A year ago, our team was recognized by our client with an award from their Deputy Commissioner.  We went downtown to a reception hall and received awards with a firm handshake from the CIO of this huge federal agency.  Our company was mentioned three different times in front of the crowd of just under a thousand people as being fundamental to the ongoing success of the project.

Internally, our company has a web page where you can nominate people for a spot award.  Well, not truly a "spot" award, they're awarded quarterly.  They are cash bonus rewards and have Silver, Gold, and Platinum levels -- being the senior person in the group I nominated the other two coworkers that received the agency recognition to be considered for this spot award.

The rewards system must send an automated alert to the Partner (my boss's boss) when a nomination is made, and I received the following response from that Partner:

Subject: Beacon Award

I'll need to check with [Sr. Partner]. Normally, the sector lead decides who should submit. Will get back to you. I know, not the way the system is advertised, but the reality of it. Thanks for the input. Why her [BT] rather than you and TB?

One of the coworkers I nominated, BT, was a level below TB and I, and basically the Partner just asked me why I nominated a subordinate instead of myself -- that should have been a warning sign...  My response:

I wasn't going to nominate myself… I may be a shameless self-promoter, but I have my limits :)

I nominated everyone recognized (BT and TB), and TB's nomination went to [another Manager]. He also responded that we should wait until the end of Deployments. (Will there ever be an End to deployments? Won't they potentially roll on forever?) [update: it's a year later, they still roll on with no end in sight...]

All I know is that the [agency] Commissioner and CIO sat there and heard three times that [our firm] was fundamental to a project that was being recognized. And it gave us the opportunity to have you meet the Commissioner. If that's not a good example of direct marketing, and worth a few dollars, I don't know what is.

If our sector leads make these decisions, who lets them know what's going on with projects (day-to-day and recognitions)? I thought that's what the nomination form was for, so they could be made aware. I'd rather have the nomination submitted and have them decide it's unworthy than have the nomination stop at our local office. [cw]

Yes, the Partner I was writing to attended the awards ceremony and met the Commissioner and CIO face-to-face, so the event was good for him as well.  And despite his final reply, I'm pretty sure this nomination never got beyond the local level:

I've already sent a note to [Sr Partner] to see if we can get a nomination approved through our process. MDs normally make the decisions based upon input from the folks, then we go beg for a slot. It's nice to see someone recognized that people should be rewarded.

Yeah, it's nice to see that I could recognize people that should be rewarded.  Unfortunately it seems the system was

• Anybody in the firm can nominate somebody
• Only nominations from Partners count
• Even then, Partners have to "beg for a nomination slot" to get it submitted up the chain of command

BT left the company about two months later -- not due to this, but it certainly didn't give her an incentive to stick around.  TB moved on to another project within the firm.  Our Partner has since retired.  And just recently, TB's manager (that declined TB's nomination) was given the Gold-level reward for renewal of the same project, while the rest of the team was recognized with email congratulations. 

If you were the rest of the team, how would you interpret that?

Tags: reward+system, bonus, compensation, pmba, shafted