A Job Done Well - Making Work Better

Episode 15: Reward and Recognition - The Workplace Steroid

• Jimmy Barber and James Lawther • Season 1 • Episode 15

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This week, we discuss our different tastes in pancakes - what does Jimmy’s preference for vegan delights and James’s taste for galettes say about us?
 
 We also talk about Reward and Recognition - what is the difference between the two, and what behaviours and outcomes they drive. They’re like steroids. They will turbocharge behaviours, but are they the behaviours you want? Do large corporate incentives work, or are they a waste of money? 

We also discuss what works, a simple thank you for a job done well (see what we did there) and creating an environment where your staff can feel and be successful.
 
 If you have any questions or comments or need help with motivating your teams, then get in touch with Jimmy@ajobdonewell.com or James@ajobdonewell.com.
 
And if you enjoy this episode, follow the show, share the episode and check out our back catalogue  

James:

hello, I'm James.

Jimmy:

Hi, I'm Jimmy.

James:

Welcome to A Job Done Well,

Jimmy:

the podcast about the world of work and how to improve the daily grind How have you been, James? have you

James:

Very good, thank you very much. Pancake night, last night I, had some, some very posh, some very highbrow, galettes, mate. No pancakes for

Jimmy:

What on earth is that?

James:

they've got brown flour in them. Anyway. I,

Jimmy:

them. Anyway. I, on the other hand, and I hate to admit this to you, I had vegan

James:

Vegan pancakes Were they tasty, were they? They were

Jimmy:

they? They were alright, yeah. Not bad.

James:

Yeah,

Jimmy:

Better than I thought they would be. But I think, I think it's a rule of life If you smother anything in golden syrup, it's going to be

James:

syrup, it'll taste alright. My daughters think so. What are we talking about today then?

Jimmy:

So, today we are talking about, reward and recognition. we're going to explore a couple of subjects. How you get the best from your staff. And, what's the difference between reward and recognition.

James:

Well, let me have a go at that then. The difference between reward and recognition, because they're usually bundled up together, I think recognition is really straightforward. Recognition is after the event, and it's a thank you or an acknowledgement for achievement. So that might be just as simple as a thank you, or it might be a card, or it could actually be a payment of some time. But it is after the event. There's no expectation of it happening. Reward, on the other hand, tends to be something upfront. It's usually an incentive Very often something material might be a payment per thing that you do. Might be a holiday. Who knows? All sorts of ways of doing it. But the key thing I think there for this conversation is it's an upfront agreement. If you do this, then

Jimmy:

I think it is important to be distinct between them. I know we, uh, we use them very much in tandem. It's always a reward and recognition. I remember back in the day when we, worked for a credit card company. And, every team had reward and recognition budgets, didn't they? They I think for the, the dynamics between reward, i. e. upfront material, do this, you'll get that. I think that has a different, very distinct dynamic and impact I suppose the after the fact is building credit for the future. Yeah,

James:

an interesting way

Jimmy:

it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reward is building credit for right now,

James:

Yeah, the incentive is absolutely, yeah. It's almost set in stone, isn't it? It's sort of traditional common sense management. So the first thing you do is you set yourself some smart goals and targets. They have to be smart. Um, you need to make sure that they're aligned throughout the organization. So usually you've got this very clever interlinking set of goals from the chief executive running all the way down to a person on the shop floor. They're invariably linked to a clear incentive. So if you do this, you will get that payment. And the reason for that is, as everybody knows, money motivates. So what's not to like? I mean, it's obvious common sense, isn't it?

Jimmy:

it? And the thing is, James, you've actually said that with a relatively, straight face. When, bear in mind that last week we were talking about being authentic. Now, you've just told me that, and I know you think that's bullshit. I'm

James:

am lying through my

Jimmy:

you So, I think, though, I have seen it done in, in lots of places and I do think there is a really strong correlation between what you incentivize, what you reward and the behaviors you'll get. As you know, I used to run a sales organization and it was very prevalent there. We did, we gave everything away from, iPads to holidays and everything in between. And it did create a real buzz. It did drive direct behaviours. I think the challenge always were, because if you, if you incentivise slightly wrong behaviours, it was going to be fatal for you. And you were going to get completely the wrong outcomes than you wanted.

