Employee of the Month – Good idea or Bad idea?

As you know by now (or maybe not if this is your first time reading my blog, if so Hi!) the hubby and I are in the process of starting our own business, a motorcycle shop to be precise. And we have been discussing Dragon Cycles (our business) a lot lately, especially about getting everything ready for when we find an investor. We are hoping that when we find one and get the money all we’ll have to do is buy the building and equipment and get the people.

We were talking about bonuses when we got on the topic of Employee of the Month. The hubby wants to do it but I’m not sure. See the thing is I’ve never worked somewhere where they had Employee of the Month or at least never worked there long enough to find out.




I looked up the definition and found this on about.com : “The designation, Employee of the Month, is an organization’s positive effort to recognize an employee’s achievements and contributions. Employee of the Month is an organizational recognition that companies have used - both successfully - and unsuccessfully - for years.”

I did some research on it and found a few web sites that talked about just how unsuccessful it can be. About.com says that most of the time the employee doesn’t know the reason why they were selected, which in turn makes the employees unmotivated about it. And there’s the fact that if you have multiple employees who deserve the award, you have the problem of picking just one person. So now I’m leaning towards not doing it, mainly because it doesn’t seem to work and then there’s the fact that we are already going to have a bonus system in place.

So I’d like to ask you this; what do you think about Employee of the Month? Good idea or bad idea?