How to Recognize Employee Excellence

When the economy changes, so change the rules for how to recognize employee excellence. Learn how to reward fantastic workers for their efforts without causing jealousy or resentment in the workplace. Keep your best performers motivated without causing a riot.

Instructions

1. PRIVATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

   The first, best step in rewarding your best workers is to simply tell them how pleased you are with their performance. Sounds easy, but paying attention to their accomplishments in front of their peers can easily have a negative impact on the workplace as a whole. Not all of your employees perform well and not all of them care to hear about those who do.

   So why care about what poor performers want? They may not be great at their jobs, but many of them are masters of office sabotage. When you recognize employee excellence, focusing on ONE employee, you essentially make that hard worker a target for envious, underhanded peers.

   This environment of hostility and resentment isn't just unfair for your star employees, but it also has the exact opposite result of what you were looking for. Rather than encouraging continued excellence, you have put your employee in a position where they now must divert time and energy from the work they have done so well for you and focus instead on defending their name and their work from jealous peers.

   It is important to recognize employee excellence, but privately. If you would like to reward your excellent employee with a moment in the spotlight, praise them before an audience of their supervisors. Better yet, your supervisor.

2. PRIVATE REWARD

   When an employee's best efforts warrant a bit more than a pat on the back, material or fiscal reward can be a great way to show them their hard work is appreciated. However, just as you are best to acknowledge their achievements in private, you are almost always better off to reward them privately as well.

   Public rewards and recognition are often used as incentives for other employees. Management and supervisors mistake vicarious reward as motivation for the workforce as a whole. In fact, these private moments are rarely appropriate for an audience. As mentioned before, rather than inspiring poor performers to work harder, it simply inspires the negative facets of competitiveness. Good performers, not GREAT performers, are often left feeling marginalized when their peers are recognized and their own efforts are passed over. Those employees who are performing adequately, or even better than adequately, can easily develop resentment and hostility. And rightfully so. Your public acknowledgement of excellence has divided the workforce into two categories: the excellent and the inferior.

   Public recognition of employee excellent leaves too much room for error, and risks offending the truly good employees you have.

3. PUBLIC REWARDS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

   There are occasions when it is very appropriate to recognize employee excellence before an audience of their peers. However, even these occasions have rules to help prevent office drama, diminished motivation, and negative returns for those you wish to recognize.

   Make sure, when you are recognizing employees in the company of their peers, you make an example of several employees. This will help prevent one excellent performer becoming the target of jealousy and sabotage by some of your lowest performers. Also, the more people you recognize, the more likely your employees are to believe that they too can achieve excellence. If your praise fails to shift from one employee to another, your respect for that employee will be seen as favoritism rather than your genuine appreciation for a job well done.

   Know who you need to recognize and EXACTLY why. It is more than clear to your employees when you have little or no real understanding of the work that has been done and who has done it. If you attempt to reward people for their efforts without having any idea as to the scope of those efforts, your recognition will be seen clearly as the empty and hurried gesture it is. Those who have worked tirelessly for you, will wonder why they have done so if you can't be bothered to know what they have done on your behalf. Those who are not worthy of recognition will see your recognition as nothing worth their labors and devotion. If you don't have a clear idea of who to thank and why, it is best to give a general thanks, explaining that you are still learning about the extent of the work done. MAKE SURE YOU RETURN AND MAKE YOUR THANKS PUBLICLY WHEN YOU ARE SURE WHO TO THANK AND WHY.