Employee of the Month in Romania: a Study on Perceptions

An important and complex problem of labor economics in general and of human resource management in particular, is to effectively motivate employees. At the current juncture, under the spectrum of economic crisis, the controversies of theoretical and practical interest such as the importance of the money, the relationship between motivation, satisfaction and performance at work, are more pronounced and more focused on non-financial forms of motivation. At least in part, this is because the usual ways of saving costs in today's organizations seem to aim primarily the expenses on staff (wages, rewards, training funds and so on). In this context, the paper aims to highlight the perceptions of employees on the program Employee of the Month, as it was implemented in a Romanian organization (in a hybrid approach, combining monetary rewards and recognition awards specific to most common forms of program). Thus, the main results of our study reflect the opinions of people involved in this program, and allow us to sketch some possible changes based on the feedback from employees, in order to further improve the effectiveness of the program.