Rewarded Employees
July 11, 2007
I like to read a good blog once in a while, which is why I read my own blog. But every once in a while, I stumble onto something that is really high quality. I was reading this story: Starbucks and it truly applies to my next story.
The reward system works against the employee in the cooperate setting. Even if I provide great service to all of my customers, its still very easy to become “punished”. The best reward you get at my job is to become “highlighted”. It basically means that you didnt fuck up too much when ringing people out. Because of technology these days, they track every purchase that you ring out. When something appears wrong, such as the coupon you rang out should not have rang through, but you put it in anyways because you felt bad that it expired yesterday, you get reprimanded. Since I’ve been working, I’ve been highlighted twice, and what has happened to me? Nothing. It’s basically getting a pat on the back for not losing the company too much money.
There is one other way to get feedback. Every 30 minutes or so, a phone number will print out on the bottom of the customers receipt. They’re supposed to call the number to enter into a chance to win $2,500. What they don’t know, is that if they don’t award top scores under each category, we get reprimanded.
I agree that we should strive to provide excellent service, but how many people are going to be enthralled to buy groceries, or pharmaceuticals, or groceries?
Anyways, because this past month we didn’t recieve “top scores” all the employees are supposed to sign a sheet posted in the back room claiming we’re going to “work our hardest” to bring the numbers up. The sheet is in a prominent area in the break room, and I very prominently applied my John Handcock. The thing is that I’m the only one who has signed the sheet.
Does that mean that I’m the only one who has to work my hardest?
The best way to reward an employee in a cooperate environment is to ask for the branch manager, or ask to leave a message for the branch manager, and tell them about the great service that employee is doing (but don’t mention that he gave you that product for free).
