Employee Recognition

Once a year, we have a library breakfast that has an author talk and service awards for several different categories. Last year, I was on the award selecting committee. As a result this year I decided I would nominate several people. I encouraged several other people to send in their nominations as well. One of the people I nominated was not even listed on the nomination list in the program. I was very disappointed and thought that there was a huge mistake. When I questioned why my candidate was not on the list, I was informed that she was DQ'ed because she had received the award several years ago. You can apparently only receive it once. After some thought I was angry because our effort was not recognized. Ok, I understand about her being DQ'ed but still the nomination was valid. She was selected for the award before I began county service. I felt a bit bummed.
The road to employee recognition is tricky and strewn with land mines. How does one go about recognizing some employees over others? How do you generate inspiration and a desire to achieve and not the opposite? How would I structure the awards to reach these goals? It is easy for me to voice my gripes and to thump my chest in righteous indignation. Much more difficult for me to think of a way to effectively solve the problem without spawning others.
Here is my thought though, keep the award breakfast as it is but make sure that people are aware of the rules. Then find other ways to recognize a wider group of best practices throughout the year. In fact this was one of the recommendations that I made sure was in a task force proposal that I was one. Last fall, I attended a goal setting workshop at Hawaii Library Association. At the end of the goal setting workshop the facilitator showed us a slide show of some of the goals that had been created in his workshops and how they were achieved. Looking at all the ideas really sparked my imagination. Now, imagine that at our quarterly meetings we have a brief slide show of some of the things the managers and their staff are doing in their libraries. I think the 10 minutes would go a long way. So there you go, not just griping about a problem, but also offering a solution. All my training is paying off!