Many companies and organizations have an annual employee awards and recognition program to honor outstanding employee performance. These programs can have both a positive and negative effect on employee motivation and engagement.

A psychologist I know who works with employee assistance programs told me about a client who was seeing her because she felt slighted and overlooked at her company.

Her job is in supply chain management for a large multinational. She has been with the company for over twenty years and likes her job and is engaged with the company. Her colleagues often come to her for help as she has years of experience and knowledge of the processes and the industry.

At the recent company annual awards and recognition event two of her colleagues that she helped frequently received an award, but not her. She felt terrible that she was overlooked, and that it dampened her prospects for promotion. She wants to become a project manager.

The effect on this employee was so strong that she needed to seek out counselling from the psychologist. Whether she was right or wrong does not matter. What matters is her perception.

I cannot comment on the company’s perspective regarding their awards and recognition program. But in the eyes of the employee who felt overlooked it seems something was not clear.

When creating an awards and recognition program it is important that employees understand what the criteria is to achieve an award. It may not be enough to just publish a document. Clarifying someone’s understanding requires a discussion and review throughout the year.

When things are unclear and wrongly perceived as in this case, there is a feeling of inequality. This employee feels that she was treated unfairly in comparison to her colleagues.

This is the same approach I recommend taking for the annual performance review. Employees need to know up front what performance they will be evaluated on at the year end. In fact, the awards and recognition program and annual performance review should be congruent so that the employee know that if they score well on their annual review, they will be eligible for an award and public recognition.

I often use the example of playing a game like Monopoly. You know that the person who holds the most properties and cash at the end of the game is the winner and you can clearly see as the game progresses who is ahead.

The same concept needs to be applied to employee performance. Make the rules for high performance clear and provide regular reviews during the year to make sure employees understand your perspective and that there won’t be any surprises at year end.

You can download and use my simple annual performance review worksheet and use my five performance competencies or replace them with your own criteria. Establishing job specific goals and objectives is another approach that can work very well, or you can combine the competencies with specific goals. Just don’t set too many goals and make sure you are also providing ongoing coaching and support.