When rewards demotivate……

In most organizations, there is lot of introspection and thought process applied to establish a well-defined rewards and recognition program. The Human Resources teams view these as essential to maintain and increase motivation and passion towards work among employees, thereby aiming to create and project a vibrant organization.

But do these established rewards and recognition programs achieve the desired goal. They are indeed created with the right intent. But many times they backfire because of the way in which they are manifested by managers and can be extremely demotivating to employees.

Here's my view on what some of these manifestations can be and their negative impact on an employee's morale.

The Posthumous Reward :  Delayed recognition is indeed disheartening.  This comes to the definition on what a recognition can be. Most mangers think that giving a good appraisal and salary hike at the end of the year is what most employees want, even though many research studies indicate otherwise. They don't realize that there are some intangible factors beyond that like visibility,  trusting an employee by giving him more accountability and giving them the authority to take decisions.  Lack of these over a period of time can be killers of an employee's passion towards work and ultimately result in loss of high performers for the organization.

The "Me too" bandwagon :  Recognition should always be personalized. Be it a pat on the back or a quick handshake with a word of appreciation, personal touch carries a great deal. One of the most irritating and demotivating factors can be this lack of personalization. These are visible through group mails with words such as "great job", " congrats keep up the good work" etc.  The more number of "reply to all" mails in the chain, the more irritating these can be.  Another reflection of this factor is in the way appreciation messages are written.  Again lack of personalization on this, where a manager lacks in taking the effort required, can demotivate as well as embarrass an employee.

The Terminal Antidote :  This is a very common phenomenon. Among employees there is a category who are silent performers. It is the manager's responsibility to recognize these employees, who are the backbone of successful projects. But unfortunately, recognition for these people is delayed or forgotten many a times. Finally, when it comes to the manager's ears through probably an accidental one-to-one meeting done with a Human resources person,  the immediately reaction is to nominate the person for a reward to boost his morale. These "Terminal Antidotes" are usually the "last straw" and are more an insult rather than a reward.  Letting the employee remain unrecognized is a better option that this , since these antidotes acts as catalysts for attrition.

Proximania: This is another key factor, especially where managers handled geographically distributed teams. This manifests itself through the manager's actions, wherein  the outside world perceives only the people who physically are near the manager as performers or his lieutenants. A manager who suffers from Proximania ultimately ends up with a demotivated remote team. This factor is also a major blinder for a manager and prevents him from implementing intrinsic motivators for an employee, like visibility and adding more responsibilities.

Glorifying Suckers:  This is the worst of them all.  Even employees who go with the philosophy of  "Do thy work and have no expectations" can also be turned off by this. This manifests where a manager invariably ends up by proving "Peters principle" while providing added responsibilities to employees.  In this situation, performers usually end up either reporting to Suckers who manage to create a mirage with a manager who suffers from "Proximania".  Managers who don't realize that they are doing this,  invariably end up institutionalizing the above four factors also into their work, and thereby lose out on building winning teams.

Rewards and recognitions are one of the key pillars of team building and is a continued area of research. But ultimately whatever be the prescriptions, it all depends on an individual and his commitment and passion to implement them.  While doing that, if care is taken consciously not to let the above five factors rise their heads, then, the probability of build high performing and cohesive teams can by at six sigma!!!!