“There are two things people want more than sex and money: recognition and praise.”
—Mary Kay Ash, Founder, Mary Kay, Inc.
There’s a revolution going on in today’s workplaces. Workers want respect, and they want it now. They want to be trusted to do a good job; they want autonomy to decide how best to do it; they want to be asked their opinion and involved with decisions—especially as those decisions affect them and their work; and they want to be supported, even if they make a mistake. Most important, they want to be appreciated when they do a good job.
These considerations are more important for today’s employees than they were in previous eras—or even five to ten years ago, for that matter. Providing workers with recognition and respect can make a world of difference in getting the best efforts out of them, keeping them, and helping you develop a reputation for treating employees in a way that helps attract talent to work for you and your organization.
Recognition is a positive consequence provided to a person for a desired behavior or result. Recognition can take the form of acknowledgment, approval, or the expression of gratitude. It means appreciating someone for something he or she has done for you, your group, or your organization. It also can come in the form of asking someone’s opinion, involving them in a decision, or encouraging them in their career. Recognition can be given while an employee is striving to achieve a certain goal or behavior, or once he or she has completed it.
Employee recognition can be broken down into the following:
1. FORMAL RECOGNITION: A structured or planned program of recognition for desired performance. Examples include President’s Award, Years of Service awards, and Employee of the Month awards. This recognition can be significant and symbolic, given the public forum in which it is typically presented.
2. INFORMAL RECOGNITION: A spontaneous gesture of sincere thanks for desired behavior or performance. Examples include: Creating a “pass around” trophy to acknowledge exceptional customer service; bringing in donuts or a pizza to celebrate a department success. These forms of recognition are increasingly more important to today’s employees than formal recognition.
3. DAY-TO-DAY RECOGNITION: Daily feedback about positive employee performance. Examples include: Dropping by to tell someone “good job” on an assignment; a simple thank you in person or in front of others for a job well done. This is the ultimate form of recognition—it’s where the rubber meets the road in creating a results-oriented culture of recognition for your organization.
It’s an item or experience with monetary value (but not necessarily money) that is provided for desired behavior or performance, often with accompanying recognition. Harvard Business School professor and management consultant Rosabeth Moss Kanter defines a reward as “something special—a special gain for special achievements, a treat for doing something above-and-beyond.”
When it comes to rewards, most managers think money is the top motivator for employees. While money is important to almost everybody, it is certainly not the only motivator. Today’s employees value many other things where they work, and surprisingly, some of the top motivators, such as praise, involvement, and support, have the least financial cost. Monetary rewards such as salary, merit increases, bonuses, and the like are important, but seldom are they today’s employees’ only motivators for making their best efforts on the job.
In a 2008 study by Maritz Research, the following anomalies about cash rewards were revealed:
• Rewards that are strictly monetary are not as effective as non-cash-based items. Because they tend to be less personal, the opportunity to develop and grow interpersonal relationships is hindered.
• Monetary rewards do little to establish a link between the behavior and the incentive. Instead of furthering company values, they diminish them and promote a culture of unnecessary spending.
Cash rewards have one more problem. In most organizations, performance reviews—and corresponding salary increases—occur only once a year (even less if salaries are frozen), whereas the things that cause someone to be motivated today are typically activities that have happened recently within the immediate work group. To motivate today’s employees, managers need to recognize and reward achievements and progress toward goals on a more frequent, even daily basis, especially thanking them when they do good work.
There is a common misconception about the use of rewards and recognition to motivate employees: that it costs a company too much money—or more money than is readily available—but rewards, recognition, and praise do not need to be lavish or expensive to be effective. Most motivating and meaningful forms of recognition, as reported by today’s employees, typically cost little or nothing at all.
It all starts with a thank you. And sometimes that’s all it takes. Most employees don’t just need to be thanked, they expect to be thanked for something they’ve done. And they expect it to be said immediately or soon after their good performance. Waiting too long shows indifference and that it was really more of an afterthought or something you’ve put off. Even affirmation from coworkers can change employees’ attitudes and give them a greater sense of contentment.
