No more "Employees of the Month"

One of the emerging themes that we are seeing from our employee recognition clients throughout North America is a shift from traditional manager only nomination schemes. Businesses are doing away with initiatives that could be viewed forever as "favoritism" or talked about as "it's your turn to get recognized this month."

In order to address this organizations shifting away from processes that single out an individual, such as "Employee of the Month" and moving towards more open-ended programs that allow multiple employees to be recognized when goals are reached. The objectives is to insure that more team members are eligible for recognition and in order to be truly effective recognition needs to reach as many people as possible not just a select group of high achievers.

The results have been encouraging in building employee engagement. To add another level excitement consider offering a peer nomination process.

Recognizing the Team

Our West Michigan Whitecaps Baseball team has been on a roll -- back to back champions in the last two seasons. As a West Michigander and a fan, I'm pretty proud of our home team. I had an opportunity to be a 'fly on the wall' at the presentation of the championship rings earlier this week... only it wasn't the players receiving rings at this particular ceremony- it was the employees of the Whitecaps organization.

The players may be the most visible part of making the team win happen, but they couldn't do it without the support of the rest of the Whitecaps staff. As the team's general manager Jim Jarecki put it, the team's championship win was the product of the contributions of "players both on and off the field". Whether it be administration, public relations, human resources, accounting-- all were celebrated this week for their role in making the team into a championship organization.

This idea applies in all types of organizations. We all want to contribute to a winning team, whether our role is performed in the spotlight or behind the scenes, and to know that our contribution is appreciated and recognized.