The HR Cafe

Some fringe benefits with a decidedly green tinge

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Dear HR Executive:

Here’s some out-of-the-box thinking about fringe benefits.

The city of Austin, Texas, has bought 15 bicycles for employees to use for business needs or during lunch. The move is intended to help reduce use of cars in the city and thereby reduce Austin's carbon emissions. The city spent $3,840 -- $256 apiece -- for the bikes and will provide helmets and locks, city spokeswoman Charlotte Blum said.

The city is also partnering with Daimler, which is providing 200 fuel-efficient Smart cars in a car-sharing program for employees.

Bikes and Smart Cars aren’t for everyone, of course. But when you think about what people spend on getting from Point A to Point B, there’s an opportunity for innovative companies to come up with ideas that have a big impact on workers’ lives. For example, I once worked for an organization that allowed employees to use its pickup truck on weekends – first come, first served. It was a nice perk – and the cost to the organization was minimal. Transit subsidies like TransitChek are another low-cost, yet highly visible, benefit.

And if, like the City of Austin, you can reduce your organization’s carbon footprint at the same time, you’ve got some great fringe benefits that deliver a lot of bang for the buck.

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Café Training Center

Celebrate mistakes to keep employees engaged in their work

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Dear HR Executive,

Everybody's heard about, and probably tried, rewarding employees for good performance. But maybe organizations should also celebrate mistakes.

Provided they're the right kinds of mistakes, of course. 

Not mistakes caused by laziness, carelessness or low standards.  "Good" mistakes are the ones that happen when engaged employees try something new. Or aim high and miss.  Mistakes that promote learning are good mistakes too -- when they point out a false assumption or uncover knowledge gaps. In a healthy corporate culture, people and organizations see mistakes as opportunities for improvement.

No cover-ups

To drive home the point that you want to glean all you can from these inevitable foul-ups -- and discourage people from covering them up -- consider measures that offer positive reinforcement for engaged employees who admit errors.

You might want to:

• Create a "Lessons Learned" award, with a gift certificate for the person whose acknowledgment of error proves most helpful or instructive.
• Establish a system that allows people to report their own mistakes -- anonymously or otherwise -- with no repercussions. 
• Set up a meeting with top management to explain -- in the employee's presence -- how his or her admission helped improve a process or correct a systemic inadequacy.

Of course, if the same person has to be recognized over and over for making mistakes, maybe thanks is no longer the appropriate response... 

Dave Clemens

Editor-in-Chief

The HR Cafe Newsletter

Scenario: Incentives and motivation

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Dear HR Executive:

Every HR pro or manager who's ever tried to design incentive plans knows what an ungrateful task it is. And I'm not just talking about comprehensive, enterprise-wide plans. Getting a simple $5000 bonus right can be gruelingly difficult.

Here's a scenario that highlights the challenges involved in using incentives to motivate people. In the coming year, my guess is we're going to see a lot what's described here.

Scenario
Operations Director Joe Brown was clearly frustrated when he entered HR Manager Kate Wiley's office. "Last year my warehouse manager got his full $5,000 bonus because he played a key role in overhauling our inventory system and cutting costs 10%. And the company was doing great. This year he did everything he needed to do, but costs bounced back a bit and the company's profits are down.

"Neither of those things have anything to do with him, but I could only justify giving him a third of his bonus and he's totally demoralized. He says he promised his wife a trip to the Caribbean and she's furious with him. The guy is now threatening to leave the company.

"I never saw this coming. Last year you and I talked about how incentives can motivate people by aligning their goals and behavior with those of the company. Well, it worked great last year but blew up in my face this year. I never want to use bonuses again. But if I don't use them, how am I supposed to motivate people?"

What would you say to Joe? Please click on the "comments" link below to share your thoughts.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

The awesome power of unexpected gestures

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Dear HR Executive:

Are you losing good employees simply because they feel your company is indifferent to them?

I saw a really interesting survey from the American Society for Quality and the Quality Productivity Center showing that an “attitude of indifference” was the reason 68% of customers left their service providers. Customer defections were rarely about quality. Or service. Or some huge blunder. People just felt ignored.

