Employee recognition has become a vital motivational tool for
managers seeking to incentivize their staff and encourage more
cooperation between individuals, departments and teams.
As Bob Nelson, author of "1001 Ways to Reward Employees" (Workman
Publishing, New York) points out, the top reason employees leave
organizations is that they feel employers have not recognized their
contributions.
One of the many companies that have begun taking a closer look at
employee recognition programs is Thrifty-Rent-A-Car System Inc., the
Tulsa, Okla.-based car rental firm. The company has created two
recognition programs with new twists that make them more meaningful
for employees, and easy and flexible for managers to implement.
Employee Recognition Without Politics
One program is facilitated out of the corporate communications
office, and involves formal procedures for nominating and recognizing
individuals among the approximately 500 employees at corporate
headquarters. There are two new approaches in this program--which
recognizes an "employee of the month" and an employee of the
year"--explains Meloyde Blancett-Scott, vice president of reputation,
spirit and planning.
First, nominations may be made by any employee, who may wish to
recognize a fellow employee at any level in the company, including
their boss or their boss' boss. By opening up the process to all
employees, "we can identify the kinds of positive behavior that
oftentimes management does not see," says Blancett-Scott.
The second unique feature of the program is that the employee
committee choosing a winner from among the nominees does so solely on
the merits discussed in the nomination form: Blancett-Scott's
department strips out names, titles, and departmnts of nominees. "We
extract out of the original nomination the pertinent behaviors that
cause the person to be nominated."
The result, she says, is that politics or personal popularity do
not influence decisions. "A lot of people," she says," never pat
themselves on the back, and they never promote themselves. This is
designed to capture that information and reward those people."
Decentralized Thrifty Bucks Program
Blancett-Scott also said the company determined that there was
need for a less formal program that would allow department managers to
quickly be able to recognize outstanding performance "above and
beyond" the norm in their groups. For this the company came up with a
company currency that could be handed out by supervisors and managers
to deserving employees.
Printed with a likeness of company President Don Himmelfarb, the
TRAC (for Thrifty Rent A Car) Star Bucks are redeemable for movie
tickets, dinners and shopping certificates. Even though the money may
be worth as little as $10, the prestige of receiving it is greater
than that of receiving cash in that same amount, says Blancett-Scott.
"It's amazing what employees will do for a TRAC Star Buck."
To take away the sting of having to pay income taxes on the
awards, Thrifty even pays the taxes on the awards.
Gives Managers Flexibility
Explaining the rationale for the program, Blancett-Scott says,
"We felt that we needed something a little more immediate than the
employee-of-the-month program."
She notes that because there are not set criteria for the awards,
some managers under-use the program, while others over-use it. "There
are good managers and bad managers--that's life," she explains. "We
can only encourage our managers to recognize performance that is above
and beyond." (Thrifty, 918/665-3930; Workman, 212/254-5900)