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Escape the Sand Traps of KM Rewards and Recognition

Escape the Sand Traps of KM Rewards and Recognition

How do you set up a rewards and recognition program for knowledge management? It's harder than it looks. That's why, despite years trying to boost adoption and engagement, only 11% of knowledge managers say their organizations are effective at motivating and incentivizing KM participants.

Convincing people to change how they work isn't easy, but it isn't impossible either. It helps to take a methodical approach and listen to others’ lessons learned. Below are five questions to ask yourself when deciding how to reward KM participation in your organization, along with tips to avoid the sand traps at each stage.

1: What does KM success ultimately look like?

When designing a KM rewards and recognition strategy, start by envisioning your desired end state. What do you want to achieve for the business? This will allow you to reverse-engineer individual and group incentives aligned with your KM goals. 

Pitfalls to Avoid

Leaders often set lofty-but-vague visions, such as “to become a learning organization” or “to create a knowledge-sharing culture.” These are useful only when defined. You want to be a learning organization? Great! Break that down into specific objectives, such as speeding up time to market for new ideas, transferring proven practices more quickly between siloed locations, and creating professional development plans tied to projected skill requirements. Explicit targets are much easier to work toward. 

2: What actions or behaviors do you want to encourage?

Once you understand your goals for KM, reflect on how individuals and teams need to contribute. What must people do to make your goals a reality? For example, if you want to transfer proven practices between locations, you’ll need teams to document the practices in a shared repository or virtual community. You’ll also need people to visit the repository or community, learn from what’s posted, and apply the information to their own work. 

Pitfalls to Avoid

Many KM programs emphasize quantity of contributions over quality in their measures—which can have unintended consequences. If you reward people for uploading or posting lots of stuff, you may end up with inferior or duplicative content junking up your systems. And if you create monthly or annual quotas for contributions, you are likely to get a flood of this junk right before each deadline. A better strategy is to reward people for sharing good stuff—for example, if others read their items and tag them as helpful. 

Another common mistake is forgetting to reward knowledge reuse. Teams that apply proven practices—especially if it leads to significant quality improvements or time or cost savings—should receive as much fanfare as the teams that generate the knowledge. Otherwise, you’ll end up with overflowing knowledge repositories that no one is using. 

Question 3: What is the right carrot to offer?

Next, you must decide on the specific rewards and recognition you will provide and how they will be doled out. Parameters include:

  • Individual or team—Will you acknowledge individual contributors, or groups such as communities, projects, or business units? Or both?
  • Tangible or intangible—Will you hand out trophies and prizes, or focus on public recognition, visibility to senior leaders, and professional development opportunities?
  • Continuous or time-bound—Will employees earn recognition continuously over time, or will you tie it to an annual cycle?
  • Top down or grassroots—Will recipients be selected and called out by the KM team, organizational leaders, or their peers (e.g., through crowdsourced nominations or voting)?

Common approaches include an annual awards ceremony or KNOWvember campaign, a “community of the month,” the option to give colleagues “kudos,” or a gamification system where participants earn points or badges. See more options in Rewards and Recognition Approaches for Knowledge Management

Pitfalls to Avoid

In an effort to be fair and cover all forms of participation, KM programs may offer too many awards or create detailed rubrics that grade employees on 17 different parameters. Multiple options and complex eligibility requirements are more likely to confuse employees than motive them. The system and criteria for recognition should be transparent and easy to get your head around.  

According to APQC’s research, the most effective way to recognize KM participants is for managers to publicly acknowledge them and say thank you. The KM team may do some back-end work to make this happen (e.g., informing managers when people contribute and providing an email template), but simple is often sufficient.

Question 4: What are your constraints in terms of budget and resources?

Knowing your limitations allows you to refine your approach. Do you have money to host an awards event or offer trophies, prizes, or SWAG? Can you purchase software to automate KM gamification? You may need to scale down your expectations or build a business case for additional funding. 

Before you ask for money, think seriously about whether you need it. Small rewards such as branded mugs or mousepads can work just as well as big-ticket items. In fact, cash and large prizes have the potential to breed resentment, especially if people disagree with how recipients are selected.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Many KM programs focus on the cost of the rewards themselves, but overlook the resources needed to administer them. A complicated evaluation process may require more “care and feeding” than a small KM team can provide. If KM doesn’t have time to rate and review submissions on time, delays may frustrate participants and dampen enthusiasm for KM. Don’t promise more than you can deliver.   

Question 5: Does what I’m planning fit the culture?

Evaluate your rewards and recognition scheme in the context of your culture. Is cold hard cash the only thing that moves employees, or do they value opportunities to build their reputation and support the mission? Will rewards be most meaningful coming from senior leaders, or do people have more respect for subject matter experts and peer networks? Every organization is different, and what works in one may belly-flop in another.   

Pitfalls to Avoid

Some KM teams reinvent the wheel when they don’t need to. If HR or leadership already has an employee recognition program in place, you may be able to tap into that—either by nominating KM contributors for awards and opportunities, or adding KM-specific recognitions to the program. If a rewards scheme already has name recognition and an established process, piggybacking onto it can further integrate KM into the fabric of the culture while freeing up your team’s time for other goals.

To learn more about KM rewards and recognition, see our new Recognizing and Rewarding KM Participation white paper and content collection