Incentive - December 2008 - (Page 25) “weekly feedback” as well as “daily encouragement” would improve performance. But she found almost identical preferences with members of the “emerging workforce”—those of all ages who had been in the workforce for less than four years. Ventrice believes this demonstrates that motivation preferences may have less to do with age than with length of time in the workforce. “Much of what we attribute to the younger generation really has to do with newness in the workforce,” says Ventrice. “While age was a factor, the strongest variation came from years in the workforce.” Ventrice believes these results illustrate that the reputation millennials have for needing frequent attention and recognition is due more to their recent arrival into the workplace than any unique cultural attitudes. “Since after about World War II, every generation has shared these kinds of characteristics,” says Ventrice. “We have all had this sense that ‘I am more than my work,’ that ‘I know more’; the boomers did that, Gen X did that and now the millennials are doing that.” These kinds of cultural differences and similarities were some of the early aspects of the workplace that first interested Ventrice about recognition and motivation strategies. Over 20 years ago, Ventrice worked as an enterprise resource planner, The Recognition Fairness Hierarchy going to new companies and helping them to coordinate all their activities and information into one umbrella computer system. Visiting new workplaces week after week, Ventrice began sensing that she had less interest in the technical side of her projects than she did in the people she met and corporate environments she had the opportunity to tour. During this time and since, she has paid attention to the impact of a broad range of recognition types, including verbal thank yous and days off as well as merchandise, travel or gift card rewards. According to Ventrice, the bottom line in deciding to use any kind of recognition is: “Will it have lasting impact and will it be the right kind of impact?” “Lasting impact comes in both positive and negative,” says Ventrice. “I’ve heard some fascinating stories of types of awards that people had hung onto because they were reminders of how unvalued they were…[the incentive] is a tangible, lasting reminder, so be sure it’s reminding them of the right things.” Ventrice gives the example of a service award being sent to an employee via an interoffice envelope instead of presented in person. To make a more positive, lasting impact doesn’t require a huge investment of time or money, according to Ventrice. Another study she conducted last year looked at which type of recognition was the most meaningful to the respondents, and how much those types cost. While 11 percent listed recognition awards valued at “over $1,000” as their most memorable gift, 57 percent of the respondents, which included a cross section of ages and regions throughout the world, said that free recognition that they had received was the most memorable. “Regardless of what the economy is, what we’re talking about is always high-demand. When the economy goes down, [employers are] looking at meaningful ways to make people feel valued without spending a lot of money, and when the economy’s robust, they’re looking for ways to really tell the top performers that they’re valued, and know that just pay doesn’t do it,” says Ventrice. In studying incentives, Ventrice has found a major reason many managers neglect to recognize employees is because of worries about appearing unfair. To avoid any appearance of favoritism for certain employees over others, managers may end up trying to give everyone equal recognition or abstain from overt kudos altogether—watering down or completely drying up any kind of recognition culture. This is where personalization and smaller types of recognitions and spot rewards can succeed, according to Ventrice. As she charts in the hierarchy of awards (above), rewards with higher perceived value are more likely to spark concerns about fairness, so they should be used sparingly, both to boost their significance and to keep it fair among employees. Interestingly, according to Ventrice, raises and cash awards are some of the incentivemag.com | December 2008 | Incentive | 25 Illustration: Mark Armstrong http://www.incentivemag.com
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