How to Choose an Employee of the Month:
Reliability and transparency are two critical yet overlooked components of the magic sauce that can me the employee of the month program well accepted and successful in any organization.
(We have covered this topic in greater detail in an article linked here).
As your employees see the authenticity of your effort in conducting your employee of the month program with a consistent direction and next month's parameters in advance they feel a lot more invested in the concept and are likely to participate.
As you may have announced the set of parameters on which they will be adjudged for the month well in advance, for the most part they will accept the outcomes without a grudge.
Of those who make the cut and are shortlisted for the month, a winner can be announced based on multiple parameters which vary from industries, team size and composition.
We strongly recommend limiting the role of subjective parameters.
However, some parameters are certainly qualitatively better than others.
Any form of arbitrary display of bias is likely to alienate the rest of the team and rightly so.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon and is a big reason for some sections of the media to crack jokes on this practice and even go as far as warning against the use of this tool to motivate employees. All this without studying the mistakes in the practice of the concept. But then haven't we seen shallow reporting on all issues off late. So where does this subset of a subset of corporate culture stand in the order of priority.
Besides, criticism makes for a better story than trying to fix a few minor wrongs in a practice.
