Among her goals is replicating for the non-sales
staff a pair of recognition surveys the sales force
took a few years ago. The changes that resulted
from the first survey raised the percentage of
sales staff who said “rewards and recognition are
a major part of Kforce’s culture” from 75 per-
cent to 85 percent the following year. “I would
strongly encourage anybody who hasn’t done
that kind of detailed survey to do that,” she says.
“Until you do, you’re making a lot of assump-
tions about what people think.”
Getting these programs right is not easy, but
the results can be impressive. “One of the most
interesting discoveries was the power of the nomi-
nation process itself,” says IRF Board of Trustees
Chairman Jeffrey Broudy, the executive vice
president and COO of United Incentives. “Even

Kforce emphasizes recognition in sales and non-sales programs; the quarterly sales cup has no intrinsic value but is highly coveted

though the program was designed to reward only two to three percent of the employees, nearly half of the potential winners indicated that they were motivated by it.”

Making It Happen

In a traditional sales travel program, it’s pretty easy to set goals and then measure participants’ results. It’s a lot more difficult in a non-sales program, where the goal isn’t something like greater sales or productivity, says Rodger Stotz, chief research officer of the IRF. “Recognition aligns with culture, so you have to think about how you align the goals of this program with the culture,” he says, which means thinking about things like teamwork.

Back in the mid-1990s, when the XYZ Co.
program began, the categories were cost reduc-
tion and process, he says. “So who got awards?
People who found cost reductions and people
who were on big projects.”
Now, XYZ Co. allows the nomination of
either teams or individuals in 11 categories tied
to the firm’s mission, vision, and values, such
as creative solutions, dedication to customers,
leadership/coaching, saved costs, and generated
revenues. By design, the last two categories now
account for less than 10 percent of nominations.

Cultural values are central to Kforce’s program, as well. “We’re not rewarding people based on how many service calls you answered if you’re in tech support,” Grobisen says. “It’s about whether you collaborated with team members. It’s whether you go out of your way to deliver service. It’s whether you work together–we’re into the team big-time. We are looking for people who demonstrate key values.” One of these is loyalty. Service anniversaries are widely announced and celebrated, and at 25 years, Kforce employees are invited on the annual sales trip.

Constant communication is key to building a culture of recognition, Grobisen adds. Every recognition program is documented, and new hires learn all about them. “So many are monthly, quarterly, we are hearing about them all the time,” she says. “Winners are announced com-pany-wide. When we announce who the winners are, we explain what they did. We don’t want it to be complicated. We want people to know what they have to do to win the top award.”

Connecting the Dots

A non-sales travel program is a large investment, and that means a company must have a strong view on the value of recognition programs. Creating a strong culture of recognition requires strong and active management support. Unsurprisingly, both points were among the six key findings the IRF researchers made during their study of XYZ Co. And they hold true at Kforce.

“I have never worked anywhere like this before,” says Grobisen. “People are being recognized all the time. The culture is about celebrating what people do—even small things. Core values are taken very seriously here; it is not just a poster in the break room.”

The Six Lessons

The IRF case study, “The Design and Impact of Employee Recognition Incentive Travel Programs,” found six broad areas that companies running or considering non-sales incentive travel programs should focus on:

(1) Aligning program goals with the company culture

(2) The need for active and ongoing management support

( 3) The importance of a clear, easy nomination process

( 4) Ensuring the evaluation and selection process is transparent

( 5) Understanding that measurement of success is trickier than for a sales program

( 6) This kind of travel program should be part of a broader recognition program The IRF’s white paper about these findings, as well as the full case study, are available at www.theirf.org.