Strategy Three: Reward System
Human resource development practitioners are often asked a difficult question: What motivates employees? One answer focuses on the intrinsic awards associated with doing a good job. Successful job performance is itself often rewarding. Improvement in performance is even more rewarding. Most people do not enjoy doing an inadequate job in their chosen field. The experience of repeated failure on the job is usually painful and humiliating. Once employees have acquired and begun to use new methods or have improved their skills in using traditional approaches to their job, they begin to experience greater success on the job. This experience will often inherently motivate employees to work even harder on the improvement of their job-related skills.
Most HRD practitioners would agree that these intrinsic rewards are wonderful—but they’re not enough. There must be tangible, monetary reward systems that are equitable and appreciative in nature. Support for the developmental efforts of employees ultimately must come through a set of policies and procedures that tangibly reward the improvement of job performance. If employees are not rewarded for the improvement of their performance, then a HRD program must rely on subtle, and often fickle, motivators like support and recognition from colleagues, personal enhancement of self-esteem, or a deeply rooted commitment to the organization.
An appreciative organization will embrace a policy that provides an objective system of performance appraisal. It will also provide ample resources for use in the improvement of an employee’s performance. Tangible rewards are offered to encourage and sustain this improvement. Salary, promotion, and job-security are directly related to the improvement and/or maintenance of a high level of competency and to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills that are related to the long-term growth and welfare of the organization. While salary, promotion and job-security are key, other forms of recognition and appreciation may compliment, but not take the place of, formal reward systems. Small grants might be given to individuals who wish to experiment with new methods. Release time might be provided to particularly competent or creative employees. In other cases, growth contracts are offered, through which an employee and his or her supervisor establish explicit criteria for assessing and rewarding not only performance but also improvement.
If employees are paid to perform more effectively, then it is assumed with this third strategy that they will do a better job. I would once again amend this assumption to include the belief that an organization must provide additional services to help the employee improve her performance in the area where she hopes to be rewarded. These services usually include training and education (Strategy One) and performance appraisal (Strategy Two). Rewards are a sham if the organization provides no resources, opportunities or information to support the desired improvement. Unfortunately, this amendment to the reward system assumption is often not included—suggesting a simple-minded and mechanistic approach to personal and organization change.
