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Employee Recognition: What Works, What Doesn’t 101

Employee recognition program A program that recog-
nizes outstanding achievements by employees with money
and/or other assets. Recognition programs can combine
structured,planned awards (such as an “employee of the month”
award) with unplanned,spontaneous rewards (such as a reward for tak-
ing first place in a national professional examination) and/or contests
(such as a quarterly sales contest or a safety improvement contest).

focus of this book so that’s what we’ll emphasize here. Later in
this chapter, you’ll learn how to combine recognition programs
for top performers with recognition programs targeted at other
employees.

Know Who They Are Recognition
Program “Mix”
As a first step to targeting
Employee recognition pro-
your recognition program,
grams can comprise any number of
list the employees that elements,restricted only by your
you’re likely to include. If imagination.The aim of this chapter is
you need any help in iden- not to provide you with a list of
tifying your top perform- reward ideas,but rather to ensure
ers, review the work you that,whichever rewards you use,you
did in the first part of implement them in a way that will
help you keep your top employees.
Chapter 3, Envisioning
For ideas about rewards,check out
Your Employee Retention
1001 Ways to Reward Your Employees
Strategy. by Bob Nelson (Workman Publishing,
The next question is 1994). Nelson is the “rewards guru”
“Who should be included in and his book,newsletter,and excel-
the recognition program?” lent Web site (www.nelson-motiva-
If you don’t have many tion.com) will provide you with more
top performers or if your ideas than you thought possible!
organization has sufficient
resources, the answer may well be “All of them.” If, however,
you’re managing a lot of top performers or your resources are
limited, you may wish to undertake a risk analysis to identify
those top performers who are most likely to pose a retention
risk in the near future and then to aim your recognition program
at them.