Managing and Rewarding the “Meets” Employee

Friday, May 06, 2011

Somewhere out there are millions of employees who come to work every day, do the job they are asked to do, rarely complain, work well with others, and make a solid contribution to their organization’s success. We label these employees, “Meets”. After all, our expectations for most employees are to do just that, perform at a level, which “meets” our expectations. Yet many organizations focus on the top 5% - 10% of the performers with rewards, promotions, titles, offices, and special treatment. Is it possible that we are rewarding the wrong employees? Is it possible that the vast armada of those employees who are the “Meets” are performing a significant level of work?

We, as managers set the expectations of what level of performance is Unsatisfactory, Meets or Outstanding. Within a degree if reason, we can set the bar high or higher. Therefore, to some extent, if an employee fails to perform up to our expectations, we may be the stumbling block. While it may be true that we have the “ability” to set standards of performance, most managers attempt to engage the employees in the process as to whether the desired outcome is possible or not.

Once employees understand our expectations and the level of expectations, those employees who choose to reach those levels must be rewarded. It is certainly a truism that unreinforced behaviors will soon extinguish. The quickest way to undo a rewards system is to fail to recognize all of those employees who performed as expected.

Performance is about more than “just get’in the job done”. How an assignment is accomplished is as important as the final outcome and an equal part of performance. Since most work today involves working well with others, performance that comes at the expense of others, even with a stellar outcome, may still be Unsatisfactory.

Most large corporate organizations provide little room to “individualize” rewards for each of thousands of employees. While this may be true, as a manager, we can certainly point out those behaviors, which lead to an employee meeting or even exceeding expectations. There are often opportunities, e.g., in staff or project meetings, in which we can recognize employees both publicly and privately with “thank you”.

Many very talented employees often lack self-confidence and self-esteem. Most of us remember the early days of our careers when called upon to give that first big presentation in front of dozens or even hundreds of employees. Our managers knew that for us to grow we would have to rise up to the challenge and overcome our fears so they nurtured our self-confidence and self-esteem in small ways.

To be effective, rewards do not always have to be tangible. The self-realization that a project was well done or that peers recognize your skills as an employee brings its own value to recognition. It is essential as managers that we are able to distill what drives an employee’s desire to succeed. Those drivers are as varied as are the employees themselves. Moreover, while recognizing the individual employee is important, most work today is done with collaboration among several individuals. Sometimes these are formal project teams and sometimes it is individuals coming together to form a virtual team. In any case, it is essential to continued success that the team members be recognized for collective efforts.

Human behavior can range from simplex to complex with gradations along a broad ranging scale, even within the same individual. Once behavior, i.e., performance is established and rewarded over an extended period of time, it is not easily altered. In the end you get what you pay for, whether that is the performance you wanted or not!