How to encourage staff to vote for rewarding an employee each month

[cutie23 10]

Where I work we have a system whereby employees can vote for their colleagues each month. The employee with the most votes gets some money and other prizes. There are voting papers in the staff canteen and managers have been asked to encourage their team members to vote. Not all staff has access to computers at work so the voting is all done paper based. However we are finding that there is a lot of tactical voting where some people vote for each other and we are not getting enough votes in fact only a 1/3 vote out of the workforce. We have thought about attaching voting slips to payslips however in the past this has not worked. Does anyone have any suggestions how to encourage staff to vote?

[Resident 1,185]

Would be far simpler just to have a select commitee of management staff choosing the winner each month. Base it on effort/improvements to the individual's work rather than who gets the most done.

 

I reckon you'll see better performance from most of your employees.

[The Joker 10]

Do staff just 'vote' for a colleague, or must they also give a reason why they voted for that person?

 

At our place of work, all staff are encouraged to nominate any number of their colleagues for 'staff member of the month' but they must give the reasons why they selected those people.

 

The criteria can be based on whatever the core values of your business are,

 

Nominations are passed to the HR department (by letter or by email) and at the end of the month, the management team read all the nominations in private and decide which one is the overall winner who is publically named, shamed and awarded a prize

[deaf andy 10]

corruption in a democratic process? no, that could never happen...

[cutie23 10]

Do staff just 'vote' for a colleague, or must they also give a reason why they voted for that person?

 

At our place of work, all staff are encouraged to nominate any number of their colleagues for 'staff member of the month' but they must give the reasons why they selected those people.

 

The criteria can be based on whatever the core values of your business are,

 

Nominations are passed to the HR department (by letter or by email) and at the end of the month, the management team read all the nominations in private and decide which one is the overall winner who is publically named, shamed and awarded a prize

 

There is a theme each month and the forms we issue also asks the reason why they have selected that person. However employees can only vote for one person. The nominations are read in a staff meeting and a winner is decided and then announced at a monthly presentation.

[dosxuk 10]

Sounds like a complete waste of time & effort. Pointless popularity contests have no place in a proper business, and it seems many of your colleagues agree.

 

There are much better ways for staff to be rewarded for good service.

[muddycoffee 10]

Colleague of the month falls down because where I work the winner is often the laziest member of staff. Employees that are not interested in buying into a management device for encouraging people to work harder or better are not likely to vote for someone else on the staff who is better than they are, especially if it risks that someone new could rise above them when they have been there years.

So what happens is people tend to vote for people who are not great performers. Ironically this sometimes gives the lazy worker a boost and makes them work better or more diligently.

 

My own view of such a scheme is that it is something from the 1980s which should not be done any longer, as it gives the wrong impression of what is really going on in the workforce.

[The Joker 10]

There is a theme each month and the forms we issue also asks the reason why they have selected that person. However employees can only vote for one person. The nominations are read in a staff meeting and a winner is decided and then announced at a monthly presentation.

 

So what exactly is the problem then?

 

The tactical voting (which you can't prevent) or that only 1/3 of staff can be bothered to vote?

 

If it's the former, remember that management decide on who wins the prize and if it's the latter, well, sometimes we get less than 1/5 of staff voting

[steveroberts 10]

Sounds like a complete waste of time & effort. Pointless popularity contests have no place in a proper business, and it seems many of your colleagues agree.

 

There are much better ways for staff to be rewarded for good service.

 

I could not agree more. This is a dereliction of duty of the management. Good managers will know their staff well enough to reward good behaviour.

Another important point here, the reward should be given at the time when good behaviour takes place...there's no point in rewarding weeks after; the impact will be lost.

[indizine 10]

Don't ask staff to vote for each other in order to win a prize. It's not going to achieve what it is you want to achieve. Would that be loyal, motivated employees by any chance?

 

Try giving some personal "thank you's" in private, directly to everyone who does their job to the required standard, and then give some extra acknowledgement (in private) to those that you know go above and beyond the standard. Let them know you really appreciate their hard work. That will do wonders for everyone more than these prizes. You can then also slip them a private voucher in an envelope as a gift to say thanks to those people who do better than the average. Hand it to them also in private when thanking them. They will leave your office feeling great, maybe quite proud of themselves. But don't do this monthly like it's some sort of "got to do it". Make it an earned thing. Say thank you several times a year to all employees. That will be enough for them. A gift is just a nice touch on top of that but is worth a lot less than a thank you.

[Gleadly 11]

This idea has been going on in some firms for decades.

 

I was made "Employee of the Month" so long ago that I've no idea what I did to deserve it.

 

Any means of showing appreciation, on top of salary, can only be a good idea.

[Ron Burgundy 10]

I could not agree more. This is a dereliction of duty of the management. Good managers will know their staff well enough to reward good behaviour.

Another important point here, the reward should be given at the time when good behaviour takes place...there's no point in rewarding weeks after; the impact will be lost.

 

One company I worked for tried "employee of the month", and then changed to "on the spot" rewarding. Both were viewed with cynicism, and eventually faded away.

 

The management should talk to the staff about WHY they want this process in place, and what benefits it brings the employees and the company. You need to get buy- in from the people you are targetting, if you want it to work.

 

The best results I have seen was making it fun, focussed and relevant. As a store manager in another company with a young team, I sat them down and asked them what they wanted to win (within a budget)- you will be surprised at what they came up with (no-one asked for cash). I then set a competition where the winner won their request.