"There’s nothing wrong to appreciate an employee for their consistency, but then, there will be nothing to stop them from reaching cloud 9 and might work under the impression that their performance is excellent."Parveen Singhal, Co-Founder & CCO, WittyFeed

You made 6 reports in a day and shot 60 emails, are that how we’re supposed to appreciate employees? Where should it be derived from - “quality” or “quantity” of the work? It’s always hard to assess the quantum of work done. People (more often than not) expect appreciation for a task which comes as default with the designation they hold, but shouldn’t they be praised for sticking to their responsibilities and adhering to work ethics? Yes, they did what they were asked. There’s nothing wrong to appreciate an employee for their consistency, but then, there will be nothing to stop them from reaching cloud 9 and might work under the impression that their performance is excellent.

There’s a fine line between value addition and performance which a manager or a C-level executive will always have to keep in mind. One might work for three hours in a day and produce an output equivalent to a person sitting for 9 hours. And, the other might not be adding any substantial value to the firm but manages a team of ten people who are worth crores when it comes to value addition.

Whether it is technical skills or managerial skills, broadly, work done will always be equal to the displacement occurred. Or, if talking in the perspective of a workplace, corresponding to an organization’s growth. Now, it can be measured regarding assistance provided in keeping the harmony, or managing the logistics so that the daily processes aren’t delayed due to that, or even showing a northward trajectory and planning for it flawlessly, managing the resources, and helping it execute seamlessly.

To provide with a better mindset, let’s go over some points which appear trivial yet have the potential to assess an individual clearly:

Commitment:

You can determine an employee’s devotion by the quality of work s/he delivers and the dedication they show by taking self-ownership rather than considering it as just a job and showing no extra efforts to maximize the output or optimize the work.

Efficiency:

Whether it is making a strategy or implementing it, the time taken by an employee to complete a task is essential. I often like to compare it with mathematics; it’s as simple as addition and multiplication. One can choose to take the digit 5 and add it individually for 20 times iteratively or right away multiply it by 20 and get the result in one go. Both

will be appreciated for the work they’ve put it but when it comes to acknowledging what they’ve done and the time taken – the latter will always receive more appreciation. Since the second employee was able to complete 20 more tasks after the first one, hypothetically speaking.

Teamwork:

An employee ‘A’ can’t work well with others, when assigned to a team but is commendable when handling a project alone. And, then there is an employee B who keeps the morale of the team high, and the entire team can work in harmony. The person ‘A’ deserves less appreciation (irrespective of how important a task s/he carries out) because s/he hinders the progress the work of 9 other people and ‘B’ brings comes in with a force of nine other employees.

Lastly, I’d like to add that an appreciation should not make the others feel de-motivated and neither the person receiving it, consider it as a privilege which allows her/him to stand over the heads of others and develop a sense of authority.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors' and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house