Employee of the month policy

Our employee of the month policy is intended to motivate your workforce to achieve high standards of work performance, by awarding recognition to those who have performed particularly well each month. However, it’s important to monitor the awards and ensure that employees from a variety of departments are successful so as to avoid accusations of unfairness.

Scheme criteria

The purpose of this type of scheme is not to reward employees for doing their job to an acceptable standard but for going over and above what’s expected of them by achieving a high level of performance. This could be in a variety of areas, so our Employee of the Month Policy includes productivity, customer service, creativity, exceptional effort and proactivity or initiative. For example, “employee of the month” could be awarded for significantly achieving targets, offering an exceptional level of service to a client, designing a new or better working procedure, giving an exceptional level of support to the business or willingly taking on a new project. It’s best to keep your criteria broad here. In addition, we’ve placed a limit so that an employee can’t receive the award more than twice per year. If the same employee were to keep receiving the award, the scheme would be counter-productive as it would cause resentment.

Selection process

Our policy envisages that other employees and line managers will make the nominations and then a designated management committee will meet to discuss the reasons for the nominations and decide on the overall winner. To keep the process as objective as possible, we’ve stated that the names of the nominators and nominees will not be revealed to the committee, so that they’re deciding on the winner based on achievements, not names. We’ve also provided for the announcement of the winner - and what they did to achieve their award - to be made by a director, in order to give the process credibility. To provide greater recognition for other staff, it’s preferable for the announcement to include details of the other nominees and so our policy includes this too.

Reward

Whilst gaining the title of “employee of the month” is the main reward, it’s normal for it to be accompanied by a certificate and some form of small reward or prize. The reward is really up to you and it doesn’t have to be financial. We’ve included a number of possible options in our policy. You might choose to first consult with your staff on the types of award that would be popular. We’ve also provided for the employee’s name to be published within the business in order to raise awareness - how you do this is again up to you.

Avoiding discrimination

As with all schemes relating to reward, it’s important to ensure that there are no discriminatory factors. For example, you’ll need to make reasonable adjustments of the expectations for disabled employees and if an employee works part-time, the achievements made in the time that they are at work must be considered, rather than comparing them to a full-time employee.