Lessons in How NOT to Reward Employees | 2-Minute Video

As an HR pro, you know it’s critical to reward deserving employees.

But sometimes it’s just as important to know how NOT to reward employees.

You want to get rewards right because, when you don’t, employees often feel underappreciated and undervalued.

Get rewards right, and it pays off: Employees with managers who excel at giving positive rewards and recognition are 40% more engaged than those who don’t have managers who do it well, according to research in the Harvard Business Review.

Failures to Reward Employees

Unfortunately, many leaders don’t get rewards right. In fact, in a quick Reddit search, you’ll find some rewards that fell flat. For instance:

• A $5 Starbucks card for doing weeks of unpaid overtime
• A check for $7.28 for busting my a$$ to hit a sales goal
• Another pizza party
• A hand towel — one, single $*!tty quality towel packed in plastic, not even with the company’s name
• A  a $*!tty book about losing weight
• A single movie voucher, so no guest. A condition on the voucher was that the movie had to have been in theaters for at least 10 days, and
• More work!

What’s Up in This Episode

Fortunately, in this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, Jackie Plunkett, Solution Consultant at isolved, helps us identify bad rewards. She explains where some rewards went wrong and the thinking that sealed their fate. Even better, though, she shares tips on getting employee rewards right.

Click, watch and listen for more details on rewarding employees well throughout the year.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

In HR, you know employees are motivated by different things.

You might even think you can motivate and reward employees based on their generation. Say Boomers want cash and little fanfare. Meanwhile, Gen Z thrives on opportunities for growth and public attention.

But that’s not usually the case. In fact, the opposite could be true.

Our HR Expert, Jackie Plunkett, gives a good example.

Jackie Plunkett: “I’ve worked in organizations where they’ve tried to give sales awards in five different ways to make five different generations happy. And you know, there is a generation that’s going to be irritated by that and I’m probably in it. But that doesn’t always work. You can’t always find that one-size-fits-all.”

We know that one-size-fits-all doesn’t tend to work in any workplace situation. And here’s what Jackie found out when one organization tried to motivate and reward based on generations.

Plunkett: “We had the people that wanted weekly awards as they were disengaged. We had people that wanted monthly awards so that they knew that they did good that month and they weren’t in jeopardy, that their sales were in the right place. And then some wanted a quarterly achievement or an annual award. Some people just wanted it one time a year — they were irritated they had to go through all this. But you have to put everybody in those buckets.” 

If motivation and rewards by generation don’t work, what does?

Plunkett: “I would say do what makes sense for your organization and your time and your money and your resources, and then take feedback on it and see what’s working and not working and see if you need to adjust it. But trying to make people happy all the time and leading with that will typically fail first. So just start where it makes sense first.” 

Everyone at work needs some motivation, and then rewards for their efforts. To get rewards right:

• Skip generalities. You might not be able to personalize every reward. But you can’t assume similar employees will want the same rewards.
• Be practical. Balance the company’s resources with employee feedback to get the right mix.
• Adjust. What works to motivate employees today won’t work forever. Go back to the drawing board regularly.

You can’t please all the people all the time, but you can motivate most of them with careful consideration of rewards that really work.