Many companies use incentives and recognition to fix a problem.
Slow sales - run an incentive program.
High turnover - run a recognition program.
Low morale - run an internal sweepstakes.
But the real problem isn't any of the stated issues above. The problem isn't the lack of a program but something different. Usually, something much deeper. And if you don't address the root cause of a problem you can't motivate and reinforce the appropriate behaviors that will drive performance.
And many times the root cause is the company culture. A bad culture will pervert any incentive and recognition program.
I was reminded of this when reading a post on Business Week: Fixing a Damaged Corporate Culture.
The post described the negative fallout from an employee recruiting incentive - a referral program. The program paid $500 for each candidate referred and ultimately hired. The gist of the post was that the program failed because the employees were taking advantage of the referral program and trolling for candidates and hoping they "hit" with a person who got hired. The company was inundated with referrals (the one thing the employee could control) - yet the spirit of the program was violated. The author's point:
"If the environment isn't healthy, then all the best-intentioned schemes and mechanisms will falter or fail. Employee-referral bonus programs, like so many other management practices ranging from old-fashioned suggestion boxes to cross-training initiatives to flextime mandates, rely on two critical elements: communication and trust."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Programs and initiatives can only be successful when driven by honest people for honest people and communicated effectively. As the article points out - the employees weren't the problem. The culture of the company was.
If it is okay to scam a program - then one of two things is wrong. One - you hired the wrong people or two - somehow, within the culture, scamming the system isn't seen as a negative. Why else would anyone hurt their own organization by "stuffing the ballot box." Don't they realize it increases workload, decreases candidate quality? Don't they realize they will suffer in the long run for poor hires caused by sending in bogus referrals? They probably just don't care - and that's when you know you have a culture problem.
Now, every company has a few employees that will take advantage of these things. But overall they should be in the minority. Knowing you will have a couple of folks who will try to scam the system, one thing you can do within the program rules is spell out the process you "expect" people to go through. Include a discussion of what you don't want.
Would the program highlighted in the Business Week article have worked better if there was as discussion about "not sending in any ole' name" and why it is a bad idea for the employee and the company? Would that have communicated better what the real goal was? Would that help communicate the "culture" better? Probably.
In addition, Business Week did an interview with former Southwest CEO James Parker on culture.
Here are some interesting selected quotes from the interview...
"The next thing is to create the culture where people feel like they are using their brains, they're using their creativity, they're allowed to be themselves and have a sense of humor, and they understand what the mission of the company is."
"If people get the idea that this is all one organization with one mission, not individuals on a bunch of individual missions, then it's a lot easier."
"One of themes of my book is that in any large organization, you have to have greater leaders at every level. The reality is, when you have 30,000 employees spread out all across the country, most of those employees are never going to meet the CEO. They'll probably never read the company's mission statement. If they don't see the kind of culture that you want to exist in your organization, if they don't see it right there on their shift and in their workforce, if they don't see leadership from their leaders right there, they're going to think all that other stuff is just a bunch of corporate propaganda, just a bunch of b.s."
Notice a pattern here? Trust is a huge part of each of these quotes. Trust that employees will use their heads, trust that employees, once they understand the mission will perform, trust that everyone is seeing the same culture throughout the organization.
Same with the referral program. Trust you won't scam the system, trust you will only recommend people you want to work with.
You can't trust a program to fix a problem with trust. Trust me.
