Leadership Evaluation Introduction to Award Program

Any discussion of employee incentive programs will make use of many different terms, most of which will mean different things to different people. In order to ensure the discussion has apples-to-apples clarity, this paper begins with a basic lexicon.

Employee incentives are a form of payment that is tied to the performance of employees. The incentive payment can be either intangible or tangible, and with or without an actual cash value. Because they are non-discretionary, incentive payments can be given at any time when the performance of an employee warrants it. This inclusive category includes awards, bonuses, recognition, and rewards.

The categorical term award covers a lot of territory, and commonly includes monetary incentives, plaques and trophies, prizes and contest payouts, public recognition and commendation, and travel bonuses. A reward is generally given to an individual when a pre-determined goal has been met. Bonuses are typically distributed to a group of employees when a team, department, or business enterprise does well on fiscal returns, sales, and the like. Recognition takes place after-the-fact or on the occasion of some milestone anniversary. Employee recognitions are typically a public display of appreciation that may include tangible items and/or intangibles, such as a formal thank you letter or email, an extra day off with pay, or cash for coming up with a winning suggestion for an improvement.

Target Industry and Company. The award program is designed for the high tech industry -- and specifically for a software development enterprise. A leader in this type of company is likely to be responsible for full cycle development of a software product, and would head up a team of software engineers. The leader will be capable of working as a member of a horizontal team of peer leaders from departments across the enterprise, such as marketing, compliance and legal, client accounts, and sales. Encouraging and rewarding technology innovation is a primary focus of this award, but the emphasis is not on product creation (Avolio, & Yammarino, 2013). It is about the vision and execution that opens the way to new technology development, and the corresponding pursuit of novel ways to bring products to launch (Avolio, & Yammarino, 2013).

Rating Criteria and Application

General Attributes Associated with Criteria. The intent of the leadership award program is build ubiquitous leadership, not to create followers or even to single out a small minority of employees to lead be nurtured as leaders, with everyone else put in a box labeled Employee, Non-Leader (Deal, 2007). Rather than scaling the operations, models, and processes of the business, employees who are recognized by the leadership award program will give evidence of spending time and resources to build leadership in the organization (Deal, 2007). Recognized leaders will demonstrate self-awareness, and awareness of culture, context, emotion, and the organization (Biro, 2013). Criteria for awarding leaders will hinge on examples of engaging with, listening to, learning from, and observing employees (Biro, 2013). Leaders who are likely to be recognized and awarded will exhibit humility and practice sensitivity (Biro, 2013). The leadership award program will help to identify instances when leaders encouraged other employees to challenge the opinions, positions, and perceptions of established leaders (Avolio, & Yammarino, 2013). One marker for this type of behavior can be seen when a leader changes his or her mind, conveys that unlearning is a positive, and seek both personal development and growth as a leader (Brent & Dent, 2010).

Major Award Categories and Selection Criteria

A nomination process will be used to identify exceptional leadership within the target organization. Similar to a 360-degree performance evaluation process, the nomination process will be designed to gather information and perceptions from colleagues at all different levels and across all departments in the organization with which the leadership award candidate engages in work transactions.

Category 1. Sets a vision and achieves results.

Selection Criteria & Associated Rating Criteria

1. Demonstrates the ability to motivate others.

2. Fosters an environment that encourages and permits others to fully contribute.

3. Clearly communicates a path to goal attainment.

4. Establishes a culture of continuous quality improvement.

5. Appropriately and enthusiastically recognizes...

Encourages innovation and intelligent risk-taking.
Selection Criteria & Associated Rating Criteria

1. Creates an environment where creativity is fostered.

2. Creates an environment where mistakes are an accepted basis for learning.

3. Establishes focus on being a learning organization.

4. Equitably builds in time for innovation.

5. Rewards intermediate steps toward innovation.

Category 3. Confidence to stand alone and make tough decisions.

Selection Criteria & Associated Rating Criteria

1. Trusts team members to thoroughly research objectives.

2. Recruits and hires people who challenge the conventional thinking.

3. Pushes reliable data upward to evoke change.

4. Takes responsibility for failures.

5. Chronicles successes and keeps tacking toward them.

Category 4. Fosters a climate of fairness, respect, transparency, and trust.

Selection Criteria & Associated Rating Criteria

1. Supports employees to achieve, learn, and grow.

2. Recruits and hires for a diverse team.

3. Regularly meets with all staff to discuss rationale behind decisions.

4. Encourages and follows up on suggestions.

5. Ensures horizontal and vertical channels of communication.

Rating of the selection criteria is based on a 5-point Likert scale that uses the following convention:

0 -- Does not apply

1 -- Never demonstrates

2 -- Rarely demonstrates

3 -- Occasionally demonstrates

4 -- Consistently demonstrates

Application. The employee award program will be driven by several key practice considerations. Awards will be distributed in a manner that is as spontaneous as possible so that timely, in the moment recognition is given to employees as they carry out exemplary work (Deal, 2007). Authentic, extraordinary, and measurable work will be acknowledged using descriptive language that is specific to the effort and the context. Employees enjoy knowing how their contributions play into the overarching goals of an organization (Nahavandi, 2012). This is one of the reasons that recognition is more powerful when it occurs in the context of an activity that is focused on business results (Nahavandi, 2012). When the extra effort of an employee helps to accomplish a goal or otherwise bring about a good outcome for the company, that employee will know that their effort was noticed and that others understand what they have contributed. The recognition that the awards provide will be on a scale appropriate to the effort, the contribution, and the results -- otherwise the meaning of the award is diluted or lost. The award program will conducted in a manner that conveys authentic meaning, providing a truly human response to genuine human effort expended for the good of the organization. Feedback from employees on the design of the award program will help ensure that the employees perceive the program as a valuable system. The chances of awardees feeling valued as individual workers, and understanding the value they add to their company or organization, is increased when they are recognized and rewarded in a manner consistent with their value system. While monetary awards are a component of this award system, they will not be used automatically -- and they will tied to the economic gain of the organization.

Application of Leadership Award Program

For an award program to be effective, it needs to encourage or foster certain specific actions by the selected target group of employees. Moreover, an award program is based on particular criteria, including the measurable behaviors of employees that are influenced by the award program (Yuki, 2013). Changes attributed to the integrated motivational strategies intrinsic to the award program are observed and measured over a defined period of time (Yuki, 2013).

Potential Benefits of Award Program for Organization

A fundamental objective of an award program is employee engagement. Experts generally define employee engagement as energy that is positively focused on work and is associated with a sense of purpose conveyed through personal initiative and effort expended to achieve the goals of an organization (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Although the definition of employee engagement varies across business enterprises and organizations, there is general agreement that a positive relation exists between the level of employee…