As the story goes historically the festival of Rakhi was celebrated with wives tying rakhi to their husband and in turn, the husband would pledge to protect them, but of course, today’s reality couldn’t be more different.
If you tie a rakhi to someone, that someone can be anybody to you but never your husband. Through decades the whole meaning has changed 360 degrees, and of course, a big ‘What If’ which probably can never be solved; we will never know for sure what was the real deal.
I was collating research material for my book and realized how similar the two situations are. Failed recognition programs end up just like our Rakhi Story.
Let me explain.
The original intent for any recognition program is always to make people feel good…and appreciated…and happy for the good work they do. Period.
There is no other reason for a recognition program to exist. Of course, as a result of people being happy they get motivated and they do more.. and you get higher retention, lower attrition, an awesome culture at work, goals are achieved and all other variations of the goodness…. Right?
But in reality just like our festival of Rakhi somewhere down the line and over a period of time things get lost and the original idea is completely changed or worst. Everyone believes strongly in the new reality.
Recognition programs even while they start with the right intent they become all about what’s easy to execute or manage instead of what will make people, feel truly appreciated?
Think about it once someone higher up decides ‘We need to implement a recognition program’ everyone gets into execution mode to implementing a recognition program which fits… fits the organization scale, size, and budget.
Don’t get me wrong you have to look at all these aspects but more importantly, we need to ask… ‘Will this make people feel appreciated?’
Ask the right question and you will be on the right track.
Otherwise, there is so much bling out there that you can easily get swayed into technology into big-budget spends into big analytics… Recognition is not that complicated and hard.
Simply we need to build an anchor, our “Why”, A Why which should be more than a pretty poster on the wall or a detail white paper report in cyberspace which no one refers to once made.
Every time you introduce a new activity you should go back to your ‘Why’ and see if it meets the original expectation. You will not be able to say things with 100% certainty but that’s never the point but I can tell you this that it will save you from making expensive mistakes.
It will help you stay true to your story.
