Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

For years, companies, organizations and schools have initiated “Employee or Student of the Month” programs. The idea is to choose a staff member or student and celebrate their accomplishment. There is usually a celebration of some kind, perhaps picture in the local paper, poster on the wall at the workplace or school and postings on social media. 

The thought behind these programs is good; celebrate accomplishments and inspire others to accomplish great things. The problem is that people learn, work and accomplish in many different ways and to make comparisons among people and choose one each month as exemplary many times becomes a popularity or political contest. A committee sits around a table and someone says “How about John Doe for employee of the month, he did a great thing last month?” John Doe is a popular employee so everyone agrees. Meantime, there may be many other employees that have accomplished great things in a more quiet way. They are not as visible and may not be as popular so their accomplishments never stand out to anyone on the committee. Moreover, the quiet accomplished workers are passed over month after month, leading to the impression that the program is a “popularity or political” contest. Once that happens, the program does little to inspire accomplishment in the future. 

A better way would be to combine accomplishment with hard work and learning as the criteria with the supervisors or individual teachers each month suggesting those that meet these criteria. Once this pool is established, a random process would actually choose the person to be deemed the “Employee or Student of the Month.” All those in the month’s pool can be mentioned for their hard work as the chosen one is celebrated the “One of the Month.”  In Dr. Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” she talks about rewarding the work instead of individual accomplishments as a more effective method of promoting learning and on-going accomplishment. Both of these qualities are of much higher value not only for the individual but also for the organization or school. 

Another effective way to foster hard work, learning and accomplishment is by celebrating character. Promoting good character traits will eventually inspire employees and students to have more character. More character leads to increased learning and accomplishment. One way character is celebrated in the Strata Leadership “Character Core” initiative is to ask supervisors or teachers, on a cyclical basis to, for each employee or student, choose a specific event or occurrence of the individual that demonstrates one of a number of character traits. One local company has a character celebration lunch each month and each employee having an employment anniversary date that month is so celebrated for a specific character by example. A company or school emphasizing character in this way inspires more character and eventually a culture of character for the whole organization develops. 

Picking out and celebrating one person’s accomplishments based only on the accomplishment does little to inspire others to work hard. Celebrating the hard work and character of everyone will gradually bring up the performance and accomplishments of the whole organization. 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.