Results helpful for workplaces 'where employee motivation is low and individual performance is costly,' says academic
Getting recognition right can sometimes be tricky for HR departments.
But a new academic study shows that when it’s difficult to recognize individual contributions in a fast-paced environment, recognizing the contributions of the entire team can increase engagement.
The University of Waterloo conducted a 12-week analysis of what happened when a group of fast-food restaurant employees were rewarded for good work and how it made them feel about their jobs.
Every two weeks, the workers at six restaurants, which had about 30 workers at each location, and were operated by sthe same franchise operator, were given non-monetary tokens such as thank you cards or chocolates to reward good results.
As a result, engagement over that period increased.
“We think that the result of our study should be of interest to compensation system designers and companies in general, in settings where employee motivation is low but, at the same time, individual performance is costly or difficult to measure,” says Sasan Saiy, assistant professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
The study employed three proxies to evaluate the level of engagement, in the form of absences, turnover and lateness.
“We noticed that engagement increased compared to 12 weeks prior to the start of the recognition program. We did a pre- and post-analysis and we consistently see that the results are statistically significant,” says Saiy.
One restaurant chain recently gave some of its long-term employees a trip to Belgium, as a reward for service.
Team or individual rewards?
While other studies document the positive effect of individual-level recognition and employee engagement and effort, this study “provides the first empirical evidence that team-based recognition can be effective in increasing employee engagement and improvement,” says Saiy.
While it focuses on the fast-food industry — which includes 3.8 million individuals in the U.S. and about 425,000 in Canada — the results should be taken into account for other sectors, he says.
“Just the nature of work performed by fast food restaurant employees is highly team-oriented and interrelated, whereby to be able to provide a good customer experience requires employees to coordinate their efforts across numerous interrelated tasks, such as taking orders accurately, preparing orders quickly with minimal waste, keeping restaurants facilities clean.”
As a result, team-based recognition programs can be effective in settings where employee motivation and engagement while, at the same time, “measuring and measuring individual-based performance is very difficult,” says Saiy.
How to craft the best program
Team-based recognition definitely does promote collaboration and cooperation, “which are competencies that we ensure we want to recognize at CAA Club Group, and the ability to have a positive impact,” says Carla Spina, vice-president human resources at Echelon Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of CAA Club Group.
“Of course, it’s always based on results, but it demonstrates that associates, if they feel valued in what they’re doing, they’re contributing to the overall success [of an employer].”
As the winners of the 2023 Canadian HR Awards for best reward and recognition strategy, the company takes pride in its approach.
“Having a recognition program that recognizes individuals on an individual and team perspective, I think, is key but there’s also other intangible recognition, that is part of your culture, and who you who and what you are,” says Mara Notarfonzo, vice-president of total rewards at CAA Club Group in Thornhill, Ont.
Using rewards to reinforce culture
A truly great recognition program reinforces what you’re trying to achieve from a cultural perspective, she says.
“Whenever we merge or acquire a new organization, there’s the business plans on how do we operationalize, how do we synchronize technology? How do we look for business-process improvement? And one of the first things that our senior leaders always ask for is ‘How quickly can we put in our recognition program to help drive the results that we want to see from an operational-based perspective but also reinforce our culture and our values?’”
And how the recognition program is communicated to the workforce is also a key driver of success, according to Saiy.
“The messaging is very important prior to the adoption of the engagement and recognition program. So how you implement it has to be well-designed and well communicated, both before and during the programs. Just simply implementing a recognition program without proper communication and implementation most likely won’t have any major effect, especially in settings where there’s chronic problems with employee engagement.”
For HR professionals, the key is to consider a rewards and recognition program as an ongoing and neverending process, says Spina.
“What’s important as HR, when you’re consulting with your leadership teams, is to ensure that frequency recognition is not just a one-and-done, it’s constant. It’s really looking at those meaningful opportunities to recognize your associates and to actually be precise on why you’re recognizing them.”
Being specific in the praise is also key to it working.
Don’t resort to just saying thank you and being very broad, she says, “versus actually giving examples and making it meaningful for the individual receiving the recognition is important.”