Employees need to feel as though their efforts are well spent, even if the results can realistically be classified as baby steps. Focusing on accomplishments gives your employees the encouragement they might need to keep moving forward in a difficult time. If they feel as though they’re consistently giving their all, only to hear it’s not enough, the time will come when they’ll simply throw in the towel.
While recognition of success is important to include in regular meetings, impromptu celebrations added at the last minute to an agenda are almost more effective. Overcoming the cloud of negative energy that befalls an organization during downtimes can be gradually chipped away by taking the time to point out your employees’ strengths. For the time being, forget about shortcomings; save those for reviews or specific feedback. So many small successes go unnoticed because they are merely a part of a large accomplishment, leaving many key contributors in the shadow of others who ultimately receive praise and recognition.
1. FIND OUT WHAT YOUR EMPLOYEES WANT—DON’T ASSUME YOU KNOW. By unilaterally deciding what to do or what to give employees who perform well, you run the risk of missing the motivational mark. Instead, involve employees in determining what would best reward or recognize them for doing good work—avoid surprises!
2. LEAD BY EXAMPLE—MODEL THE BEHAVIOR YOU EXPECT OTHERS TO FOLLOW. Having top managers practice employee recognition sets the tone for all managers and sends the message, “If I can make time to do this, no one else in the organization has an excuse not to.” The publisher of The Washington Post is said to give handwritten notes to reporters he feels have written excellent articles. Similarly, one bank president gold plates quarters a roll at a time to pass out to individual employees as their performance merits special acknowledgment.
3. REALIZE THAT ONE TYPE OF RECOGNITION NO LONGER FITS ALL. Paying even above-market rates or having a few traditional (and predictable) recognition activities or a single great formal recognition program is no longer enough. Update formal recognition programs to make them exciting and relevant. Johnson & Johnson surveyed employees and found that some of the organization’s traditional awards were not considered recognition by over half the employees. Accordingly, the organization made adjustments that were most meaningful to their employee population. In short, you’ve got to be experimenting, learning, and discussing recognition ideas and activities on an ongoing basis.
“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval, than under a spirit of criticism.”—Charles Schwab
The link between effective strategies for sales, public relations, and marketing and increased sales is not only well established and taught in all business schools, it is also common sense. Executives know that the results from such strategies are easy to track, benchmark, and adjust. Not surprisingly, when evaluating a company’s profits, executives tend to focus almost exclusively on these areas. With this focus on spreadsheets, what is too often lost is the fact that people are behind the strategies management institutes. It is easy to create business plans that directly attack an organization’s goals, but today’s most profitable and successful organizations know that actually achieving them requires indirect and creative action—and that that indirect and creative action comes from their employees.
Take the case of Circuit City and Best Buy. In 2007 Circuit City laid off 3,400 of what it called its “highest paid employees” and replaced them with employees who were paid much less. While these 3,400 employees might indeed have been highly paid, they were also the most seasoned and productive salespeople Circuit City had. Looking only at numbers, the executives at Circuit City figured they could get the same results from their new batch of employees that they had received from their previous employees. The result? Investors promptly rewarded Circuit City with a 4 percent drop in its stock price, and the retail chain, which was by no means doing well, experienced nearly exponential drops in the quarters following and ultimately went bankrupt in 2009 with no buyer. At the same time Circuit City was letting go of its top talent, Best Buy, its largest competitor, was nurturing its talent. In 2007 management at Best Buy instituted a new program entitled “ROWE” (Results Only Work Environment), in which employees at its headquarters could come to work whenever they liked, set their own hours, and even work from home just as long as their goals were met or exceeded each quarter. The result? A big boost in morale, a significant drop in turnover, a healthy jump in productivity, and best of all, increased sales.
