More Than Just a Pizza

Recently, I heard an interesting comment about the employee recognition experience from a People Services Project Coordinator named Lou. Her company, a Midwest furniture manufacturer, had several initiatives in place to recognize employees for their achievements. One of their programs involves rewarding departments who meet productivity goals with a pizza party.

The company was mystified to find that employees in some departments who were rewarded with pizza parties felt that the company had done a very good job of effectively recognizing their contributions, while employees in other departments seemed to have "recognition amnesia". Though these workers had received the same or in some cases, even more pizza parties than their "well recognized" colleagues, they had forgotten that the company had recognized them at all. When the under-recognized employees were reminded of their pizza parties, their response was "oh yeah, I forgot about that."

What was the difference?

After some investigation, the management observed that it was a very small, but very important difference that made employees in some departments remember the recognition experience more vividly.

In some departments, the pizza would arrive, employees would assemble, they'd eat and then return to their work. The big difference was linked to departments where the managers would kick off the pizza party with a brief announcement about the achievement that had earned them the pizza reward. Those few words made all the difference to connect the pizza party with the reason behind it. "This pizza party is our way of saying thank you for what you did." -- That's what takes it from more than 'just pizza', to a memorable recognition experience.