to either return the favor or share it forward.

Step 3: Committee meeting

Once the online survey is closed, forward the survey data to the Awards Committee for their review approximately one week prior to the committee call. Then, the Awards Committee holds a one-two hour conference call to discuss nominees and determine final recommendations. If you are ordering physical awards to be handed out at a ceremony, be sure to have the committee meeting in time to place the final order.

Here are some suggested guidelines for the call:

• It’s best not to record the call, as the committee needs to feel free to be as open as possible during the discussion, to arrive at the best possible decisions.
• Establish a moderator to keep the meeting moving, and/or a scribe to record the committee’s final decisions.
• Each member of the committee will put forward a view the top 2-3 people they recommend as award recipients, followed by a larger group discussion and decision on a recommendation for the final recipients.
• Remember, the recipients are decided based on the strength of the word comments supporting the nominations. If your discussion becomes “stuck,” look to the values descriptions and guiding behaviors.
• If one of the meeting participants is a suggested contender for an award, s/he should abstain from the discussion, perhaps by leaving the room or putting the phone down for a few minutes.

Step 4: Final awards decision

Upon the final decision, place the order for the awards if they are physical awards. If there is a monetary reward, follow your accounting department’s process for establishing those

Step 5: Award presentation and feedback

Announce or present the awards in the way that best suits your company: possibly at a ceremony, company meeting, or via an email, newsletter or intranet announcement.

Shortly after the awards presentation, I highly recommend sending e-mails or letters to all nominees with their appreciative comments. Even if you sent these comments on a monthly basis, it’s still very meaningful to people to see all the appreciation they received from their teammates throughout the year. Another action to consider is to CC the appreciative comments for each award recipient/nominee’s manager, and also Human Resources so that they filed in each employee’s file.

In my experience, this process of recognizing employees is much more meaningful and motivating than awards based on revenues or other bottom-line criteria, or based solely on votes. I’ve had people tell me, every year, how much they appreciated receiving those messages; and often, the award recipients comment that the appreciation of their teammates means more to them than the actual award. And that’s been rewarding for me, too.