As proven business practices that were once a sort of “secret sauce” to a select few have filtered their way through organizations worldwide because of the explosion of the information age, the result has been a standardization in which price- and cost-cutting become the only means for revenue increases, which, in turn, leads to the loss of the all-important competitive edge. As such, today’s top executives understand that their employees, far more than any strategy they learned at business school, are truly their competitive edge and that more than anything, they must protect and nurture this. As business guru Peter F. Drucker wrote, “... developing talent is business’s most important task—the sine qua non of competition in a knowledge economy.” Circuit City, which didn’t understand this, saw its employees as an expense; Best Buy, which did, saw its employees as an investment.
Since people are, and will increasingly be, the competitive edge of organizations, treating employees right has never been more important. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford Business School professor, recently concluded, “Companies that manage people right will outperform companies that don’t by 30 percent to 40 percent.”
One of the strongest tools in a business’s arsenal for increasing motivation is recognition. According to my doctoral research, 99.4 percent of today’s employees expect to be recognized when they do good work, while research by Maritz has found that only 12 percent of employees strongly agree that they are consistently recognized in ways that are important to them and nearly three times as many (34 percent) disagree or strongly disagree that they are recognized in ways that are meaningful to them. In addition, Maritz has found that employees who do receive recognition where they work are:
• 5 times more likely to feel valued
• 7 times more likely to stay with the company
• 6 times more likely to invest in the company
• 11 times more likely to feel completely committed to the company
And, according to research conducted by Towers Perrin, committed employees have been shown to deliver 57 percent more effort than uncommitted ones. Add to that the true cost of employee turnover (which recent studies from the Society for Human Resource Management place at 1.5 times an employee’s annual salary) and the numbers quickly become significant to the organization in terms of the actual cost of replacing employees, as well as lost opportunity when experienced employees leave.
Recognition is a significant driver of employee engagement, and having engaged, satisfied employees leads to increased customer satisfaction, greater customer loyalty, and profitability, thus enhanced bottom-line success for the organization. Indeed, Watson Wyatt’s 2009 “WorkUSA Report” found that organizations with highly engaged employees enjoy 25 percent higher employee productivity and a lower turnover risk, and attract top talent more easily than those without engaged employees. Furthermore, a study by the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia concluded that “recognition has been shown to motivate staff, increase morale, productivity, and employee retention, and decrease stress and absenteeism.” Towers Perrin, in 2008, found that “... companies with high employee engagement had a 19% increase in operating income and a 28% increase in earnings per share. In contrast, companies with poor employee engagement scores had declining operating incomes and an 11% drop in earnings per share.” And the Corporate Executive Board, in its study “Driving Employee Performance and Retention Through Engagement,” found that recognition was one of the top methods for increasing employee retention.
Why are effective recognition and rewards important? Because they constitute one of the most significant strategies for driving performance that matters to the success of the organization. People do not commit 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week or more out of their lives to just show up at work. They want to make a difference in their work—and to be appreciated for doing so. Further evidence points to the power of recognition:
• In recent surveys of American workers, 63 percent of the respondents agreed that most people would like more recognition for their work and the same percentage ranked “a pat on the back” as a meaningful incentive.
• Robert Half International, the nationwide staffing firm, recently conducted a survey of why people leave their jobs and found the number one reason to be a lack of praise and recognition.
• According to the “People, Pay, and Performance” study by the American Productivity and Quality Center in Houston, TX, it generally takes 5 to 8 percent of an employee’s salary to change behavior if the reward is cash, as compared to approximately 4 percent of the employee’s salary if the reward is not cash.
Recognition improves job performance, and improved job performance compels managers to provide additional recognition. In my doctoral study I found evidence to support the recognition–performance link in at least three ways.
