Page 125 - Retaining Top Employees

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Employee Recognition: What Works, What Doesn’t 113

• The program distorts established standards or processes.
Watch that goals or targets that you choose to reward
aren’t standard performance goals for other
employees in the organization.

Making Recognition Programs Appropriate
It’s important that recognition programs be not only specific,
attainable, and fair, but also appropriate. This means ensuring
that rewards and awards are relevant in type and level to top
performers.
Monetary Rewards
The most important thing to bear in mind about monetary
rewards is that they should not be so large that they’re a materi-
al element of compensa-
tion. If the monetary
Put the Money
rewards available to an into Bonuses
employee through a recog- If you do want to make
nition program amount to large amounts of money available to
more than around 15% of your employees,put it into a bonus
total monetary compensa- system,as discussed in Chapter 5.
tion, employees will begin Don’t forget: recognition programs
to view them as an ele- are to recognize achievements that
are out of the ordinary and bonus
ment of compensation, like
programs are to incite greater pro-
a discretionary bonus,
duction. Don’t confuse the two.
rather than as recognition.
Non-Monetary Rewards
Similar considerations of materiality apply to non-monetary
rewards, like giveaways, vacations, or paid time off. Convert the
reward to its monetary value (if it has one) and do the same
math. If the value is greater than around 15% of total compen-
sation, it’s too high.
Here are some other considerations to bear in mind in mak-
ing your non-monetary rewards relevant:

• Expectations. Top employees are less likely to be excit-