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Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-35 October 4, 2013

Author: Jim Lundy

Drive Employee Performance with Social Recognition

Summary: Enterprises are constantly seeking ways to drive the highest performance from employees. Social recognition is the latest twist of a classic model that allows for employees, partners or customers to be recognized by peers, managers or both.

Recognizing people for their contributions to a company is a key part of workforce motivation. Many firms have had recognition programs in place for years. Social recognition takes that process to a more engaging level, allowing more people to participate in the process. This research note explores the shift from traditional recognition to a socially enabled one.

Business Success Hinges on Employee Performance Legacy performance management has been the subject of much discussion and in some cases an over pivot on its importance. “A recent survey conducted by Towers Watson shows that organizations with better-engaged employees enjoy a 19% increase in annual operating income compared to a 34% decrease in enterprises with disengaged employees.”

Understanding how people perform and then classifying them is a management function, but it has overshadowed a larger and more strategic objective: getting the highest potential performance out of people.

Many HCM departments, in their quest to have their systems of record in place, sometimes over pivot on tracking performance. The recognition part of the equation, telling people they are doing a good job, giving out recognition pins, instant awards for going above and beyond, is often overlooked by many firms.

Performance and Recognition Social recognition is all about socializing a traditional part of the employee recognition process. Performance tracking has been a major enterprise process since the 1950s, and has grown into a major component of an HCM suite.

Topic: Social Business

Issue: What are the trends in social software?

       

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Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-35 October 4, 2013

Recognition has been part of the motivation equation at firms for years. Enterprises that still offer management training preach this, but for many enterprises the science of recognition is still an art that is not practiced consistently. With the advent of social networking and now social business applications, recognition is a key part of many social networks and it is now recognized as a social business application.

Social Recognition and Motivation When a recognition program shifts from a traditional approach (e.g., an award is given out at an event) to one that is socially enabled, the amplification factor cannot be overemphasized. People love to be recognized and when they know their peers see that, it motivates everyone to work harder.

Additionally, employees who receive recognition are generally more satisfied at work. Happier employees work harder. While this is generally accepted, many firms fail to implement solid employee recognition programs.

Social Recognition and Social Platforms The key point about adding recognition to a social platform is you should not separate the formal recognition program you already have in place from the one you want to add to your social network. Since we are practitioners of social networking and help end user enterprises with their social strategy, we advise enterprises to look carefully at things such as badging, to ensure it isn’t overdone. Enterprises need to take a step back and look at what they already have in place in areas such as recognition before they socialize it.

For many firms, they already have a corporate recognition program. News about recognition is often isolated – it may appear in a newsletter, but often the recognition is limited to those who were present when the recognition was given. Amplifying that program with a social capability can have a huge impact on people’s performance.

The reason is simple: More people can see that others got recognized, and it makes them want to seek similar recognition. This suggests that tying corporate performance and recognition with social recognition is a best practice.

       

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Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-35 October 4, 2013

Gamification A case in point is gamification, the application of game mechanics to other kinds of software (see Note 1). In startup circles these days, you can’t go five minutes without hearing about gamification. What the enthusiastic promoters don’t mention is that gamification, for all the noise around it, is still in its infancy.

In years of covering corporate learning, I’ve coached a lot of clients on various aspects of gaming and simulations. I’ve even created some award-winning learning simulations. They were successful, but only because of long planning and work. I never found a magic bullet or a magic button that said, “Click here to add game stuff.”

It’s certainly tempting to look for one. After all, if you can make learning fun and engaging, why not do it everywhere? Airlines and customer communities have used gamification for years with moderate success. Reading about these successes, some people think of their current project and say, “Hey, let’s find that button and gamify this thing!” Unfortunately, like a poorly designed video game, gamification can be overdone, done unnecessarily or inappropriately, or just flat-out done wrong (see Note 2).

