My first post on rewarding employees explored the importance of providing a reward that is meaningful to the recipient. My second post explored the purpose of rewards, the timing of rewards, and my thoughts about rewarding all the members of a team rather than a few individual members of the team.
In this final post on rewards, I explore answers to the following questions: Do rewards work? Are they manipulative?
Rewards aren’t effective for everyone.
I have friends who oppose rewards. My friend, Marty, tells me she feels manipulated by rewards. They remind her of grade school where if she did as the teacher told her, she would receive a high-grade.
Are rewards manipulative? Yes, they are. Face up to that fact: You want the recipient to repeat their behavior and you want others to notice the reward so they will exhibit a similar behavior. That’s manipulation; regardless of whether the manipulation is in the best interest of the organization as a whole.
I had dinner with my friend and colleague Ken Estes a few months ago. He had recently participated in a workshop on animal training led by Karen Pryor. We were talking about what he had learned. Ken is sharp; rather than tell me what he learned, he asked me, “When Is a reward a bribe?” My mind plumbed its depths. Ten seconds later no answer had surfaced so I replied, “Uh… I don’t know, Ken. When is it a bribe?”
“When the trainer shows the reward and issues a command.”
Bingo!
If rewards are clearly specified in advance, people like Marty, feel bribed and they don’t like it. I can empathize with her feeling. No one wants to feel like they being manipulated by a lousy dog trainer.
I have observed a glow on Marty’s face and a sparkle in her eyes when a team member appreciated her for organizing and interpreting problem data, which she did exceptionally well. I suspect she didn’t feel manipulated because no one said to her, “If you organize and interpret the problem data exceptionally well, I will appreciate you during a team meeting.”
Someone noticed and took the time to share their observation with Marty. The person who noticed wasn’t her manager. He was a member of the same team. A thoughtful appreciation from a member of a team about the work of another member is a powerful, underused reward.
I recommend scheduling time during status meeting for you and other team members to appreciate the work of each other. Make it special by not scheduling appreciations every meeting. In my experience, once every two weeks works well. I’ll have a separate post on this topic next week.
If Marty is the North Pole of attitudes toward rewards, my friend Sandy is the South Pole. She wants to know the rewards in advance so she can maximize her gain. She doesn’t feel any manipulation. She sees winning rewards as extra compensation.
Employees respond to rewards differently. People like Marty don’t like being manipulated by rewards but will respond positively when you notice something they did well. People like Sandy don’t feel manipulated at all: They feel compensated for their trouble. And the remaining people are in the middle feeling some degree of manipulation and some degree of compensation.
Employees talk about organizational rewards. They sometimes agree with them. They sometimes object to them. But, in my experience, employees respond to them.
The most effective programs reward to produce the desired results with the people who are doing the work. Designing these programs isn’t simple and unintended consequences are possible.
Rewarding is like cooking a stew… Add good ingredients and spice to accent the desired flavors. Cooks who carefully taste and conservatively spice produce tasty stews. Careless tasting and liberal spicing produces disasters.
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