Recognition, handled badly, can destroy teamwork…..
Recognition and performance measurement systems, handled badly, have the potential to do more harm than good. Handled badly, they hurt morale rather than help it; and destroy teamwork rather than enhance it. Yet, properly acknowledging the achievements of employees is essential to the continuous improvement process. Even quality skeptics admit it’s fundamental value within an organization.
As we all know, recognition plays a key role in promoting employee involvement. It reinforces quality objectives. It also encourages employees to cultivate initiative and creativity above and beyond the expectations of the formal job descriptions.
On the downside, it is difficult to develop fair systems that somehow balance individual and group recognition. One of Professor W Edwards Deming’s hardest criticism was that traditional employee recognitions are random; that recognition systems fail to account for naturally occurring variability in the broad spectrum of employee talents and aptitudes; and the good effects of recognizing one individual are nullified by the ill effects of overlooking another.
We at Qimpro believe in recognizing Project Team Excellence. We believe a healthy competition between teams, across industries, is a great motivator for not only the teams from an organization but also for the process members within the same. We believe that a structured transparent process for examination and judging makes every team a winner. We have done this for 25 years through our platform, Qimpro Convention. Commencing this year the QualTech Prize will be awarded in three categories: Improvement, Innovation, Sustainability. We are proud to receive repeat entries year on year from the Tata Group, the Aditya Birla Group, the Reliance Group, the L&T Group, the HDFC Group, the ICICI Group, and more.
As a concluding remark….what are the attributes of an effective leader? An effective leader is a trainer, coach, counselor, facilitator, and recognizer. The last is the toughest!
