Wrecking Recognition * Tell Us Your Stories

On his Employee Engagement Zingers blog, David Zinger posted today on "Wrecked Recognition," encouraging folks to enter our contest for the worst stories of employee recognition gone wrong.

David shared some of his favorite stories of wrecked recognition:

Instilling disengagement. Perhaps you were given a hat and you hate wearing hats or you got a company pen that leaked all over your purse. Perhaps you were given a box of donuts and you were dieting. The wrong type of recognition does not foster employee engagement, it instills disengagement.

How long can you last? Years ago most recognition events seemed focused on how long you worked there. It seemed if you had been there 30 years the organization would finally recognize you.

Public recognition or humiliation. At one organization I worked with, they called in the work crews to publicly acknowledge them and it was painful. These guys would have preferred never to be singled out in front of their peers and asked to come up to receive a plague and a gift. If the workplace really saw these gentleman they would have done it quietly in the lunch room or run it out to them where they were driving heavy equipment. I believe some of the men experienced the recognition as humiliation or punishment not as reinforcement for good work. We must recognize the impact or our recognition.

Dying for recognition. One organization somehow failed to recognize that someone had died and the person who had died two weeks earlier was called up to receive their award.

What about you? Tell us your stories, and enter to win $500, $200, or $100. Contest ends March 31, so submit now!