Carrots and Communications: A recipe for all employees

Reward and recognition programs are adopted by all types of organizations – across industries – to move or more needles on employee behaviours. But, despite the best of intentions, these programs, which are often launched with much fanfare (and budgets), often fall well below their ambitious targets for engagement, retention, and organizational alignment*. The result: organizational leaders, HR executives and Project Managers can distance themselves from such programs or conclude that they’re somehow ineffective. 

So, what’s all this got to do with employee communications?

We’ve found quite a lot employee ---- but not in the way you might expect.

It is fair to say that very few organizations ensure that employee communications professionals work together with those building their reward and recognition programs. Now, stop and think about that for a minute. Does that really make sense? Considering that one of the core functions of employee communications is to reinforce an organization’s desired behaviours and true values, doesn’t it make sense for them to be involved in reward and recognition programs that are, wait for it, built to reinforce an organization’s desired behaviours and true values?

Separation is not intentional, but it is problematic

You can rightly ask yourself why these two activities are kept apart from one another. On this count, there is good news according to Mike Byam. Byam is the Managing Partner of Terryberry which is one of the world’s leaders in reward and recognition platforms. Byam suggests the separation of employee communications professionals and reward and recognition programs “is not deliberate” or emerging from malice. That being said, separating these two activities creates problems and lost opportunities

Just consider how employee communications is viewed when it comes to rewards and recognition programs. Employee communications is seen merely as how the programs are promoted. In other words, the program is the product for employees to embrace and employee communications is simply the advertising. Pigeonholing employee communications in this way means that insights about employees gathered through communications initiatives are omitted in the development of rewards and recognition programs.

Those responsible for building rewards and recognition program aren’t the only ones with a limiting set of blinders on. Employee communications professionals, by default, overlook how such programs can inform employee communications plans and initiatives. These programs are a treasure trove of data that could be used in shaping employee communications messages, more effectively deploying employee communications tools/venues and setting refined expectations about sparking behavioural change.

Employee communications and reward/recognition programs: natural allies

Eventually, employee communications and reward/recognition programs will dovetail and work together on achieving their mutual goal of reinforcing desired behaviour and organizational core values. To get an inside scoop how and catapult your organization, check out The Swear Jar podcast episode, Carrots and Communications with our special guest Mike Byam, Managing Partner of Terryberry.

Special offer

**Special offer** – Win a copy of Mike Byam’s The Wow Workplace. Just send us an email with a story about how your organization’s employee communications work well (or not) with your rewards and recognition program. Send your story (under 300 words) to "[e-mail].