In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape, companies are fighting hard to attract and keep the best employees. To boost employee morale and performance, many businesses use recognition programs. These programs are quite common, but surprisingly, not many studies have looked at how well they work in real companies. Most research focuses on programs that reward individuals.
However, researchers at the University of Waterloo have found something new. They discovered that recognizing and rewarding teams can be very effective, especially in companies where teamwork is crucial for success.
“Our findings, based on actual employees performing their real jobs, provides compelling evidence of the efficacy of team-based recognition programs,” the researchers explain. “This study also demonstrates the positive effects of team-based recognition in a fast-food restaurant setting, which is a notably large industry in North America, well known for its difficulties motivating employees.”
Boosting motivation
A field study was conducted on six fast-food franchise restaurant locations to examine the effectiveness of team-based recognition on employee effort and engagement. These restaurants were all managed by the same franchisee, referred to as “Management,” and were situated in the same geographical region within Canada.
Each restaurant had a team of approximately 30 employees. Faced with persistently low levels of staff engagement, Management decided to implement a formal team-based recognition program, which was then evaluated by researchers.
During a 12-week period of this recognition program, each location had the opportunity to receive non-monetary recognition, such as thank-you cards or small gifts, every two weeks. The results revealed that both employee engagement and effort increased during this 12-week program compared to the preceding 12-week period.
Indirect improvements
Additionally, the research showed that team recognition had indirect effects on employee effort by boosting employee engagement. This suggests that team-based recognition has both direct and indirect impacts on employee effort through its influence on engagement.
This study represents the first of its kind to demonstrate the positive effects of team-based recognition on employee engagement and effort, in contrast to prior research that primarily focused on recognition programs targeted at individual employees.
“Team-based recognition is a potentially more cost-effective solution for businesses as compared to costly individual performance assessments,” the researchers explain. “Our results should be relevant to reward program designers, especially in settings where individual performance is costly or difficult to measure and where the nature of the work is team-oriented.”
The research addresses worries that what we learn in controlled lab experiments might not apply to real jobs. Fast-food work involves doing the same things over and over, being in a hurry, not earning much, and not having many chances to move up the ladder. All of this can make it hard to get employees excited and working hard. However, this study in real fast-food restaurants shows that recognition programs can actually work well in these tough situations.
