Beat Recognition

By Matt Buttell, Deputy Editor

HRM’s Matt Buttell talks with Tom Miller about the relationship between recognition and reward programs and corporate culture.

“Organizations are a bit like people; they've got their own DNA, a different heartbeat and a different spiritual core and a recognition system needs to reflect that”
-Tom Miller, President of Recognition Professionals International

Tom Miller, president and owner of The Miller Company, which develops and operates recognition and reward systems for mostly Fortune 1000 companies, has been working in the industry for about 20 years – though he is the first to admit you could have a very big discussion around what the industry (and what a recognition program) actually is. “It looks different depending on the organization,” he explains, “I’m a believer that organizations are a bit like people; they’ve got their own DNA, a different heartbeat and a different spiritual core, and a recognition system needs to reflect that.”

In the time he has been working in this industry, Miller has seen a real shift from product-orientated selling toward intellectual capital. He believes this has been a ‘true effort’ to understand what recognition and reward systems can do within an organization to impact the bottom line, change behaviors and align effort and talent with where an organization is desired to go. “It’s a fascinating industry to be a part of if you’re interested in people performance and how people relate and integrate to each other,” he adds, “It’s been a lot of fun.”

Communication

Miller also believes that a recognition and r ewards system can be used as a communication vehicle between an organization and its respective employees. He notes that if there is an alignment there, then employees have a better idea of how to perform in a way that is beneficial to the company. This communication is also essential in determining the, as Miller puts it, DNA of a company: “It’s not the only way to do it, but it is a very strong motivational tool and can send a very strong message to support that,” he notes, before going on to say that he is less of a believer in the relationship between recognition programs and counteracting negative impressions employees can have of their employers. “If there are negative impressions out there, there’s not really a way to recognize that away,” he says. “What companies need to do is make sure they’re dealing with reality in terms of the health of their culture, the health of their working environment and the value proposition that is offered to employees.” He notes that if things are wrong with any of that, a recognition program won’t help.

Where it might help, however, is with regard to the current turbulences we are experiencing within the economy. “Obviously we’re dealing with quite a difficult time at the moment,” says Miller, “and I think there are two directions companies can go as far as recognition programs are concerned. One is the way those companies go who look at recognition as an effective way to maintain employee engagement and continue to invest in the employee relationship.” In other words, difficult economical times shouldn’t mean companies should stop investing in their people; difficult times don’t last, things cycle around, and when they do, companies will want their good people there, and they’ll want them engaged. The opposing side to this, and the other thing Miller see companies doing, is taking the view that recognition is nothing more than an overhead, believing that it is superfluous and eliminating it in an effort to cut budgets.

He notes this attitude as dangerous and says it presents a plethora of challenges. After all, if his logic is right – if a reward and recognition system is a means of communicating the heartbeat of a company to its employees – then by removing it, what are companies saying to their workforce? “If all you’re saying is, ‘We’re a good place to work when things are healthy, but when the economy goes bad you’d better just be lucky you have a job here,’ then that’s going to breed cynicism.”

Miller prefers the idea that we’re approaching a new trend within the industry. He calls it ‘the people era’, which, he believes, sees companies moving away from traditional trends such as technology – which Miller now believes is ubiquitous with in the industry – and toward understanding that performance is all about the people. “Recognition is not the Holy Grail,” he goes on, “but it’s part of the mix of a company’s employee engagement strategy. The intellectual capital around it and thinking about how to use it is the era we’re now in.” In short, recognition is an indicator of what companies are doing in terms of corporate culture and organization, as Miller explains, “We’re through with the hierarchical era of 20 or 30 years ago when people did what they were told because their boss said so. Recognition looked different then. Now there’s a sense of entrepreneurial effort from people, a sense of owning your work, and recognition systems need to reflect that.”

The smart companies are those that use recognition wisely. By creating as much flexibility and as much on-the-ground impact as possible, and by integrating recognition with training and communication gives supervisors and managers the discretion to do it successfully. “There is some art involved,” notes Miller, “Management should be able to use the recognition and reward system as a tool they can flex and bend into specific purposes, while at the same time getting the organization’s work accomplished.”

Technically speaking

When Miller refers to technology as being ubiquitous with the industry, he’s not wrong. “Companies are pretty far behind the curve if they aren’t already considering or aren’t already using technology and technological solutions in their recognition and reward system,” he says. “A few years ago, maybe it would be as little as a couple of years ago, there were some real technological advances and some ‘ah-ha’ moments in the operation of recognition and reward systems. These days, the technology is out there, and while not much new is going on, companies need to be thinking about how to use it.”

Technology has become so important to the recognition space because it creates a much more efficient delivery system: “It enhances communication and enables more efficient recognition. The most important thing technology has done for this space is give organizations the insight into what’s going on within their system, which then gives them insight into what’s going on within the culture of their company.”

Miller goes on to talk about the key rules for designing a successful recognition program, saying that the Recognition Professionals International (RPI) group, with which he is closely linked, has designed and developed a set of best practices for this. “They begin with the strategic and filter down toward the practical,” he says. “There’s a lot of science and research behind how to do it well. The rules are pretty expansive, but ultimately, a recognition and reward system has to align with the corporate culture, so the corporate culture has to be based in reality.” Miller explains that the first thing an organization needs to do in is take a hard look in the mirror to ask whether what they are saying about themselves is true. “From there, the recognition system should look at that truth, look at the reality and derive behaviors to say where the organization is trying to go.”

Strip a recognition program down to its bones and, essentially, it should enable every employee the ability to be recognized for what they can do to impact the organization. “It doesn’t mean that’s a guarantee and that everybody will be, but that’s the effort,” says Miller. “That’s the hope.”

Conversing diversely

It’s a huge challenge to design recognition programs for diverse workforces and come up with ideas that appeal across the board, especially in today’s markets where so many companies operate on such a global scale.

I’m in school actually over in the UK and in Paris and I’m learning a great deal about the various cultures internationally, and they’re very, very different. If we were to take a US-centric version of how we recognize people and just wholesale and blindly implement that in France, it would be a disaster. It would be a laughingstock, and you’d create very cynical employees.

There has to be a great deal of understanding about the different cultures within an organization. Whether it’s different countries or not, you can still find different cultures. In the US, for instance, the South is different from the North, so there has to be an understanding. And there can be mistakes made. It would be easy to take the technology and build one system and very easy to scale that across an organization and say, ‘Hey, we’ve invested in the system. The system’s done. We’re going to use that system come hell or high water wherever we have employees.’ Well, that attitude is a mistake.

Systems need to be made to be flexible. You have to understand an audience and an audience in the US is different than in France, than in Asia, than in the UK and so forth. It’s more work and you have to invest in it, but you have to do that if you truly want to reflect the character of the organization.