First, several performance-related variables were found to have broad support by all managers in the study, the majority of whom agreed or strongly agreed with the following items (listed with percent of agreement):
• Recognizing employees helps me better motivate them. (90.5 percent)
• Providing nonmonetary recognition to my employees when they do good work helps to increase their performance. (84.4 percent)
• Recognizing employees provides them with practical feedback. (84.4 percent)
• Recognizing my employees for good work makes it easier to get the work done. (80.3 percent)
• Recognizing employees helps them to be more productive. (77.7 percent)
• Providing nonmonetary recognition helps me to achieve my personal goals. (69.3 percent)
• Providing nonmonetary recognition helps me to achieve my job goals. (60.3 percent)
Second, 72.9 percent of managers reported that they received the results they expected when they used nonmonetary recognition either immediately or soon after the employee’s action, and 98.8 percent said they felt they would eventually obtain the desired results.
Third, of the 598 employees who reported to the managers in this study, 77.6 percent said that it was very or extremely important to be recognized by their manager when they do good work. Employees expected recognition to occur: immediately (20 percent), soon thereafter (52.9 percent), or sometime later (18.8 percent).
All performance starts with clear goals and expectations, but even more significant than setting expectations at work is following up to see what was achieved and noting that success. Recognition can have a powerful impact on the management and motivation of any employee, group, or organization. In fact, I find that one of the great challenges of the topic is to get people to take recognition seriously. Because recognition sounds so easy to do, people often feel that they must already be doing it! Unfortunately, more times than not, that is not the case. I often find myself telling managers, “Yes, I know you can do recognition. My bigger concern is will you do so?”
The most proven principle of management and motivation known to mankind (we’re talking about evidence from hundreds of studies) is the simple and commonsense notion that “you get what you reward.” That is, the behaviors and performance that you notice, inspect, recognize, appreciate, reward, incentivize, or acknowledge will be repeated by those you acknowledged and perhaps others as well who noticed or heard what happened. In fact, it could even be said that all behavior is driven by its consequences. If there is a positive consequence, the behavior will tend to be repeated; if there is a negative consequence, the behavior will tend to stop. Here are a few of the other core principles of effective recognition:
Many managers mistakenly think that recognition is just “being nice to people.” This view misses the point. Recognition is most effective when it is in response to something significant that someone did. You should avoid using recognition “just to be nice,” for example, or “because you want your people to like you” or “because you feel guilty.” Instead link recognition to the performance objectives, values, and behaviors that will have the greatest impact on your continued success. In this way, recognition becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in reinforcing those things you most wanted to happen so that they occur again over and over.
The sooner you recognize desired behavior and performance when it occurs and the stronger the reinforcement, the sooner the behavior or performance will be repeated. Generalities should be replaced with a more exact focus when using recognition. If you are specific in stating exactly what the recognition is for when you give it to someone, the interaction will serve a practical purpose of making clear to the individual exactly what you appreciated that he or she did, which in turn will help increase the chances of the behavior or results being repeated. Good recognition also has to be meaningful to the recipient. If it is something they don’t value or want (for example, giving a plaque or certificate to someone who already has dozens), giving them yet another is likely to do more to demotivate the individual than to make them feel valued and important.
One of the most amazing and delightful ironies about the topic of recognition is that the most powerful forms of it cost little or nothing. While money is, of course, a top motivator for all of us (and it is nice to receive gifts and merchandise, especially in response to having done a good job), simple, sincere words and actions can and do have the most significant impact on how people feel about what they do, whom they work for, and where they work. Asking someone for their opinion, involving them in a decision, granting them permission to pursue an idea, or supporting them when a mistake is made can resonate the deepest in terms of showing the trust and respect you have for the person in your working relationship. In fact, probably the very best form of recognition is a simple thanks for having done a good job.
