Kudos – Can Automating Employee Recognition Enhance Employee Engagement?

I was recently contacted by someone from marketing at a company called Kudos - a polite and literate human, not a bot. They asked if I’d blog about their product. This was new to me. There’s no commission nor would I seek one. I don’t use their product – I’m a self-employed sole-charge contractor. I give myself recognition all the time which probably could be a bit more positive than it is, although some days I think I’m way too fabulous.

I knew (and know) not very much about the specifics of Kudos beyond their website and what other bloggers reveal. So, don’t think for a moment I’m formally recommending them at all, or commenting on the reliability or functionality of their offering one way or the other. I’m not because I can’t and I shouldn’t. Plus, as I said, not only am I a a self-employed sole-charge contractor, I also have a history of being flippant with a sideline as a professional stand-up comedian making serious business points using humour as a lever.

So, after that long introductory proviso, I like the idea of Kudos. That’s all I’m even remotely qualified to comment upon.

I like that here is a possible solution to the problem I’ve personally encountered with managing operations that are 24/7 and / or geographically distributed. As I said, I sometimes think I’m pretty fabulous but no amount of fabulousness makes you omniscient or ominprescent. You cannot be everywhere at all times. Tons of things are happening in the workplaces you’re supposed to be leading when you’re, quite simply, not there. You can’t be. And no matter how charged up you are about “catching people doing things right” and how committed you are to ensuring your people get all the positive reinforcement and corrective feedback they need, you, alone, simply cannot.
I paraphrase Tom Peters (I think) a lot when I say the true test of your communication / leadership / whatever is what happens when you’re not around. A challenge I often throw at people I train is how can you be more influential over what happens when you’re not around. The idea of Kudos seems to be a great tool for helping here.

In your absence, employees can give each other feedback online and you can be kept in the loop. If it works and if some tricky bits can be handled well, then this has the potential to be very helpful. If you’ve ever sent an email that someone else has misinterpreted, then you’ll know what I imply by “tricky bits.” And, in the same way as email in some workplaces has laughingly replaced face-to-face communication lies a potential pitfall. There’s no substitute for feedback that is BEST:

B -behaviour based
E -esteem building
S -specific
T – timely

Target behaviours when recognising employees

Sure Kudos would be great if it can create a formal record and trail. It would be excellent if it helps bring together teams spread over time and space. But it would need to be implemented carefully with accompanying training and moderation. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset showed the dangers of how just gushing with praise for the wrong behaviours can be counter productive. (Kids praised for “being smart” avoided challenge later on whereas kids praised for “working hard” sought challenges.) I think that any automating of feedback needs to cater for this pitfall.

The ratio of positive to negative statements in employee recognition

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive. Kudos would need to factor this in too.

Another opportunity for automated recognition systems to be corrupted would be familiar to you if you have teenagers on FaceBook, Tumblr etc. Often you’ll see ‘like for a like’ requests. (Actually, you see that a lot with grown-ups’ LinkedIn recommendations.) They may indeed be genuine reflections of actual positive experiences or they could simply be recognition as a tradeable commodity. Again, Kudos would have to tackle a praise ‘black market.’ (But who am I to criticise? I’m not even sure I spelled “tradeable” correctly.)
There could be, I suppose, an application for Kudos in my current working environment where I frequently subcontract to a few training providers. I don’t have colleagues or bosses in the traditional sense. They generally employ a contractor model but we contractors too have our our needs for recognition (prick us, do we not bleed?) and we are even more problematically spaced out over time and geography. There’s definitely potential usefulness for Kudos or similar in that structure.

I’m not meaning to be negative. I do like the idea of Kudos. I also like the idea of cars and there are road rules and safety systems in place for those. Give it a try. There’s a free offer. Check out that new software smell. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, that’s what I say (despite my stance against meta-amphetamine…)

I’ll keep looking at it. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve had direct experience.