James:

And you were going to get completely the wrong outcomes that you wanted.

Jimmy:

Yeah. And the trouble is the behaviors that you then get are not always the ones that you

James:

ones that you

Jimmy:

And that's how people would behave. They didn't care about the impact on others, even the customers, the organization, you want to win at all costs. And as somebody who is inherently competitive,

James:

great

Jimmy:

One great example of this was, with the. Sales leadership team, we did a back to the floor event where we went and actually answered sales calls and, being competitive, I wanted to win. And I wanted to do the most sales. And sure

James:

the most sales.

Jimmy:

did the most sales.

James:

Were they, hang on, were they strictly legal sales?

Jimmy:

sales? Well, legal is a strong word, James. they were all disqualified and I ended up losing. Because when they listened to the calls, I wasn't selling in the right way. So I was, but I wasn't bothered about the way, the method, the behavior. I was just bothered about the outcome. The outcome was selling, and I wanted to win. And, it's like the other side of that competition is, you know, we also used league tables in a number of the operations I've worked in. And the people at the top of the league tables love them, and the people at the bottom don't. So I do think they kind of, work like magic in terms of driving behaviors, but they're often going to drive the wrong behavior. Yeah,

James:

It's almost a steroid of management, isn't it? It's the thing you give people to improve performance

Jimmy:

that's a very good analogy, because you get the, you know, you get the kind of fitness and the bulk and the, but,

James:

yeah, you also get liver failure spots, God knows what else.

Jimmy:

where have you seen it done, though? In

James:

experience was in manufacturing, and although they're, I mean, clearly targets, but at an individual level, on the shop floor, people had to work together, so it wasn't nearly so incentive driven. I've seen it done, I've actually seen it done quite well, worked in retail for a while, worked for one of the big multiple supermarkets. And they had two rather clever incentives. So this was a, a head office was in a big, it was in a city centre location. And parking was an absolute nightmare. And they had this thing called the golden cones, it was a golden traffic

Jimmy:

a golden

James:

Yeah, and what they did was, for the person at head office who was voted by the stores to have done the most useful thing to help the stores out that

Jimmy:

help the

James:

They awarded the Golden Cone, so you get to park by the front door, for good behavior. Which, yeah, wasn't financial and it was a bit of kudos, but it was really quite clever. And it meant you didn't have to get to work by 6 o'clock in the morning to find a parking space. The other thing they did, which was also quite clever, was the Chief Executive's Jaguar. So, all the guys in stores, they had the opportunity to promote a line. So maybe they were promoting rice pudding, or maybe they were promoting raisins, or whatever the hell it was. But for the guys who got the highest uplifting sales in any particular week, they'd get the CEO's Jaguar for that week. And that also was quite clever, because there's no way these guys were going to be driving around in a Jaguar any other way. But again, it was Qdos as much as anything else. So I think they were quite clever in saying that. But on the whole, I think, particularly in the service industry, where it's individuals and they are targeted with an incentive, it just drives a whole host of poor behaviour.

Jimmy:

you're the intellectual. on this podcast. Yeah, tell us what does, what does the research say about rewarding people's behavior and incentivizing outcomes? Well,

James:

Well, there are two quite interesting studies which were done. One was done by a chap called Sam Green. And there's a problem. It's a little candle problem, but the idea is you give somebody so in that box they've got tax and they've got to stick the candle to the wall candle And the time to see how quick. And most people start off by trying to melt some white. Dick in that or trying to, but after a while they make the mental leap and they realize, well actually box that is all Cayman is part of the solution. Tap the box to use it as a trek. So that's the problem.

Jimmy:

to be honest, when I was given that task, I gave up. I couldn't figure it out in the first minute. That's it.

James:

that board with that, but the point was it needs a little mental leap. Yeah. So what, uh, this psychologist did was he incentivize p. And the winner would get 25 for doing it in the quickest

Jimmy:

Which back in the 60s, that would have been a few

James:

was pretty quick. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a chunk of change. But what he found was he had two groups. Those were incentivized and those weren't. The guys who weren't incentivized, they took about 7 minutes on average to do The guys who were incentivized took 11 minutes. So the actual incentive made the performance worse.

