[17] in Staff Recognition
Minutes from June 16, 1992 Meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Cecilia d'Oliveira)
Wed Jun 17 19:21:36 1992
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 92 19:21:04 EST
From: cec@MIT.EDU (Cecilia d'Oliveira)
To: thanks@MIT.EDU
The fourth meeting of the group was held on June 16 from 12:00 to 1:00.
Everyone was present.
We reviewed a goals and objectives statement from Tom and Kim and the
principles statement from Cec. This led to a lengthly discussion about the
difference between the goals/objectives and the principles. We concluded
that the goals reflect our overall desired outcomes (ends) while the
principles are really requirements or constraints (means) that we believe
need to be met in order to meet the goals. With this in mind we decided to
add a fourth goal to the statement of goals and objectives along the lines
of "A recognition program that is respected by the staff." We will also
revise the Principles statement to be a Requirements statement which
includes many of the existing principles and several additional
requirements including "the program does not replace other existing
mechanisms, e.g. annual reviews." These will be revised and circulated by
the next meeting.
As part of this discussion Kim raised a question about whether the
requirements statement should include a budget constraint. Cec suggested
that we talk about this again when we have a better feel for what we want
to do since this may be a nonissue assuming the amount of budget required
for the program is not large.
David raised an issue about recordkeeping regarding formal recognitions.
We probably want to make it a requirement that formal recognitions go into
departmental personnel files and get written into annual performance
evaluations so that there is an historical record.
It was also noted that the IS luncheon would provide a good laboratory to
evaluate against our four goals.
We then reviewed Miki and Mark's writeup "What do we want to recognize?"
The summary of their document is included below:
****
The thank yous should create a work environment where people are
encouraged to express appreciation for the efforts of those around them
(point 3 of the general principles - Cec).
A formal recognition program should encourage certain work
behaviors. (point 3 of the general principles - Cec). We should be
careful that all work is recognizable independent of its nature (project
oriented or not), (point 1 of the general principles).
We further found 3 subcategories in the formal recognition
category:
- recognition of important work milestones
We should recognize important milestones : finished projects,
completed releases, finished installations - when they are done within
expected time and quality.
- recognition of consistent work of good quality
We should recognize consistent work done by individuals which do
not work on "projects" , on a regular basis - like end of year - term...
(Fairness principle).
- recognize/reward extraordinarily good work
We should recognize exceptional work - exceptional quality,
amount, or initiative.
****
The conversation around this document focused on the key issues that Mark
and Miki identified including whether "extraordinarily good work" should
focus on quality or effort. There are potential pitfalls to rewarding
"heroic efforts". On the other hand it wouldn't be fair to exclude "heroic
efforts" that meet the requirement of "quality" from recognition. The
conclusion is that the program needs to be balanced and we must insure that
"heroism" in and of itself isn't rewarded.
The notion of balance also came up in discussing the issue of a potential
for an implicit bias towards recognizing people who are involved in
project oriented roles rather than on-going service delivery roles. The
point is that the program needs to carefully search out opportunties for
recognizing the less noticeable but nevertheless important contributions
and contributors.
We also discussed whether the first category of recognition (important work
milestones) relates to group events where no one in particular is
recognized but an overall group accomplishment (or passage of time) is
noted (e.g. DEC equipment decision) or whether this category is strictly
recognition of a group or individual accomplishment (e.g. a product
release, a new service, networked a department, etc.).
We agreed that the next step in terms of what to recognize is to get
concrete with examples of things that would fall in each category.
Next Meeting is next Tuesday 12-1:
We will continue work on goals and objectives and requirements and make
sure we are clear on these. We'll debrief about the IS luncheon in terms of
the goals. We will then begin to talk about examples of things to
recognize in each of three categories.
Bring feedback if any from work groups about what we're doing.
Action Items:
1. Tom and Kim will review goals and objectives to include a statement to
the effect that "the program should be respected by the staff..."
2. Cec will revise principles and this will now be called "requirements".
3. Think about the annual IS luncheon in the context of the goals we've
been discussing for a recognition program and will come prepared next week
with comments about the luncheon.
4. Come prepared to next meeting with specific examples of things to
recognize that fall into each of the three categories outlined by Mark and
Miki.
