Individual Skill Building: Recognizing & Rewarding Good Performance

It can be easy for a manager to spend the majority of his or her time focusing on both the excellent and poor performers in an organization, as it is easier to focus on the extremely good and bad sides of performance. These two extremes will catch your attention, but also make up a narrow range of employees. A manager should be focusing on the majority of the workforce, which is the broad range of good performers in the organization. By shifting the focus to the good performers, a skilled manager can keep them from slipping into the poor performance range, where the manager would have to act retroactively to exercise control. The manager can also bring the good performers to the excellent level with continued coaching, and by recognizing and rewarding good performance as it occurs.

Strengths

One of the strong points of properly recognizing and rewarding good behaviors is that it encourages good performance to continue. The bulk of your employees will be doing "good" work, and by rewarding "good" performance, you will be recognizing and rewarding the majority of your workforce. Be sure to recognize "expected" performance, AKA "just doing your job", because it encourage this good performance to continue, and the recognition may be enough to inspire an employee to improve further. Many jobs can become monotonous after some time, and a little encouragement and appreciation can go a long way in motivating an employee to maintain his or her enthusiasm. Just because a responsibility is expected doesn't mean it shouldn't be recognized and appreciated.

Another strength of recognizing good performance is that it encourages under-performers to rise to the level of the good or excellent performers. When an employee observes that rewards are given only to the level of performance that is desired, and not to anyone who shows up for work, most people will change their behavior to match those who are being recognized. Conversely, when excellent or good performers are not rewarded for their accomplishments, or see that everyone receives the same treatment no matter their effort, their performance will tend to fall towards the level of the poor performer at an organization.

Rewarding good performance is also crucial in linking the employee's importance within the firm. If the employee feels that even the everyday maintenance tasks that they fulfill are important to keep the company running, the employee will feel a sense of accomplishment in these tasks. Even if they are "just doing their job", there is still a reason these tasks are being done: because they are necessary, and it is important that there is a link between the work being done and the success of the company.

Weaknesses and ways to overcome them

It is easy to ignore good performers and focus only on excellent or poor performers, as they will stand out the most being at the two extremes of the workforce spectrum. Focusing only on excellent performers can discourage good or poor performers to improve if they feel that there is a "golden child" amongst the employees. They may feel that the manager is playing favorites and that no matter how much effort is exerted, there will never be anyone as good as the favorite. Focusing more attention on poor performers is only good at retroactively attempting to change behavior, and many times is too late.

To overcome focusing only on excellent or poor performance, the manager must take special care to focus on all employees, and recognize when a task is being done correctly. The manager must also refrain from encouraging poor performance (sometimes erroneously known as being "fair" to everyone), even if he or she feels guilty praising some and not others. This will encourage the poor performers to recognize the actions that will give them rewards. Focusing on good performance will also encourage some employees to maintain the level of work that they are doing, eliminating some of the possible poor performers, and leaving the manager with more time for good and excellent performance recognition.

Another weakness of poorly implemented performance recognition is rewarding performance in an untimely manner. If something is being done right, and the employee doesn't hear about it until 6 - 12 months later at the annual performance appraisal, there is much less chance that the action will be repeated in the same fashion. Furthermore, the employee will not know that they have been performing well, so they may not continue to do the task in the same way. This can lead to inconsistent performance, and the worker may be surprised at year end at the appraisal because they have not received the appropriate feedback at the appropriate time.

To avoid this pitfall, good performance should be rewarded as soon as possible after the action, or even during, if possible. This helps reinforce the correct behavior while the person performing the task can still remember what it is that they have done well. This also helps to supply the employee with a somewhat continuous feedback system, where they will know right away if they need to adjust the manner in which they complete a certain task. To recognize and reward performance in a timely manner, it is important for a manager to be around the people performing the tasks, to mingle among the employees from time to time, and to monitor results soon after they occur. It can be easy to put these things off and look at a summary report at year end, but the manager must remain diligent and monitor performance as it happens.

The last weakness discussed is using an inappropriate or inadequate recognition and reward system. In any organization, there are some people whom desire attention, some of which do not. By giving a reward publicly, this could embarrass certain people and discourage the effort required to get the reward. Also, not everyone is motivated by the same rewards, and if you are trying to coax an employee to perform in a certain manner, enticing them with the wrong reward will not likely get positive results. One way that inadequate recognition can be a problem is when the manager is not specific enough about what action is being performed well. This will leave the employee confused about that which should be repeated in the future, or with a feeling that all the work they have done has been done well.

In order to overcome these risks involved when implementing a faulty reward system, the following actions can be taken. Rewards sometimes must be specific to the individual receiving them, or something universal that you know everyone at the organization will appreciate. Certain employees prefer extra time off, some may like to simply go out to lunch, and others might just need a note from the boss. Some people like to be publicly rewarded, others find that the attention is humiliating. In any case, it is important try to get to know your workforce and even ask an individual what type of recognition or reward would motivate them. This shows that you care about the individual and how you can best help them do good at work. Lastly, when encouraging good performance, try to avoid general statements like "Good Job!". This is nice, but is not very specific, and there could be confusion about what was done well. It would be much more effective to tell the employee exactly what behavior was being done well, to be sure that it is the behavior which is repeated in the future. Try naming the actual action that was performed, as well as when it was done, to limit ambiguity.