Social Networks Amplify Participation When employees see others being recognized it can serve as a strong motivator for them to deliver enhanced performance. This is the trend we are seeing overall as social networks mature. More and more platforms are adding some form of instant kudos, ratings or in the best scenario, recognition. An example of this is in an engineering department. Agile development was being used and at the end of each sprint, an engineer had to give a demo of the code that had been developed. When the demo went well, the general manager gave that engineer a 5-star rating in the social network. Word quickly spread and then many engineers were eager to take their turn, in part because of the recognition they had received in the social network.

The Shift to Engaged Social Recognition and Performance In many of the scenarios we have seen over the last twelve months, people can are given a gift card or points that allow them to select an item of their choice from a store or marketplace. This connects the formal corporate recognition plan to the social

Note 1: Gamification: Think Of Behaviors First

The oldest form of gamification is a sales compensation system. Sales compensation rewards a sales executive financially for selling products and services. The compensation system is designed to reward certain behaviors, such as sales to new customers or sales of certain types of products. Sales executives quickly figure out what the comp plan is about and tailor their activities for the maximum payout. Similarly, frequent flyers do the same thing, such as planning their trips to maximize reward points.

Unfortunately, application development has yet to use game techniques to foster good planning and design practices, so you’re on your own for motivation. Just resist the urge to leap into gamification before you figure out what you are trying to accomplish. Then, think about how gamification can help you meet that goal – and most importantly, how it cannot. This takes work, planning and the discipline to ignore the hype, focus on the endpoint you’ve decided on, and use only the game elements that make sense in that context. Note 2: Gamification Doesn’t Replace Good Design

Just like building a great game, designing gamification to be part of a product or service takes work. That means deciding on the objectives first, and then using things like algorithms (machine learning) to reward certain types of user behavior (rewards, levels etc.). Done right, these things can increase the right kinds of behavior. Done wrong (like a bolt-on) and you can end up trying to undo what was a weak attempt at gamification in the first place.

       

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Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-35 October 4, 2013

engagement. It allows for instant recognition and often conveys the message “the company cares.” That message translates into increased performance from the person who got recognized.

Planning Assumption: By year-end 2014, social recognition, which leverages both gamification and formal recognition, will be an accepted way to engage employees and customers. Social Analytics Helps Us Understand What’s Happening Lastly, social analytics can help managers understand levels of engagement. From participation to connectedness to identifying high performers, social analytics is an important tool for both the HCM department and line managers.

To illustrate the power of social analytics, consider that people often volunteer to help other teams. Social analytics can show how people are connected across groups. Co-workers are often connected in close proximity in a social graph. However, when one person is connected across different groups, they represent a bridge and are often identified as ones to watch and could be high potential candidates (see Figure 1). This kind of insight is invaluable for managers.

Figure 1: Social Graph Analytics Can Identify High-Potential Candidates

Towards an Integrated Recognition Strategy One problem has been that recognition programs are isolated. Our opinion is that social and corporate recognition need to be merged. We feel that the amplification that social recognition offers when added to a traditional recognition program cannot be ignored (see figure 2). When people see that others got recognized, it helps to motivate them to higher performance.

       

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Workplace Service RESEARCH NOTE Number: 2013-35 October 4, 2013

Figure 2: Social Recognition Improves Performance

Social and corporate recognition need to be connected because doing so reinforces the right behaviors more effectively. By its nature, social recognition, which notifies the community when a manager or peer recognizes an associate, makes everyone aware of the recognition. Moreover, open-ended feedback and follow-up, available to and from everyone in the community, can extend and amplify the recognition, increasing its motivational value.

Aragon Advisory

• Recognition is a part of any high-performance enterprise. Enterprises should examine their recognition programs to how it ties to their performance management approach.

• Enterprises should add social recognition to their roadmap and develop a rollout plan. The rollout plan should be revisited periodically to ensure the recognition program is working and adjusted if not.

• Managers need to be trained to understand social analytics, the social graph and the role they play in recognizing and identifying high performers.

Bottom Line

Enterprises need to leverage social recognition to maximize performance from their employees. Social recognition goes beyond traditional recognition due to the amplification effect. Improved employee performance due to increased engagement has been shown to positively impact the bottom line.