Do the remuneration and reward policies of your organisation recognize the values and culture you want your organisation to be known for? Or do they reflect the ugly underbelly of what is really happening in your workplace? That’s a tough question, because it is the behaviours of the employees and leaders that determine the culture, and what gets rewarded gets repeated.
Karen Gately in an excellent article ‘Leverage Reward and Recognition Strategies to Drive Culture’ (read it here) addresses this issue and provides some suggestions on how to ensure your programs “not only reinforce desirable behaviours, but make clear also those detrimental to the success of the individual, team or business.”
- Create and maintain awareness – regular communication about the program can support efforts to keep the importance of the desirable culture on the radar.
- Focus on outcomes and behaviours – place priority on not only what people achieve, but also how they go about it. That is, don’t undermine culture by rewarding people who achieve outcomes by behaving poorly.
- Recognize role models – you can do this by acknowledging those members of the team who demonstrate examples of the behaviours that are needed, with the added bonus that as these people progress in the organisation, it will strengthen and grow the culture.
- Make no exceptions – don’t reward the ‘high performance’ bully, and irrespective of the nature of their role or authority, someone who is having a detrimental impact on organizational culture or team engagement should not be rewarded.
- Be creative – find a variety of ways to reinforce the cultural expectations and positive examples.
The article in full is worth the read to see how Gately expands on these points, because culture can make or break your organisation.
The Avondale Bsuiness School can help you with your organisational needs, to find out how just call or email Warrick Long on 20 4980 2168 or [email protected]