To recognize good work without it looking like favoritism, write down the rule and hand it to your crew before the month, quarter or year it covers begins. On one sheet of paper you write what earns recognition, how often it is given and in what form: a thank-you, a day off, a grocery voucher. You date the sheet on the day you hand it over. That is the recognition sheet: it holds the rule, never a list of who got what.
If you only decide afterward who gets something, by looking at who stood out, the people who got nothing have no way of knowing why. To them, a thank-you you meant as encouragement looks like proof that on this farm, recognition goes to whoever you like.
Say one night the tractor driver stays late to finish planting a field, and the next morning he gets a day off. The same month another worker gets a grocery voucher and a third gets a thank-you, and nobody else hears what each of them did to earn it. The others do not know what they would have had to do to get the same. The day off costs you little. What costs you is that the reason stayed in your head, so the rest of the crew reads it as favoritism.
Why does recognition decided afterward look like favoritism?
Because with no rule set in advance, you have only your own judgment to go on, and the people who got nothing cannot see what was in your head. A day off handed out by feel is a decision you make alone. The rest of the crew has nothing written to compare your choice with, so they cannot tell whether it rewarded the work or the person.
What changes when the crew knows the rule in advance?
When the crew knows the rule in advance, a worker who got nothing can see why: the recognition went to work he could have done too, not to someone you happen to like. Two short experiments looked at two parts of this: a reward promised in advance, and a reason said out loud. Both hired mostly students for a few hours of data entry, not a farm crew. In the first, by the economists Michael Kosfeld and Susanne Neckermann, some students were promised an award in advance for the best performance: a congratulations card, with no money attached. Those students did more work than students offered no award.
The second experiment, by the economist Christiane Bradler and three coauthors, tested only the second part, the reason said out loud. Nobody was promised anything. Two hours into the job, a thank-you card went only to the people who had entered the most data so far, as public recognition tied to being among the best performers, and the whole group heard why. Most of the extra work that followed came from the people who got no card. The authors think those people learned from the reason given that they were behind most of the group and worked to catch up.
When the reason for recognition is said out loud, the rest of the crew learns what it takes to earn it. When it is not, they are left to guess, and favoritism is the easiest guess.
With the rule on the sheet, you still decide who earns what. The difference is that anyone can hold your decision up against the rule and see the reason.
What goes on the recognition sheet?
The sheet has four items. First, what earns recognition, written as work that anyone on the crew can aim for. For example: seeding finished inside the planting window, a month with no accidents, covering a sick coworker’s shift without being asked. Second, how often recognition is given, for example at the end of each month or after each harvest. That way it comes on a set date, not when you happen to be in a good mood.
Third, the form, which does not have to cost much. Penn State Extension, the farm advisory service of Pennsylvania State University in the United States, lists forms that work on farms: a word of thanks at the end of a shift, naming a person’s effort in the team meeting, marking the close of the harvest. Fourth, the date you handed the sheet to the crew, before the period it covers began. That date turns the sheet into a rule rather than a loose note: with it you can show that the rule came first.
If a manager hands out recognition for you, give him the same sheet, so he rewards by your rule on the days you are not there. Which decisions a manager can take without asking you is the subject of a separate article on what your manager decides alone. Pin a copy of the sheet where the crew sees it every day, for example next to the work roster.
You already plan the month’s work before the month starts, not while it is under way. The sheet does the same for how you reward people, as one more part of managing the whole farm. Articles on hiring, paying and reviewing a crew are in the people section of this library.
Where does the rule go wrong?
A recognition rule can go wrong in three ways, and you can avoid each one when you write the sheet. The first is rewarding what the weather did instead of what the worker did. Write each line about work the person controls, like seeding finished inside the window or a shift covered. Leave out the yield and the price the crop sells for, because no worker fully controls them.
The second is writing the rule and then not following it. That is worse than having no rule, because now the whole crew has seen you break one. The third is letting the sheet turn into a ranking of people. On the sheet, you compare each person’s work with the rule, never with a coworker’s. If you want to follow how the crew is doing as a whole, with numbers like turnover, that is a separate job with its own article: choosing which numbers about your crew to track.
The studies in this article were short experiments with students, not farm crews, and they measured how much people worked, not whether anyone saw favoritism. On whether a reward promised in advance raises effort, they disagree: in another experiment by Bradler’s team, a thank-you card announced in advance to the three best performers had no effect. So the reason to hand out the rule first is not that it makes people work harder. It is that the crew can see why someone was recognized. Take the studies as a sign that recognition with a stated reason can work, not as a promise of what it will do on your farm.
Where to start
One sheet of paper and an hour, before the month, quarter or year the rule will cover begins.
Writing the rule costs you something real: the freedom to reward on the spot, by feel, the way it has always been done. In return, when you next thank the tractor driver, the crew knows what he did to earn it and what they would have to do to earn it too.