It seemed like a good idea at the time: what we have learned from implementing a student employee rewards system

At the 2007 SIGUCCS Fall Conference, Kristi Evans from Webster University and Geoffrey Sperl from Wayne State University wrote and presented a paper entitled "The Proper Care and Feeding of Your Help Desk" which highlighted a new student employee points and rewards system at Webster University. The program was aimed to improve morale, satisfaction, initiative, and participation among student employees. Of course everything about the program as we designed it was perfect and it would go off without a hitch, right? Almost one year later, there have been more than a few lessons learned and a multitude of changes. We keep finding ourselves saying "It seemed like a good idea at the time!" This paper will outline the principles of our rewards system and explore the good ideas that went wrong and subsequent adjustments made to try to get back on the right track. Through all the pain and tribulations of implementing this program we still firmly believe in our system and the theory that if implemented correctly, a rewards system can go a long way towards addressing the kinds of personnel issues that seem to affect us all. We hope to share our experience with other institutions that may be considering implementation of or are just starting a points and rewards program for their student employees. As we are blazing our own trails to the goal of ultimate success with this program, our mistakes and discoveries may help others in the path to their own.