In my research I’ve found that simple praise represents four of the top ten categories of motivators when employees do good work. I identified four types of praise:
Personal praise: face-to-face thanks and acknowledgment for a job well done
Written praise: written note or formal letter of thanks
Electronic praise: personal thanks and acknowledgment via e-mail or voice mail
Public praise: recognition in front of one or more other people, in a public forum such as a meeting or a broad form of communication such as a newsletter or newspaper
At first glance these forms of praise might all seem the same, but I’ve learned that this is not the case. Each of these dimensions is mutually exclusive and provides a different value and meaning to an employee. Being praised to one’s face is different from receiving an e-mail or note or being praised in front of others.
At meetings, allocate some time for recognition of outstanding effort or the sharing of success stories. End meetings on a high note, especially those whose agendas are laden with less-than-happy line items; it’s a great way to remind employees that even in downtimes there are still good things happening.
“Many know how to flatter, few understand how to give praise.”—Greek proverb
In the workplace, praise is priceless, yet it costs nothing. In one survey of 65 workplace incentives, the incentive ranked number one by workers was a personal praising from their manager for doing a good job, yet 58 percent of employees say they seldom if ever receive such a praising. Although giving effective praise may seem like common sense, a lot of people have never learned how to do it. I suggest an acronym—ASAP-cubed—to remember the essential elements of a good praising. Praise should be as soon, as sincere, as specific, as personal, as positive, and as proactive as possible.
AS SOON
Timing is critical. To be most effective, the thank you should come soon after the achievement or desired activity has occurred. If you wait too long to thank a person, the gesture loses its significance: Your employee assumes that other things were more important to you than taking a few minutes with him or her.
AS SINCERE
Words can seem hollow if you are not sincere. Your praise should be based on a true appreciation of and excitement about the other person’s successes; otherwise your thanks may come across as a manipulative tactic—for instance, a ploy used only when you want an employee to work late. As the saying goes, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
AS SPECIFIC
Avoid generalities in favor of details of the achievement. Compliments that are too broad tend to seem insincere. Specifics give credibility to your praise. Say what the employee did and why her effort was of value. For instance, “Thanks for staying late to finish those calculations I needed. It was critical for my meeting this morning.”
The most effective forms of recognition are the most personal ones. They show that recognition is important enough for you to put aside everything else you have to do and focus on the other person. Since we all have limited time, the things you do yourself indicate that they have a high value to you. Recognition by way of a quick e-mail or voice-mail message is certainly appreciated, but praise in person means much more.
AS POSITIVE
When you say something like “You did a great job on this report, but there were quite a few typos,” the “but” erases all that came before. Save the corrective feedback for the next similar assignment. Separate even constructive criticism from your acts of praise.
AS PROACTIVE
Praise progress toward desired goals. Don’t wait for perfect performance; praise improvements and behavior that are approximately right. You will get the results you want sooner.
High-quality praise simply communicates (1) I saw what you did, (2) I appreciate it, (3) here’s why it’s important, and (4) here’s how it makes me feel. You can praise an employee one-on-one, directly or in front of others, or you can even praise someone who is not around, knowing that your remarks will more than likely make their way back to the person.
“Continuous, supportive communication from managers, supervisors and associates is too often underemphasized. It is a major, major motivator.”—Jim Moultrup, Management Perspectives Group
It’s difficult to overstate the impact a manager has on his or her employees. For most people, if you have a good manager, you have a good job. Likewise, “People leave managers, not companies” pretty much sums up what study after study has proved: The number one reason why employees leave an organization is over a bad relationship with their immediate manager.
Over the course of 20 years, and interviews with literally millions of employees, the Gallup Organization, the most authoritative expert on this topic, has come to the conclusion that “the single most important variable in employee productivity and loyalty turns out to be not pay or perks or benefits or workplace environment... it’s the quality of the relationship between employees and their direct supervisors.”
Employees expect to be recognized by their managers when they do good work. This is a truism supported by dozens of studies and surveys, and it is easily confirmed by asking almost any employee. Thanking employees for doing good work increases the likelihood that they will want to continue to work for your organization, and it serves as a catalyst for attracting talented new recruits.
