Citizen based employee of the month program for local government workers: to improve city worker productivity and citizen participation Christopher James Green Working paper June 2013 Abstract Working for public organizations has many rewards most of those rewards are not always direct but internal and can either be pride of a sense of self-worth by helping others. However working in the public sector, managers often have problems getting their workers to be more productive and also remember who they are there to serve. Many business organizations use employee of the month programs to increase worker productivity. Of these methods many programs of employee recognition have been tried such as manager or coworker recognition programs. Employee recognition programs have their merits but are mostly internal affairs. The basis of this research if to investigate whether a citizen based employee recognition program could be used to increase worker productivity and in turn increase city productivity as a whole for local government. Keywords Employee of the month, citizen survey, award, recognition program, social capital