Reward effort, not results

The Unisys Shared Services Center handles a lot of office support, including paying bills, copying job applicants' resumes, and more. These seemingly monotonous things, the center staff have done brilliantly. They work hard to increase customer satisfaction and save costs. They are well-received, and they set a high standard of work for the rest of Unisys. What is the mystery?

One of the reasons for the team's success is a well-designed recognition and reward program.

Rationale: Employees Can Only Determine Effort

It is often mistakenly believed that recognition and rewards are the answer to most employee productivity problems. If employees are not working hard enough, make too many mistakes, or fail to meet performance goals, the problem can be solved by means of salary increases, bonuses, prizes, honorary certificates, competitions, etc. But usually, things are not so simple. Recognition and reward results often bind employees to do exactly what managers want. Conversely, it's better to recognize and reward effort and motivation because it's a direct feedback on the employee's work attitude, which determines how hard work is done.

Why recognize and reward effort? Aren't most recognition and reward programs focused on results? Yes, most policies do emphasize results, not process. However, think about what your purpose is. As a manager, you must first try to correct the attitude of employees, fully mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, so that they do their best to work. Second, you assign them appropriate jobs so that their efforts translate into good grades. So employees decide the first half of the equation, and managers decide the second half.

Rewards are tied to organizational performance, and employees often feel less connected to themselves and less motivated because they don't see a strong connection between their efforts and reward results. Rewards seem to have little effect on them.

Your responsibility is to ensure that the strategy is appropriate and in the right direction. So if the results are disappointing, you deserve to suffer, but often it's your employees. A better solution is to recognize and reward something that employees have complete control over—their own performance. Recognizing and rewarding efforts can fully motivate employees and increase the effectiveness of your management. Isn't that exactly what you need most?

It can be seen that recognition and rewards are the most important basis for employee effort or motivation. High performance cannot be created by recognition and reward, but after high performance, there will be something worthy of recognition and reward.

Approach: Choosing the Right Motivation

However, be aware that many employees are skeptical or dissatisfied with the formal incentives and rewards offered by the company. Employees generally complained that the practice was like coaxing a child and felt a hidden threat: "If you don't obey me, you won't get the good things you expect." In this case, incentive policies generate more negative emotions than positive ones. many.

The solution is to align incentives with employee motivation, while ensuring that incentives symbolize success and that everyone can follow the obvious path to success. The reward is just a token. If rewards work, ask yourself what they symbolize. Any symbol can work if the essence is correct. Link motivation to motivation and effort, making sure that any external motivation is indicative of inner motivation.

Alternatively, you can make the job more attractive to employees by increasing the number of certain incentives that employees are interested in, using recognition and rewards. For example, employees with a strong sense of belonging like clothing with company logos as gifts or prizes. If they are part of a team or project, also like items with the team or project's unique logo and name, and also want the opportunity to participate in group social events.

In addition, employees have different motivations at work, and the corresponding recognition and reward methods for each motivation are also different. A certain incentive works for some employees but not for others; it motivates one person but may discourage another.

Your challenge is to fully understand your subordinates and ensure the best match between motivation, personal performance and competence. Wendy's knows it all. At one of its restaurants, the fastest cashier can wear a large golden crown. As a result, all the cashiers were eager to wear the gold crown and speeded up, and the long queue of customers to pay the bill disappeared. Clearly, this motivational method had an effect on this particular group of employees. However, don't expect all employees to want to win the golden crown. Some people don't like the idea at all, and may instead slow down to avoid embarrassment.

Effect: Stimulate emotional and rational resonance

How do I know if the recognition and rewards you provide are effective? If under its stimulation, employees resonate, the reward has a good effect. That is to say, the recognition and reward system should attract employees from two aspects: rational and emotional. Only when there is a strong resonance in both areas can your reward system fully motivate employees.

In other words, an effective reward or recognition policy has a clear meaning to employees—they know what the reward or recognition is about and how it relates to the company's overarching goals. At the same time, rewarding or commending them makes them feel good—inspiring enthusiasm on an emotional level.

Rewards that resonate emotionally and are weak in rationality can also attract employees. But the effect is not what you want. While emotionally arousing, they perceive your approach as imprecise and poorly controlled, leading to potential danger.

Case in point: In an effort to stem a declining sales slump, a company decided to offer two-week Caribbean tours to its top-performing salespeople for the next six months. The reward is attractive and mouthwatering, and the employees and their families are all fascinated and deeply resonated on an emotional level.

Nevertheless, the competition undermines employee motivation and negatively affects the sales force. Why? Because the company lacks consideration on the rational level. Salespeople face a lot of competition, but the company fails to provide them with ways or strategies to improve their sales performance, so they have no idea how to earn rewards. Then there's the issue of fair play, because some regions have more sales potential than others, but the competition doesn't take that into account.

Lastly, some salespeople work in small groups and don't know how their individual effort is counted in the competition. These problems cause salespeople to have rational doubts about the competition and affect their enthusiasm. Even people who get travel incentives are not as happy as they think, because they are worried that the results of the competition are arbitrary and unfair.

When you consider the rational aspect well, formulate fair and reasonable rules and methods, and strictly abide by the rules, you can build a rational resonance, so that the rewards can truly motivate employees. And one more thing to ignore: Rational, well-crafted sales competition awards won't work if they're emotionally unattractive. Employees will say they know they should try their best, but seem reluctant to do so because of a lack of emotional motivation.

Employees like to be rewarded for their efforts. But what reward is right for them and in their favor? They work hard every day, what exactly are their career and personal goals? In addition to the general principles of good management, there are different motivational techniques for employees. Every employee has a unique set of work dynamics, and their priorities may not be the same as yours. Know what they really need in order to manage them well.

Excerpted with permission from Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance by Alexander Hiam, published by AMACOM, a division of the American Institute of International Management. The author registered copyright in 2003. Translated by Huang Xi.

The English version of this article was purchased from McGraw-Hill Education (Asia) Singapore.

Author Alexander Hiam brings motivational management training to Ford Motor, AT&T, and more. He has authored several books, including Making Horses Drink, Marketing Kit for Dummies, and Streetwise Motivating & Rewarding Employees.