Simple techniques, such as including employees who directly report to you on your weekly “to-do” list and checking the names off when they have met or exceeded their job responsibilities, can go a long way toward making employee recognition behavior simple and doable.
One of the most common misconceptions managers have about recognition is that it’s the responsibility of the human resources department, that managers simply have too much to do to worry about making staff feel good. The belief isn’t entirely unfounded, as far too many organizations actually mandate this.
Let’s turn this belief on its head for a moment. Suppose you are approaching your five-year anniversary and you walk in to work and find a plaque on your desk from HR in commemoration of this milestone. Ask yourself: How important would it be to me that someone in HR knew it was my five-year anniversary? Now, suppose your immediate supervisor threw a party for you during lunch for the same five-year anniversary and presented the same plaque to you. My guess is that you would almost certainly prefer that your manager, rather than human resources, recognize you for this milestone. Why? The best and most effective recognition comes from those we hold in high esteem. They are the ones we want recognition from. Research shows that the best forms of recognition are contingent in nature, and yet the bulk of recognition dollars are still spent on programs that reinforce presence over performance.
This is not meant to disparage the role of human resources, as the best recognition programs are often managed from HR and implemented by managers. Recognition consists of formal, informal, and day-to-day components. HR is usually best at managing formal recognition (with managerial involvement), but managers alone are responsible for the informal and day-to-day recognition components, which have the greater impact.
Every time you communicate, you are offered a chance to recognize employees. Exchanging praise and recognition in newsletters, posting an “applause” bulletin board on the company’s intranet, and commenting in meetings are just a few possibilities for formalizing communication about employee recognition.
“If success were determined by good intentions alone, everyone would be successful.”—Dean Spitzer, Senior Managing Consultant, IBM
Organizations must confront the beliefs of managers who prefer not to use recognition (low-use managers) if they are going to make recognition a personal, practical, and positive experience. Misperceptions and constraints must be overcome, objections and obstacles removed, excuses fronted. Here are the six leading “excuses” for not using recognition that I learned from my doctoral research, as reported by low-use managers themselves, and examples of how to deal with each excuse:
1. “I DON’T KNOW HOW BEST TO RECOGNIZE MY EMPLOYEES.” Most low-use managers consider giving recognition to be a difficult task. They need to become aware of the importance of recognition, be trained in the skills of recognition, be provided with individual feedback, and be shown positive examples and techniques that they can actually use, no matter their time and resource constraints. To get buy-in, managers should discuss potential recognition strategies with their staff and seek feedback on their own recognition behaviors.
At the Boston-area branches of Bank of America, managers give employees a blank index card on their first day of work and ask them to make a list of the things that motivate them. The manager ends up with an individualized checklist for every employee.
2. “I DON’T FEEL THAT PROVIDING RECOGNITION IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY JOB.” As has been previously asserted, the evidence for the positive impact of recognition is simply too compelling to ignore. Moreover, organizations need to set up the expectation that providing recognition is not an optional activity, but rather an integral part of the organization’s strategy, specifically linked to achieving the company’s goals. Managers should be evaluated on their frequent and meaningful efforts at providing recognition. Recognition should be an important part of the planning of organizational, team, and individual goal setting, and not “management by announcement,” where an initiative is announced once and then never heard of again.
A vice president of AAA of Southern California personally writes thanks to individuals in field offices, demonstrating to all managers under him that if he can find time to acknowledge employees, they need to do so as well.
3. “I DON’T HAVE THE TIME TO RECOGNIZE MY EMPLOYEES.” Who does have time to do something they don’t feel is important to do? High recognition–use managers view time as a facilitator of recognition because some of the best forms of recognition (personal or written praise, public recognition, positive voice-mail or e-mail messages, and so on) require very little time to accomplish. Thus, the reaction by low-recognition users of not having enough time is often no more than an excuse for not doing it.
