Employee Recognition Program

JRecore · November 2003

Hi to all - I'm looking for sometype of a list of criteria that would apply to a program that recognizes employees who go above and beyond their normal scope of duties. My peers are having trouble separating the expected, or part of their normal job, from the extra effort someone gives to accomplish something either under unusual pressure, time constraints that are not normal, contribution to a project, etc.

Has anyone developed a criteria check list type of format that they would be willing to share that I can at least start with. I'm not looking to plagerize, I'm more looking to validate that my impression of criteria for an employee being nominated for this type of recognition is valid.

I'm a big beliver in recognizing my staff on a regular basis with even simple things like, thanks for the help yesterday, good job on getting the statments done, things like that.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

HGHAHR · November 2003

We have an employee recognition program as well. We don't have a checklist, but encourage "proper" nomination through the nomination form. The recognition committee reviews all nominations and screens out the "just a part of the job" from "above and beyond" rather than expecting the employees to do it. It's not such a big deal for us, because we only have 80 employees and review 2-10 nominations per month. Sorry I can't be of more help.

Parabeagle · November 2003

In my opinion there's no way to make the process entirely objective. We have a recognition program that we are rolling out on January 1 that recognizes people for going the "extra mile" for guests, employees, etc. Anyone can nominate anyone for an award and all nominations are sent to Corporate. At Corporate, the Director of Ops and myself review all the nominations and select one winner per quarter. We don't have a checklist, but have included in our criteria that "exceptional performance of normally assigned job duties and responsibilities do not satisfy the criteria for nomination" and that acts must be an "extraordinary task or service not customarily part of their job duties or responsibilities." Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

stilldazed · November 2003

We don't have what you are looking for either, but we may be at a very early step--the employee evaluation. What I have done is produce a draft that forces a focus on key job responsibilities, peripheral or incidental responsibilities in addition to core job responsibilities, and incorporate an employee's compliance to safety regulations, training requirements, and our organization's mission statement. We're at the draft stage; therefore, no formal in-house presentation has been developed as of yet. Given my scenario, I would expect that exemplary performance might exceed all of the fundamental expectations captured by employee performance evaluation, but it would have to benefit the organization in a way the organization needs to be benefitted.

I have been part of other organizations in the past and have been the recipient of an award on three occasions. One for covering workloads of coworkers for extended periods (months) during their absences without requiring overtime hours, once for helping with a major proposal to extend anorganization's business permits so it could continue in the business in which it was in, and once to facilitate product licensing transfers in all states in the US during a company buy out so the new company could continue to sell in all states. (One characteristic of my Type A personality is generally a high level of productivity, which happened to pay off for me. I received monetary awards of several hundred dollars each time. It "feels" good to look back, but what I really recall is how stretched I felt at the time.) In those organizations, there was a formal supervisory nomination and selection process by the highest level of management. Awards were limited to a specific number annually (probably somewhere around 1% of the employee population) and were given to employees who shined in their own job responsibilities and who also picked up special projects that were necessary for the organization and shined in the special projects as well. The programs were not well publicized, so employees didn't develop an expectation. Also, the limited number of awards made the process fairly competitive.

Because of where we are in our overhaul of the evaluation process, I'm interested in other folks' input. It seems that a fundamental step must be the the method of measure, whether job tasks are accomplished at an outstanding level in addition to extracurricular activities or whether job tasks are compromised by extracurricular activities, and whether the extra productive truly benefits the organization in a significant way.

Employee Recognition Program

Comments