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Employee Recognition: What Works, What Doesn’t 109

be able to figure out your judgment criteria after a few months,
anyway, so why keep up the pretense that it’s otherwise?)

Ensuring That Your Targets Are Attainable
After nailing the specific, measurable elements of your recogni-
tion program, your next step is to ensure that any targets in
your program are attainable. If your employees can’t attain the
targets you set, the program won’t motivate your top perform-
ers and won’t encourage retention.
Start by using past performance as a guide, if possible. Set
the recognition program targets within the top 5%-15% of
already achieved past results. There’s little to gain in setting tar-
gets at a level previously unattained, unless you have good rea-
son to believe those higher targets will be met.
Once you’ve set initial targets for your recognition program,
make sure you take the time to solicit feedback from your
employees, before you proceed. After all, since the goals are for
the employees, not you, their views on whether or not the goals
are attainable are more important than yours.
In some organizations, recognition programs are handed
down to employees rather like the stone tablets from Mount
Sinai—in a flurry of smoke and mirrors, with terms, conditions,
goals, and rewards all neatly decided and carved in stone by
management.
This approach only has the effect of imbuing the recognition
program with a sense of paternalism. Why not start the

Recognition vs. Performance Incentives
Don’t forget that recognition programs are not performance
incentive programs. If you want to lift performance levels,
design a performance incentive program to include stretch goals (goals
set higher than past performance levels),as discussed in Chapter 5.
Stretch goals do not make good recognition program targets
because if they’re not met,there’s usually a sense of failure and disap-
pointment—the exact opposite of what you’re trying to engender
with a recognition program: a sense of success and achievement.