My intuition tells me a lot of managers simply forget about their solid performers, assuming they'll stick around forever. Then one day ... they leave.

So what can you do to show employees you're not indifferent? One simple, inexpensive way is the "unexpected gesture." Here are some great examples from the sales/customer service world that, I hope, will inspire you to come up with ways to surprise your valued employees:

• A bank teller noticed that many of the customers who came through the drive-in window had dogs in the car. So she took it upon herself to keep a box of dog biscuits nearby. Customers rave about this unexpected treat. What a statement of personal appreciation!
• Lots of hospitals give new mothers flowers or a basket of goodies when they check out with the baby. But a hospital in Florida came up with a twist on that idea. It sends flowers one month after the mother gets home. Just at the point where reality has set in, a bouquet of flowers really brightens up an otherwise trying day.
• A restaurant owner learned from his staff that over-40 patrons often had trouble reading the menu. Seems they forgot their glasses. Today, every waiter carries a cheap pair of magnified reading glasses. Patrons are delighted beyond words when, after squinting to read blurred type in dim light, they can read the menu perfectly with a set of borrowed glasses. 
• A corporate information systems troubleshooter does a fine job fixing her  “customers’ ” computer problems. But no matter how busy she is, she always calls the next day to make sure everything works okay. She’s perceived company-wide as an irreplaceable resource.   
• A surgeon always makes a point of meeting with his patients’ family members both before and after every surgery. If it’s a long operation, he’ll call during the procedure just to say everything is going fine. He understands the deep anxiety family members feel when a loved one is ill, and he knows he can comfort them simply by taking a few minutes to talk to them. This surgeon has developed a near-mythic reputation in his field, and gets more referrals than he can possibly handle.
• A salesperson for a tool-and-die company called all of his contacts at a given account at least once a month and asked, “How are we doing?” The buyer wasn’t always so surprised by that. But the secondary decision-makers were delighted to be asked. And they had long memories. When they got promoted and became decision makers, who do you think they trusted with their business?

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Rewarding employees

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Dear HR Executive:

Here's a reward/incentive scenario you'll never see:

Yesterday my six year old got a timeout. My two year old, who always wants everything her big sister gets, wanted one too. So, while I was trying to get her to eat her angel hair pasta and meatballs, she said, "I won't eat it unless I get a timeout."

At which point I uttered words never uttered by parent in human history: "Okay, if you eat your dinner I'll give you a timeout." She ate. I put her in the corner for five minutes. Smiles all around.

I'm waiting for the day when an employee comes to me and says, "I'll work overtime this weekend if you'll dock me a couple vacation days."

Rewarding employees is tricky. We had a discussion recently about giving out some awards to "most loyal employee" or "most helpful employee." But the idea got nixed because, "You'll end up creating a bunch of losers." Hard to argue with that. And yet ... there's gotta be a way.

At a former company the CEO gave out high-priced tickets to sporting events. But people who didn't like sports grumbled that the company didn't give them anything of value. So by doing something good ... the company ended up doing something bad?

How many times have I given bonuses to people who freeloaded off the efforts of others? And how many times have hard-working, earnest employees missed their bonuses for reasons totally out of their control? 

Rewards, both monetary and non-monetary, can blow up in your face if you're not really careful. I'm at the point in my career where anytime I consider giving new rewards or incentives, I run my ideas by several very smart, perceptive people from different parts of the company and try to find the holes in my logic.

Below is an article from B21's newsletter Human Resources 21 that gives some ideas about personalizing non-monetary rewards, which is a lot of work but can be a very effective strategy.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Rewarding workers with ‘personal touch’ still the best approach, but ...

During the gift-giving season, we all remember the old saw, “It’s the thought that counts.”

The same holds true for employee rewards. While allowing workers to select their own rewards (e.g., from a catalog) ensures people get something they want, that’s still second best to a reward with a personal touch.

But because people’s reactions are so hard to predict, the “personal touch” can backfire, either by:

• revealing the manager doesn’t know the worker that well (giving a box of chocolates to someone who has been successfully dieting for months), or
• calling attention to a person in a way that’s embarrassing (praising a painfully shy person at a company meeting).

