Q.From an employee perspective, what essentially makes a place ideal for rewards and recognition? Can you share some of the characteristics of such workplaces?
A. There are many ingredients that need to be put in place – fairness and consistency across employee groups, innovative thinking to develop a few not-so-common practices and more importantly, the practices should be easy to understand and implement. There is no point having great practices with complex mechanism. Practices must be in sync with the mechanism.
Q. How can management ensure that rewards and recognition are in sync with the demands of employees? How do you measure or understand those demands?
A. By engaging with employees on constant basis and by observing what they use the most. Normally, the demands of employees are so diverse and vast that it is difficult to meet all of them, but the trick is to keep moving and keep adding at least one-two new practices every year. It is important to be meticulous in thinking and approach.
Q. In the context of India, are rewards seen as more significant than recognition or is it the other way round?
A. They are complementary and cannot substitute or replace each other. It is more individual-dependent rather than country specific. Rewards essentially address our material needs and recognition addresses the social and emotional aspects.
Both are equally important and relevant. While material needs motivate an employee to perform better, social and emotional needs make him or her confident and resolute.
Q. Please discuss some rewards and recognition methods adopted by some of the top companies and how does it make them different from the rest?
A. The typical reward mechanisms are fixed and performance-linked, like pay, employee benefits and long term incentives/equity. They are directly linked with performances and are quite common.
Recognition is done through a variety of practices, some of the common ones include performance awards, incentive trips, long service awards, impromptu/spot awards and recognition through internal communication channels like newsletters, in-house magazines, intranet etc. Both rewards and recognition are important today.
