Where did employee of the month come from?

Mid-twentieth-century American retail and hospitality, where a large frontline workforce and a single manager made a monthly pick a cheap way to signal that performance was noticed. The photo on the wall was for customers as much as for staff.

Is employee of the month a good idea?

In its standard form, rarely. It recognises one person and teaches everyone else that they were not chosen, and the choice usually goes to whoever the manager saw most. It can work with clear criteria, published nominations and a limit on repeat winners.

What should replace employee of the month?

A monthly values award with open nominations that are published in full, so the recognition goes to everyone nominated and the company reads what good behaviour looked like. Combined with frequent informal recognition, the single winner matters much less.

Recognition glossary

Employee of the month

Employee of the month is a recurring award in which one employee per month is singled out for exceptional performance, traditionally announced publicly and marked with a photograph, a certificate or a small prize.

The photograph on the wall behind the till is the most recognisable image of workplace recognition there is. It is also a useful case study in what goes wrong when one person is chosen from many.

Why it has lasted

Employee of the month solves a real problem cheaply. A manager with forty frontline staff cannot recognise each one every week, and a monthly pick is a way of saying, publicly and at almost no cost, that somebody is watching. The photograph was for customers too: a sign that the staff here are people with names.

It also has the appeal of a ritual. Every month the date comes round, a choice is made and a certificate goes up. Nobody has to decide whether to do recognition this month, because the format has decided for them.

What it teaches the other 96%

The arithmetic is the problem. In a team of twenty-five, one person a month is recognised and twenty-four are not. Over a year, twelve people have won and thirteen have watched, and among the thirteen are the people whose work does not photograph well: the person who keeps the stockroom accurate, the one who handles the difficult customers so nobody else has to.

The choice, meanwhile, is made by one manager from what that manager saw, which is recognition bias in its purest form. The same four names rotating through the year is the usual outcome, and it tells the rest of the team that the award is not about them.

The messages for this occasion on this site are written to soften this, by naming what the winner did in enough detail that the message is about the work rather than the title. That helps. It does not fix the format.

Running one that does less damage

If the award is staying, four changes make it fairer.

Open the nominations. Anyone can nominate anyone, in writing, against a named behaviour or value. The manager’s view stops being the only view.

Publish every nomination. The winner gets the certificate; everyone nominated gets their citation read out or posted. The award now recognises six people a month instead of one.

Cap the repeats. Nobody wins twice in twelve months. This forces the panel to look past the obvious candidates, which is the exercise the format otherwise skips.

Pair it with something frequent. A monthly award on top of daily informal recognition is a highlight. A monthly award on its own is a monthly reminder to most people that they were not picked.

The honest alternative

Many companies have quietly dropped the title and kept the rhythm: a monthly moment where a panel reads through what colleagues wrote about each other and chooses the nominations to share. Who wins is the least important part. The DEI page on this site covers why spreading recognition wider matters more than picking the best.

What it looks like

A regional retailer names one employee of the month per store, chosen by the store manager, with a photo by the entrance and a £50 voucher. After a year, the same four people have won in rotation.
A software company replaced its employee of the month with a monthly values award: anyone nominates, the panel publishes every nomination, and the winner’s citation is read out in full.
A hospital ward runs the award with a rule that no one can win twice in a year, and asks each winner to nominate the next month’s candidate.

Questions people ask

Where did employee of the month come from?: Mid-twentieth-century American retail and hospitality, where a large frontline workforce and a single manager made a monthly pick a cheap way to signal that performance was noticed. The photo on the wall was for customers as much as for staff.
Is employee of the month a good idea?: In its standard form, rarely. It recognises one person and teaches everyone else that they were not chosen, and the choice usually goes to whoever the manager saw most. It can work with clear criteria, published nominations and a limit on repeat winners.
What should replace employee of the month?: A monthly values award with open nominations that are published in full, so the recognition goes to everyone nominated and the company reads what good behaviour looked like. Combined with frequent informal recognition, the single winner matters much less.