Recognizing that there’s no shortcut to thoughtfulness in rewards, here are some approaches to try:

1. Match reward to behavior. This reinforces good behavior. Has a worker put in extra shifts during a crunch? That may have stressed the worker’s family life. Some time off and a gift certificate to a restaurant shows the manager understood the sacrifice.
2. Reaffirm a person’s strengths or self-image. If an employee is an athletic sort, a gift certificate for a round of golf may make the person feel good about that. (Make sure they’re not recently injured, though.) Or sports tickets.
3. Remember attention. Old-fashioned face time with the boss works. Taking the employee to lunch or out for a drink, and listening to the person’s ideas, is flattering and appreciated.

Rewarding people -- three "musts"

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Dear HR Executive:

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: compensation and reward are the most complex issues any company (or HR person) faces. Part of the reason is the extraordinary emotion attached to money. But it's also because compensation and reward schemes are terribly complicated and can easily backfire. You know this if you've ever seen someone get totally demoralized after getting a $5,000 bonus -- "Why didn't I get 10?" -- or if you've seen your brilliantly conceived "Caribbean cruise gift for the top salesperson" blow up in your face when you realize that you created one winner and dozens of losers. We all need help with this stuff. Here's a useful piece B21 ran in its newsletter Human Resources 21. Read on.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher

Three things companies MUST know about rewarding people

Bottom line: recognition and reward are central to what managers do

Even very good companies are sometimes remarkably bad at recognizing and rewarding their employees. The reason is that it’s so incredibly difficult to do well. Here are three obstacles, as well as suggestions for overcoming them:

1. Managers don’t see their own role in recognizing employees
Every employee’s most important relationship is not with the company but with his or her boss. So if you have 50 managers at your company, and each one has five reports, that’s 250 opportunities for things to go terribly wrong!

Solution: Managers need to be trained about the importance of recognition. At the very least they need to understand these iron laws of employee motivation:

• For your subordinates, you are the company. If they like working for you, they’ll be motivated and stick around.
• Employees crave positive feedback. As their boss, you’re the key to their career success. Nothing demoralizes like the deafening silence of a boss who doesn’t communicate.
• Employees seek meaning, and they’ll only find it if they see a link between the work they do each day and the company’s goals. As their boss, it’s your job to make sure they see the link. You can do it through formal bonuses or informal recognition
• Money is only one of many ways to motivate. Performance feedback, as well as informal recognition, can be even more effective than cash.

2. In times of change, reward programs get overlooked
The company president at a parts maker ordered his lieutenants to emphasize expanding business with existing customers. So customer service reps got in-depth training on how to engage customers in a dialogue that explored needs. But management forgot to change the bonus structure, which rewarded reps based on call volume. So reps rushed from one call to the next, which totally undermined the new strategy. 

How could that happen? Were they stupid? No. Reward and recognition programs take great thought. And it’s hard to rethink them every time the wind shifts. The same sort of thing has probably happened somewhere in your company.

Solution: Never let reward structures be an afterthought. If there’s dissonance between an articulated strategy and the reward structure, how do you think employees will sort out that confusion? They’ll abandon the strategy and go for the dollars (or the prizes, or the praise). In the end, you’ll get what you reward.

3. The easy solution, one-size-fits-all recognition/rewards, doesn’t work
A lot of companies buy season tickets to baseball games or the local theater. Or they give away meals at top restaurants. Then they dole them out as a reward for worthy employees. At one company, out of the blue all employees received a beautiful compass when the company beat its performance goals.

Most reward experts say these programs, though easy to create and administer, don’t motivate people. What if you find baseball tedious? Or hate musicals? Or have eating restrictions that prevent you from dining out? The compass backfired because employees were left wondering, “Do they think we’re lost?”

Solution: Tailor rewards to individuals. Find out what your employees like and customize their reward. If your shop foreman loves golf, buy him 18 holes at a premium course (and throw in a glove and box of Titleists). If your controller loves antiques, give her a gift certificate for a nice antique shop.

With personalized rewards, people see the time, effort and thought you gave to crafting such a meaningful gift, so you get a huge bang for your buck.