Turning Soft Stuff into Hard Results

Employee recognition is often called “soft stuff”. Recognition rarely stacks up against the more financial performance metrics regularly at the forefront of business meetings.

What can we do to give employee recognition the justice it deserves?

Make the “Soft Stuff” much more tangible
The first key in making recognition have more tangible value is to determine the organizational impact recognition has. Do employees feel more connected and thus become more engaged? Are certain performance outcomes driven higher by an effective incentive program? Has one department or business division exceeded target results and attributed it to a recognition program they have established?

Whatever it is you find that you know has recognition as a strong contributing tool then you must highlight the level of importance of recognition to leaders. They must learn the strategic importance and driver of performance that recognition can play.

You also have to determine how trackable the criteria are so you can create solid metrics that correlate the value of recognition in producing results.

Monetize what is easy to put a dollar sign to
Determine what the critical elements are that need to be measured – is it turnover rates; productivity levels; quality control percentages; safety levels, etc. Some of these numbers are far easier to turn into corollary currency figures.

Be aware of objectives continually on the radar screen from your senior executives. When bottom-line figures are the issue how can you make recognition an ally in the cause. If retention is a problem, how can recognition assist HR in helping managers better retain the real assets – our employees. These numbers need to be simply turned into dollar signs so conditions without recognition and those with can be compared and shown to make a difference.

We all have to become better business analysts. Ask questions of those who do perform business analysis to understand the financial implications of measures that impact business strategy. Find out how the objectives with more people strategy initiatives are being achieved and how they are viewed from a financial return perspective.

Allow some non-monetary elements to stay that way
I have gained a great deal from Jack Philips from the ROI Institute on how to turn intangibles into tangible measures. In his book Show Me the Money, I learned it is important to question the best use of our financial and human resources and ease of conversion, as to whether it is worth turning certain soft numbers into dollar signs.

Some numbers speak volumes just as they are. One organization had such low recognition scores on their employee engagement surveys that senior management automatically requested reports on how to address the issue. No dollar signs were needed there.

One also has to be careful not to squeeze the wrong numbers. Tangible rewards and bonuses do not necessarily equate with feeling recognized. Most financial rewards are really only compensation and transactional in nature. Intangible and more personal recognition is not only transforming it actually transcends a pure monetary viewpoint of work.

We need to work hard to turn soft stuff into hard results but it’s worth it.

Please share what you are doing to monetize or give stronger hard result focus to employee recognition initiatives you are carrying out.