Recognise This! – Change is most easily influenced through peers, so ensure the behaviours of employees, not just managers, are those you want emulated by all.

I’ve neglected to share with you my latest posts on Compensation Cafe. Click through the titles below to read the full posts.

The Annual Bonus Conundrum * How to Reward Employees Appropriately without Creating Unintended Consequences (4th September 2013)

There are few absolutes in employee recognition and reward programmes. Regular readers know my stance on the annual bonus and its inherent problems.

1. It quickly becomes an expectation and entitlement, to the point where some have threatened to quit or even sue if they do not receive their bonus as expected.
2. It disassociates the reason for recognition from the recognition itself. By the time the bonus is received, most people have forgotten the reasons they’re receiving the bonus. More to the point, you’ve missed out on multiple opportunities to encourage them to repeat desired behaviours or results throughout the year.

Yet the annual bonus remains one of the most common forms of employee recognition and reward. Now, new researchout of Towers Watson shows annual bonus programmes don’t even deliver the results we hope for. Why? Click through to Compensation Cafe to read the three reasons.

How Do You Actually Influence Change? (12th September 2013)

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is, “How do we get our people to change?” Generally, people understand the power of a culture of recognition and are on-board with efforts to move forward to create such a culture, but they don’t know how. The biggest concern is often how to convince employees – especially managers – to change their behaviours, learn the skills and adopt the tactics necessary to make a new culture reality.

And this is understandable. Creating a culture of recognition is much more complex than simply implementing a new software system, for example. At its foundation, culture is both the outcome and the guiding force of the daily choices, actions and behaviours of individuals.

Click through to Compensation Cafe to read four ways to influence change from Chief Executive and why peer behaviours is the strongest influencer of all.