BetterWorks Breakdown: Employee Recognition & Reward Myths
A post written by Derek Irvine and titled "Debunking 10 Myths of Employee Recognition & Rewards” has been making its way around the office. Never shy of voicing opinions, the BetterWorks team quickly started a discussion thread, commenting on specific points.
The article focuses on the biggest misconceptions in effectively rewarding and recognizing employees. To put it bluntly, times have changed and the old way of doing things no longer works. Employees want to be consistently appreciated in meaningful ways. This is one reason the BetterWorks perks and rewards platform resonates so strongly with leading companies looking for new, more effective ways, to take care of employees.
You can read all ten myths here. Two incited the most commentary: Cash is the best reward, and appreciation and recognition is only for the elite.
Overall sentiment i
s that cash is overrated. No, really. A bonus is great in theory but rarely do you get the full amount, and it typically goes to things like your car insurance and not something to reward yourself. (Check out our interview with Mallory Maske from the Rubicon Project for 8 Ways to Make Employee Bonuses Really Count).
Another hot button is the importance of recognition and appreciation for the big and the little things. Kudos aren’t just for the boss, the superstar sales executive, or the cool kids who work on all the fun projects. Kudos should go to everyone and be given by everyone. Truly rewarding cultures are ones where the whole company is empowered to recognize a peer.
Does your company subscribe to any of these myths? Do you think cash is king? Take a read through some opinions from BetterWork’ers.
Myth 2: Cash is the best reward
I like the myth about cash being the best/only reward. In "predictably irrational," Dan Ariely talks about how compensation creates a monetary/business relationship between two people (in this case, the company and the employee). It is much different from the friend relationship that you have with your buddies, or the family relationship you have with relatives. And for birthdays and other times of recognition, we very rarely give our friends/relatives cash. We tend to give them something special - an item, a service, etc.
If companies do the same thing, their employees will feel more like a family/group of friends rather than just employees at a giant corporation that doesn't recognize them. I'm sure everyone at BetterWorks has seen this effect take place already. And of course, BetterWorks is an ideal platform for hooking employees up with non-cash rewards.
- Misha Silin, Sales
Cash bonuses are also not ideal because they are heavily taxed and therefore inefficient as a frequent reward & incentive tool. Once, I wrote a C code generator that generated 2 million lines of code in a much more human readable format for configuring a networking chip that another team team adjacent to mine was developing. My boss was really impressed and gave me a nice 3 digit bonus. However, I ended up only getting about half of that because of IRS calculations that the bonus was a permanent addition to my monthly salary (even though it was just one time), so I was therefore taxed at the next higher up tax bracket for that month.
To me, that was a downer instead of a reward. It would have been much more preferable if it was a material present, a celebratory group lunch with the team, or non-monetary recognition that cannot be taxed away.
- Kuangwei Hwang, Engineering
Myth 7: Appreciation and recognition are only for the elite
I like how this article points out to reward not just the top performers. Sometimes only certain people get noticed for their hard work and it makes the others feel under appreciated. It's important we let employees recognize each other. Fewer employees will go feeling unappreciated because people on a team will notice the little things someone else does to make their life easier or if someone really goes the extra mile to meet a deadline. This will help take care of the good behavior managers miss. When everyone feels truly appreciated, now there's an amazing company culture.
- Danilo Stern-Sapad, Engineering
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