Jimmy:

performance

James:

Yeah, it is. And the reason why is because what the incentive does is it focuses your behavior. It absolutely gets you focused on the task.

Jimmy:

But you're

James:

you're so focused you don't look outside the, sorry, outside the box, so to speak. You're very clever, yeah?

Jimmy:

didn't actually want to do that one,

James:

that. No, I couldn't help myself. I couldn't help myself. So incentives work really well in a sort of piecework environment. Yeah. But anything that involves a modicum or having to think about it. It's actually counterproductive.

Jimmy:

to be honest, um, if I think back to some of the sales incentives that we ran, people became incredibly focused and quite stressed. And, they became, because they really wanted the round the world holiday, whatever it was. And, to that level of stress where you're not doing your best work anymore. Yes. You know, so they, I can, I can readily believe that. Yeah,

James:

Yeah, if you think about it, I mean, if you're selling insurance or whatever it might be, actually, it's quite a creative process. You've got to think about what the different options are. So, there's the first bit. The other bit, which is quite interesting, also, I think, probably in the 1970s, some psychologists gave some nursery children some fancy felt tip pens. The sort of thing that was, a bit of a thing in the 1970s.

Jimmy:

very proud

James:

I've still got my 68 piece, Crayola colour set, I can tell you. I'm very proud of

Jimmy:

gave the kids

James:

But, what they did was they gave the kids some crayon, and they asked them to draw a picture. And half the kids, they incentivized. They said, if you draw, if you draw this picture,

Jimmy:

to win.

James:

then I'll give you a reward, you know, a little good worker badge, or whatever the hell it was that the kids wanted. And the other half, they didn't. And what they discovered was that, so this is with a sort of before the event incentive, what they discovered is that, when they came back two weeks later and laid the crayons out again, The kids that were given the incentive weren't the least bit interested in doing any drawing, whereas the kids which weren't incentivised carried on drawing. So it's almost the fact that they gave them this incentive just killed any intrinsic motivation they had altogether. Yeah,

Jimmy:

I can, I can well believe that because I do think that rewards are often a little bit like drugs. You know, they really, you know, give you a real short term hit in terms of the behaviors that quickly disappears and then, you need more of the, the drug to fuel your behavior. Otherwise you're not going to bother. And so I do think it has those real. Has that was real highs and lows.

James:

Yeah, I mean, well, you've got kids. If you're going to incentivise your kids, yeah, it's one thing to incentivise them to tidy their bedrooms, because they ain't going to do it any other way, are they?

Jimmy:

tried my, my hint, which was like, go in there and say, shit, we've been burgled.

James:

I can imagine the look I'd get of my daughter if I did that. And then there are other things which you want your kids to do, like for example revise for their exams, but if you incentivize a child on how many exams they pass, you can be sure as hell they're not going to pick up a book after they've, finished revising. Yeah,

Jimmy:

Yeah, no, it's a fair, fair point. And, going back away, I was incentivized to pass my, my exams when I was at school. All right. And my dad offered me an incentive. I did really well. And, he Oh, did you? Just not really interested? So that's incentives a, uh, I suppose a

James:

So that's incentives at a, I suppose a shop floor task based level. But what about, you know, big bonuses and management incentives? What's your thinking on

Jimmy:

and managing these incentives? What's your thinking on that.

James:

Yeah. You

Jimmy:

the more senior you are, the more money you get and all that sort of stuff. my personal experience, I think those are really nice for five minutes. You know, you get the money, you get the rating, you get

James:

of change in your bank account.

Jimmy:

and you feel really good about that. And then the next day you've forgotten about it. Whereas, what frequently happens is you don't, you don't quite get the rating you think you deserve. You don't quite get the reward that, you know. You think you deserved, and you're pissed off about it for months afterwards. You know, the hangover lasts a lot, lot longer. And we won't mention their name, but I know a certain friend of ours, next time we see him, will mention the fact that I never gave him any long term incentives at one point, when we worked together ten years ago. People don't forget, you know.

