Home > Blog > Rewarding Managers for Engagement

Rewarding Managers for Engagement

In the struggling economy, employee engagement came to the forefront more than ever, with employers wondering how to motivate staff that had seen colleagues laid off, taken on more work for the same (or less) pay, and often feared for their own jobs.  Now that the economy is beginning to recover, companies have an additional concern: how to keep those employees from leaving altogether now that the job market is getting better.

In January WorldatWork completed a year-long survey, with 736 respondents from around the world weighing in on the impact of factors such as compensation, incentives, reward programs, management, and rewards program design on employee engagement at their organizations.  They just released a paper documenting their findings, and something very interesting came to light: while most of the organizations agreed that total rewards programs affect employee engagement, most of them didn’t think about how the design of these programs came into play.

One of the study’s conclusions stated, “Organizations that encourage managers to engage employees by making it a performance criteria and rewarding engagement through incentive programs indicate that their organizations more effectively foster employee engagement and motivation then those organizations that do not. “

Basically what they’re saying is—managers need incentives too!  Often when companies design recognition and rewards programs, they neglect to include initiatives for their managers.  Not only does this exclude managers from participating in the program, it also increases the likelihood that they will forget to use the program to reward their own employees.  And what was found to be another major contributor to employee engagement levels?  Not surprisingly: quality of leadership.  So if you’re looking to use your recognition program to increase engagement (and who isn’t?), the middle and top layers must not be neglected, because whatever starts there—whether positive or negative—will trickle down throughout the organization.

Here at Michael C. Fina we take advantage of our own Total Vision points program, which the whole company participates in.   While managers don’t necessarily have separate initiatives within the program, they get a certain percentage of the points that they award.  For example, if our Recipient Contact Center meets its goal of clearing inquiries in the allotted time and receives points for doing so, the department manager also receives points for coaching his employees to meet this metric.  This is just one idea…do you incentivize your managers to engage their employees?  And if so, how?