Does reward programs for employees really create the motivation?

What could ensure total loyalty from any employee? 

Is it above market median pay, liberal benefits, fancy perquisites, accelerated career, or robust recognition opportunities?

Having a sound reward plan, is no guarantee for eliciting employee’s loyalty and serve as a passport to superior performance. The employee reward plans can at best achieve short-term and purely a temporary correction in employee behaviour.

Reward programs do not produce lasting changes in employee behaviour just as penalising employee brings an impact which lasts only for short periods. The positive impact of rewards lasts only for a few days just like the swing and sting of cricket ball which is lost once the shine fades away.

Employers cannot aspire to secure a durable loyalty by rewarding the milestone anniversaries with liberal monetary rewards. Long serving employees are not committed to  acknowledging  with continuous contribution.

Acknowledging invokes positive feeling which lasts till the recipient finds and compares with  some other colleague who is perceived to have got the reward undeservedly.

In one of the organisation where I worked, the award selection committee strongly felt that the youth should be encouraged and the award should go to the junior most eligible contestant when there was a tie with a very senior employee for  “employee of the year award” for smart performance.

The decision of the committee turned out to be a counter- productive act. Within one month, the same employee was sitting in an exit interview with the manager.

The reason cited by him for his exit was that he felt it to be fair to be given a pay raise after having proved his capability as the top performer. In his own assessment he deserved the raise and it would be only fair for the current employer to meet the competitor’s offer.

The managers felt outraged about the whole approach of the employee and the  bad effect it had on the reward itself.

The top management decided to scrap the entire award scheme.

The good intention of the management to reward superior performance to get other employees to emulate the behaviour failed to buy even temporary loyalty from the employee.

The unhappiness that follows any disappointment drives the person to behave entirely different and do even untried things if possible to avoid any further disappointment.

Despondency and negative feelings arising out of unfulfilled aspirations to win reward can last longer. Announcement day of winners of various awards in organisations is the most stressful day, as it makes employees who did not make it to feel disappointed and sulk. Whoever lost would not openly acknowledge or say that some other employee deserved to win. When someone loses, the immediate reaction is to even doubt or question the whole system.

This is not any management team would expect to get in return for rewarding an employee. There is always a section of employees who perform to their peak level despite absence of any reward.

The big question is whether rewards can ensure better output from them? The answer is negative.

The employees, who always look forward to getting a reward, have higher anticipation. When their anticipation fails, it results in huge disappointment and they become less productive. There is conclusive evidence that people with anticipation to receive a reward for completing or for just doing a task successfully, simply do not perform at superior level when compared to those who work with no anticipation.

It is human nature to anticipate which makes employees work for the reward and makes them deliver less as they work only in the environment which fetches return for doing something which is mainly the money.

The rewards destroy the inventive spirit of employees. In an experiment conducted with consumer product designers, people produced highly qualitative results when any reward was absent than when a huge incentive was introduced.

Creative people are motivated to invent not because of the drive to make money, but their urge to make the world better place to live in. They do not  work for getting the  reward when involved in an invention.

In general, management‘s belief that implementing some form of reward for  employees would keep the motivation level up has been disproved many times over.

Rewards have the potential to create distortions in pay and sabotage pay parity. Monetary incentive has the potential to create inequality in employee’s total earnings.

Imagine a situation where a salesman gets a chance windfall order, which brings huge incentive in one-quarter and the way it can upset day to day rhythm of lifestyle. Moreover, such windfall gains create social tension in the family and friend circles due to temporarily inflated lifestyle.

Normally the tendency of people is to go crazy with spending when there are unexpected windfall gains only to regret it later for being unable to maintain the same style. Rewards end up creating heart burns among peers and consequently attrition.

Telling an employee to behave in the most desired way with the promise of a reward is not really very different from telling the employee not to repeat a behaviour with the threat of discipline.

In an organisation that created a culture of rewards for every action, the employee’s focal point is the reward itself than the task to be accomplished.

When the design of the reward is aimed to elicit or encourage certain behaviour, that makes the manager to become more calculative with the subordinates and the feeling of being controlled is likely to assume punitive perception over time. Penalty and reward approach thus belong to the same family.

Both sides end up having a negative overtone because they are perceived as a calculated move.

An employee who had worked harder anticipating a reward ends up feeling belittled which is as bad as being penalised.

The child in the person sulks and tells that “you got cheated”. For any employee who worked extra hard, if the reward was not forthcoming, the psychological effect is always depressing.

When the anticipation runs high for reward, it is more depressing and demoralising from a miss-out.

The dilemma of reward or discipline is always taunting every management. Managers are tempted to hire subordinates who are more prone to comply and do things as per the manager’s demand and the manager then rewards for compliance and expect a repeat behaviour.

This approach is no different from another type of manager whose way is to find people who are doing something wrong and disciplining them with hope to stop that behaviour. Both categories of managers live in a paradigm of their own. Either is not the correct approach as both are perceived as controlling.

When questioned about not nominating any employee of his team ,quarter after quarter, the manager’s  justification  that he would not nominate anyone for any award because he was not hitting his target and earning his incentive.

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