James:

But the thing that's supposed to motivate you actually demotivates

Jimmy:

and I think it also becomes an entitlement, because you get so used to having your bonus every year, you think it's your right to have it, I don't believe that, these sorts of incentives unlock any discretionary effort at all. I think people they either Treat it as an entitlement and therefore they're not going to make any extra effort. Or the other way of looking at it, which I always used to think, is they're often based on the overall organisation's performance. And, how much can you, in one of 20, 000 people, how much can you really make a difference to it? When we were working in an insurance company, you can't influence the weather. And every year there were floods and that was the incentive down the pan, or an amount of it. So, if you couple up the entitlement with, can I really make a difference to it, I reckon organisations across, the world are spending literally millions of pounds and not really motivating people.

James:

because the minute it goes away, you demotivate people. It's interesting, the company that I work for, which I think was, probably had the best motivated staff, they pretty much took the incentive, baked it into people's base salary. Everyone was very well paid, but it wasn't that expectation. And actually because of that, everyone was far more motivated. So, other downsides then? Anything that occurs to you? So, yeah,

Jimmy:

yeah, I think as we touched on it, it does encourage cheating. Yep. Yeah, and I do think it stops, I think you've become very insular in what you're thinking about. You don't really think about how you can help other people. It's about me making sales. It's about my team achieving stuff. It's not about, the overall organization.

James:

table. If you've got a league table of sales

Jimmy:

top,

James:

Why the hell would I, if I'm sitting at the top, share with other people what my top tips are? And

Jimmy:

And that's the ethos of how you want people to improve. you want the best person to figure out the best way of doing things and share it with everyone. You're not going to do that if you're in a lead table, are

James:

it run the risk of demotivating you, but actually, it probably reduces performance anyway. So,

Jimmy:

motivate

James:

Well, what motivates me? Well, there's a dark thought. I remember one occasion, very simple, I worked for an organization, and the chief executive and the chief operating officer always used to say, Hello James, when they saw me walking the corridor. Now, they might have thought I was some right pleb, but, the fact they always said hello, just made me feel like I was part of the organization, and that I wanted to be there. Really motivational. the other thing which, someone, something I did, was I once gave somebody a thank you card for a piece of work they'd done. Anyway, when we moved out, we were in cubes. When we moved out of the cubes some two years later, she still had the thank you card pinned to the side of her desk.

Jimmy:

I've got a load of rack of thank you cards stashed in my office that people have given me in the past.

James:

Yeah, it doesn't cost anything, but yeah, hugely motivational. and then the other one, interesting story., I read a story about baseball. Now, I have to admit, I'm not a big fan, or don't know much about baseball.

Jimmy:

know much about any sport. You know when I was growing up, it was always a really strong belief where I grew up, is if someone didn't know about sport, didn't like sport, you didn't trust

James:

grew up,

Jimmy:

a correlation between

James:

someone didn't know about speed in high school, you didn't trust them. It wasn't that there was a correlation between trust and speed. Dreadfully quiet. Nobody was getting excited about the match at all. And after a while, they tweaked on why. And what it was, was baseball's quite complicated, the

Jimmy:

had gone down. And

James:

And the scoreboard had gone down. And because the scoreboard had gone down, nobody knew how they were doing. And because nobody knew how they were doing, no one was getting excited about

Jimmy:

do think

James:

So I do think numbers are really important. I had a situation once, I was on a night shift in Grimsby of all places. We were making chicken curry. You can imagine, right? This is not sophisticated plays. But everybody was absolutely fired up and going for it. Chicken curry coming out of our ears. Why? Because we were going to beat the shift record. And everybody knew we were going to beat the shift record. And constant debates about how many turns we've made, just so that we could beat the record.

Jimmy:

think there's a great point about displaying progress is something I always think is important. Whenever I go into. Any business, any operation, I'd always look around and see, what is it they're measuring, and how are they displaying it, and, how much interest does it get. It does, it does give you a bit of the, kind of, it's like the lifeblood of an

James:

Yeah, but quite often you have these boards up, and they don't show how well we're doing. They show how badly we're doing.

