Recognition drives the human engine.
—Leonard Berry
Texas A&M University
“Catch somebody doing something right today” is an admonition that succinctly captures years of managerial wisdom and a ton of behavioral science research. It has special meaning and import for the service management effort. If you want people in your organization to think and act in customer-oriented ways, seek out ways to catch them doing just that, and reward and recognize them for making the effort.
It is a reasonable and rational guideline, a precept hard to disagree with—and one more easily broken than kept. The biggest problem, of course, is that in the modern service workplace most managers seldom see more than a small sample of employee behavior and therefore have few opportunities to personally catch employees, particularly frontline employees, doing anything—good, bad, or indifferent. You have to be prepared to use what you see as well as find ways to see more.
Research shows that many service employees leave their jobs simply because they feel unappreciated in their work. That makes finding small ways to show your people you value what they do each day in the name of pleasing customers one of the best—and most cost-effective—methods for reducing attrition levels and boosting performance.
Effective recognition and reward oil the wheels of willing cooperation and dedication to the job.
• Reward typically connotes money: salary and bonuses, cash awards, financial incentives, and other tangible payoffs in lieu of cash (though often chosen and presented in terms of their cash value).
• Recognition is typically less tangible, given for taking a little extra time with a customer, for going a step beyond nominal expectations, for caring about what the customer needs and expects to be done, and for looking for ways to do it better, faster, and/or smarter.
Recognition and reward come in as many styles as there are recognizers and rewarders. Common approaches include:
• High-Profile Formal. Programs such as “Bravo Zulu” and “Golden Falcon” (FedEx), “Circle of Service Excellence” (U.S. Bank), “Customer Champs” (Manheim), and “Heritage Award” (Great Plains Software, a Microsoft subsidiary) come complete with detailed rules and objectives that everyone learns and set prizes, payoffs, and awards that everyone can strive for.
Caution: Make sure your recognition spotlight doesn’t put employees on the spot. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable standing up to take a bow, respect their wishes.
• Low-Profile Formal. Little rewards can be as effective as the big ones if they are used the right way. Nonmonetary awards possess the “trophy value” that cold hard cash doesn’t; while few people dislike cash and it provides a quick rush of satisfaction, the money usually disappears quickly and employees are left with nothing to remember their accomplishment. Lapel-style pins, plaques, framed certificates, and embossed business cards that list service awards are tactics common to service leaders. Others award good suggestions for new or better ways to serve customers with free video rentals, tickets to sporting or cultural events, courtesy time off, gift certificates, or points redeemable for merchandise at the company store. In one retail bank, the employee who submits the month’s best idea wins a circulating trophy—a three-foot-high light bulb.
The trick is to avoid one-size-fits-all reward plans. Give employees a choice of awards so they can choose something that fits their tastes. One person’s sporting event nirvana, for example, might be another’s snooze-inducing “night that wouldn’t end.”
• Informal. A simple “thank you for your effort” note or a verbal “well done” delivered in front of coworkers are great ways of recognizing people. Style counts every bit as much as substance. A handwritten note from the CEO saying nothing more elaborate than “I really appreciate the extra effort you expended making the senior officers conference a success” is often more powerful—and certainly more lasting—than cash on the barrelhead. It’s the sincerity and acknowledgment that count most to the recipient. Ditto for similar notes that you send to your frontline staff. In this day of ubiquitous e-mail, a heartfelt “thanks” note penned by hand can make a big impression.
You’ll also want to ensure your reward and recognition efforts don’t fall prey to the law of unintended consequences. Organizations and managers sometimes can do more harm than good in how they choose to design or implement recognition plans. Beware of these pitfalls:
• Winner Takes All Plans. Competition is healthy in the marketplace, but it can be demotivating in the workplace. Abandon employee of the month or other winner-take-all service reward plans in favor of those that recognize more people for the small things they do every day to please customers or assist coworkers.
• Perception of Favoritism. When peers have some say in the voting process for formal rewards, people tend to see the process as more open, honest, and fair than if a manager unilaterally chooses award recipients. After all, who better to identify the service stars (and slackers) than those working alongside them on the front lines?
• Lack of Immediacy. Waiting for weeks or months after someone exhibits commendable behavior to reward it dulls the impact. Deliver rewards or recognition as close to the contribution or event as possible.
• Same Old, Same Old. Even the most inventive and unique awards grow stale and lose their impact over time. Survey your employees to make sure they still see your reward or recognition plans as appropriately motivating. If the answer is no, develop other options to breathe new life into the program.
Sometimes recognition and reward programs take on dimensions that show you just how valued they can be to employees. We once worked with a theme park that was researching various ways to put feedback and recognition into the workaday life of employees—and to improve customer satisfaction in the process. On the reward and recognize side, we started giving supervisors little cards called “Warm Fuzzies” to give to employees—you guessed it—caught “doing something good.” Token givers were encouraged to write notes on the backs of the cards explaining what the receiver had done to merit a Warm Fuzzie. Four years later, we had supervisors giving out Warm Fuzzies, guests giving out Warm Fuzzies, and frontline employees giving Warm Fuzzies to each other as well as to supervisors and staff support people.
We encountered only one problem with the system. Hoarding. Not by the givers. By the recipients. Those “Warm Fuzzie” cards had point values and accumulated points could be redeemed for gifts and merchandise. But employees were not turning in the “Fuzzies” for the prizes. An employee focus group told us why. The psychological value of receiving the little cards outweighed the value of the prizes to many of the employees. As one employee put it, “When I’m having a bad day, I take out my stack of Warm Fuzzies and reread the notes on the backs, the nice things people said about me, and I feel better. That’s more important than any prize I could buy for turning the cards in.”
The solution was easy: give the employees credit for the points and let them keep the cards. It made a mess of our research, but it worked. The lesson was a big one: It’s terribly easy to lose sight of how powerful a sincere “You did a good job—thanks” can be.
The deepest principle of human nature is a craving to be appreciated.
—William James