Archive
The third in a series of articles on nonmonetary awards
Agencies are seeking innovative ways to provide recognition for their employees' achievements. As a result, there is a growing interest in the use of nonmonetary awards. Very often, these awards have taken the form of items such as certificates, plaques, or medals. In recent years, agencies have been interested in using other items ranging from silver-framed certificates and crystal vases, to televisions, theater tickets, and sports equipment. This article describes criteria for determining the kinds of items can be used as honorary awards and those which can be used as informal recognition awards.
Honorary Awards. Many agencies include as part of their overall awards programs a traditional form of high-level "honor awards." Often, such honor awards do not use monetary recognition at all, but emphasize symbolic recognition of significant contributions and public recognition of organizational heroes. Nonmonetary items presented as honorary awards must meet all of the following criteria:
Informal Recognition Awards. Agencies are finding that they can effectively and efficiently achieve many of the goals of a recognition and incentive award program by providing more frequent, timely, and informal recognition of employee and group contributions that might not merit the cash, time-off, or honorary awards that the agency uses. OPM has used its regulatory authority to provide for this informal kind of recognition (see section 451.104(a) of title 5, Code of Federal Regulation) as an appropriate agency use of the statutory authority to "incur necessary expense for honorary recognition." These informal recognition awards are clearly intended to recognize contributions of lesser scope that might otherwise go unrecognized. In addition, informal recognition awards typically have more informal approval procedures and presentation settings than honorary awards.
Although an agency is free to use them, the criteria for honorary award items such as "lasting trophy value" and "clearly symbolic of the employee-employer relationship" do not have to apply to informal recognition awards because the items used for informal recognition are often extremely casual and low-cost. For example, an agency may reasonably use its awards authority to purchase wrapped hard candies to fill a circulating candy jar that team members award each month to the "most improved team player," even though that candy might be quickly consumed and has no relationship to the agency mission. Further, inexpensive off-the-shelf items such as pre-printed pins, balloons, or mugs need not be eliminated as informal recognition awards simply because adding an agency logo is infeasible.
Informal recognition awards may take a wide variety of forms and the criteria for these items are extremely general:
It is important to note that some contribution must still form the basis for informal recognition and be clearly acknowledged as part of any presentation, however informal. Further, the award item must be clearly recognizable and distinguished from other items that might be used as part of a recognition event.
The next article in this series will address special types of nonmonetary awards-U.S. Savings Bonds and gift certificates.
Originally published on February 1997
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