Jimmy:

So, if, you know, a few things for me in terms of motivation. I do think your point about recognition, I think that is massively underplayed. We talked a lot about reward. The recognition of saying that you've done well or thanking people, I think it makes you feel, makes you feel valued. And it makes you feel like you're making a difference. From my pers

James:

just a question, how many bosses have you had who never, ever once said, good job? I bet you can think of some, can't you?

Jimmy:

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Just check

James:

Why didn't you do this instead of you did a good job

Jimmy:

Yeah, and I think if you think about the, those that really motivated you versus didn't, that will be one of the things that will be common. And, it wasn't just my boss. In fact, it often wasn't for me. My boss and it was from the teams that I was, working with, and it's like doing this, this podcast. We've had quite a few messages about people enjoying it and getting something from

James:

and getting time to respond. So, I think,

Jimmy:

I, I, to me, I think I always tried to think I was providing a service, creating an environment for people around me. So if they said thank you, or, or recognize something I'd do, that did, it did always,

James:

personally, you know,

Jimmy:

they? You were one of them, James, and you've never been accused of being a prize suck up, that's for sure. So I think, creating the right environment for people to be successful is important. And for me personally, I wanted to be left alone and have a bit of autonomy. Yeah. That independence always meant that, I was trusted to do a good job. So I think those are some of the things that really, matter to me. The other thing I think, money was often is talked about as a big motivator. I personally, and this is easy to say, I I was motivated by money only in so much as I equated that to the thank you. To the well done. Yeah. Because I had to,'cause that's what people were giving me. So if I got a pay rise, if I got a bonus, it wasn't the number, it was the fact that that was saying. Yeah, but

James:

I remember getting, getting a bigger job at one point. And you know, you get the bigger job. I didn't ask for And actually, I suppose it all comes down to, well I'm sorry, it's all about motivation isn't it? And there is a really good book, if anybody's listened to this, hasn't read or listened to, it's called Dry by an American guy called Dan Pink. And in that book, he talks about three things, he's had a good look at what motivates people. But he talks about three things, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Now we talk about purpose a lot, but are you doing something that's worthwhile? Autonomy, are you giving your heads? As you've said, that's important to you. And mastery, do I get the opportunity to really get good at this thing? And one of the examples Dan Pink gives is he talks about, Microsoft Encarta versus Wikipedia. And when you think about it, to start off with, you know, you've got Microsoft, which has got a huge number of resources, loads of money, and they want to build a internet encyclopedia, and then you've also got Wikipedia, which is a bunch of volunteers doing it off the side of their desk. And you'd have thought, you know, on face value, well, obviously Microsoft are going to win this race, but of course you can't get Encarta. Wikipedia wiped the floor with them. So it's just those three things. You know, people will go for miles and miles and miles if you give them that opportunity to do something useful and show that they can do it. So where does that take us then in conclusion?

Jimmy:

I think, we've recognition of a job done well. Works for a lot of you're doing well. You want to know that you feel valued. The

James:

thing is if you are going to incentivise someone, Rewards, they're just like drugs, yeah, you will get a short term hit and high, but over the long term they can be really destructive, and be really careful what you're incentivising. Because

Jimmy:

incentivising. Because it's quite possible that rewards will drive cheating, case in point here, and often will, will drive a lack of cooperation between people and teams.

James:

course is what all this reward and recognition is about. Purpose is all important. Are people doing something that they think is worthwhile? And can you give people their heads? Because if you give them their head, they will run through walls for

Jimmy:

think, to Dan Pink's points about motivation, think about how we are motivating people. Where if we didn't demotivate them so much, think about the environment we're creating for them. And quite often that environment will be demotivating. We wouldn't obsess so much about reward if, if we weren't getting it wrong in the first place.

James:

there you go, I think that's that.

Jimmy:

I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode. If you would like to talk to James and I about, reward and recognition and how you use it and some of the pitfalls in a bit more detail, feel free to get in touch. If you've got any questions, any comments. You can get in touch with us at jimmy at a job done. Well calm

James:

Thanks,

Jimmy:

Thanks everyone have a great week

James:

week. Cheers, now.

Jimmy:

If you'd like to find out more about how James and I can help your business, then have a look at our website at ajobdonewell.Com.

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James Lawther

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Jimmy Barber

Co-host