Founder in Eleven

Like the daily huddle, one of the easiest and best investments for company culture is the employee-of-the-week (EOW) announcement and award.  I will have to give credit for this idea to one of my peer group members, Carson Kyle from Burnham Nationwide.

Employee Recognition: Opportunities and Concerns

Recognition is one of the best (and cost-free) ways to reward your staff, and is a feeling that many employees crave.  Even small remarks in the hallway (or Slack, for remote environments) can have an outstanding impact on morale, especially in IT services where late hours, overtime, and weekend work are often required.  As a founder, I tried to go above and beyond to provide appropriate recognition, while also keeping it from appearing as fake. TSG had some early experience with giving an annual “Employee of the Year” award, but found that recognizing one person who had “won” the title was pulling away from the other employees that had also contributed good work, sometimes resulting in team tension.

With the EOW award, recognition was spread across multiple people over the course of the whole year; subordinates, peers, and managers all having an equal chance in the nomination process.  Having the previous weeks winner pick the current week’s winner also eliminates any founder/manager bias in the awarding process.

Employee of the Week – How It Worked

1. The meeting was scheduled at 3:00 on Friday in a common area or on Zoom.  It lasted no more than 15 minutes and was not charged as  nonbillable work. We found having the meeting on Friday in the office was a good way to wrap up the week.
2. Before the meeting, anyone could submit nominations for the award (we used a Wiki).  Submissions listed the nominee’s accomplishments during the week that made them deserving of the employee of the week award.  Nominations were also saved for future reference, since employees that were not chosen were often nominated again in the following weeks with new accomplishments.
3. At 3:00, the nominations were read by the previous week’s winner to the office.  The previous winner then picked the winner for this week, and they were awarded $100.  We typically gave out $100 bills as, with cash being handled so infrequently, it gave the winner a reminder of why they earned the $100 bill when they went on to spend it (we encouraged them to use the money with other coworkers).

Over the years, TSG’s EOW became a key part of the culture and was even used when convenient during the recruiting process.  Nominations got longer and more humorous as employees looked for ways to differentiate their nominations.  With the recognition being all about what is read rather than winning or losing, even when winners were picked with some small bias from friends, the process had a completely positive effect on all employees being recognized.  An example of a nomination for Joe Hof:

EOW – Week of DD/MM/YY

Joe “Don’t Hassle the” Hof – Joe was killing it this week working long hours to get the ACME project past some difficult client checkpoints and debugging some difficult technical issues.  Joe stayed late helping me fix technical issue “A” and I appreciate the constant support.  Give Joe the ‘Hundo!!!  (Nominated by Michael – Joe’s subordinate)

Seconded – Joe has had difficult client interactions and kept a smile throughout – great job this week presenting to a tough management team (seconded by Sue – Joe’s Peer)

Quick Fix – Employee of the Week

“Employee of the Week” is an easy practice that shows the firms commitment to recognizing work.  For those starting EOWs out, getting momentum requires that the first couple of nominations establish a tone.  As a founder, I would try to nominate one person a week myself with some humor to show off the spirit of the award. As managers, the team would typically push to recognize newer employees whenever possible without any nomination appearing fake or undeserving.