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Employee Recognition: What Works, What Doesn’t 103

goals need to be expanded to be attractive to all employees (not
just top employees and not just employees we wish to retain).
Modular Program
As we’ve seen, a tiered approach to recognition can dilute the
retention goals for top performers. In many circumstances, they
can also alienate employees who feel they can’t really compete
with the top performers.
Far better is a modular approach, which allows for the
design of separate recognition programs for different groups,
under one overarching umbrella, such as beating sales targets
or completing that tricky computer installation.

Orienting Your Recognition Program
Around Retention
You’ve achieved the first goal for the recognition program—tar-
geting top performers. The second goal is to make sure it is
retention-oriented.
Employee recognition programs suffer from the “mom and
apple pie” syndrome: they are seen as all-round “good things to
do” and rarely are viewed as having specific, measurable goals.
“We’re good employers,” so the thinking goes, “so we provide
employee recognition programs.” However, if you want to retain
your best employees, it’s important that your recognition pro-
grams have a traceable, direct impact on your retention goal.

Recognition Isn’t Compensation
In some cases,recognition programs are considered a
low- or no-cost alternative to monetary compensation—
usually by employers who aren’t paying a fair wage. If your compensa-
tion packages aren’t competitive,a recognition program won’t rectify
the situation.As we discussed at length in Chapter 5,you ust get
m
your compensation packages to market level before introducing other
elements of the retention toolkit,including recognition packages—par-
ticularly to retain top employees.