All managers and supervisors at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, are provided tokens inscribed with the words Thank you to use as an on-the-spot form of recognition, which takes only a moment to do, for any employee caught demonstrating one of the organization’s core values.
4. “I AM AFRAID I MIGHT LEAVE SOMEBODY OUT.” Low-use managers take this concern and interpret it as an excuse for not recognizing employees at all, but high-use managers translate this concern into a greater commitment to be sure that no one is left out. This might, for example, mean checking with a team leader to see if you have all the names of the people who assisted with a successful project before commending the team in public. If at any time someone deserving is left out, it is perfectly acceptable to acknowledge the oversight, apologize for it, and still provide the recognition. Managers who learn from such an experience get better at it.
I recently attended an awards presentation at Florida Hospital, in Orlando, Florida, in which the presenter and top manager personally checked in advance to see that everyone who was receiving an award that evening was present so that no one’s name would be called who was absent (the individuals who were not present were acknowledged separately in person by the leader).
5. “EMPLOYEES DO NOT VALUE THE RECOGNITION I HAVE GIVEN IN THE PAST.” Instead of being put off by what might not have worked in the past, low recognition–use managers should seek to find out what forms of recognition their employees would most value and make an ongoing commitment to do those things. Managers can talk with employees one-on-one or have a group discussion about potential rewards and incentives; or they can ask each of them to bring two suggested motivators to the next staff meeting to share with the group. By involving employees in decisions that affect their own motivation, managers increase the employees’ commitment and buy-in, as well as the likelihood that what is done will be successful.
A manager at the Hyatt Corporation asked her employees at a staff meeting what ideas they had for increasing recognition. One of the employees suggested that the department rotate the responsibility for recognition throughout the group so that each week one person would be responsible for finding an individual or group achievement and then recognizing it in some way of their own choosing. Creativity flourished; recognition skyrocketed as employees were empowered to be an integral part of the process.
6. “MY ORGANIZATION DOES NOT HELP FACILITATE OR SUPPORT RECOGNITION EFFORTS.” Although recognition efforts can flourish even in the absence of formal organizational support, such support, if made available, can help managers maintain their commitment. Information, training, recognition tools, budget, and recognition programs that reinforce desired behavior and performance should be made available on an ongoing basis—even if all managers do not use these resources—to support recognition efforts and the organization’s expectation that every manager take the responsibility of providing recognition seriously.
At each morning’s plantwide meeting at Honeywell’s industrial fibers plant in Moncure, NC, employees are allowed to publicly exchange thanks and acknowledgments with other employees. Upon hearing of an achievement from one of his managers, the plant manager suggests possible recognition awards or activities for that manager to consider doing for his people. Looking for and facilitating opportunities for recognition to occur within the organization helps to increase the activity and make it an integral part of the organization’s people philosophy, culture, and daily practices.
An employee’s motivation is directly affected by the work environment. Oftentimes there can be factors in an environment that get in people’s way and keep them from doing their best job. Sometimes the best thing a manager can do to motivate employees is to remove those obstacles. Following are some ways to remove such obstacles in your organization.
SIMPLIFY POLICIES.
If your organization is rule-bound with policies and procedures, chances are that employees’ productivity is stymied. Many organizations today are replacing their volumes of policies and procedures with simpler, less restrictive versions that trust employees and allow them to take responsibility for their actions. For example, a few years ago, Houston, TX-based Continental Airlines symbolically burned its legalistic several-hundred-page policies and procedures manual and replaced it with a relatively short document titled “Working Together Guidelines.” The new guidelines rely on “the judgment of the people who really run this airline,” that is, line employees. Similarly, GM, after its 2009 federal bailout, began greatly reducing its bureaucracy.
DON’T BLOCK EMPLOYEES FROM TAKING RISKS.
Most managers want employees to take initiative, but if an employee happens to make a mistake while taking initiative, they are usually punished severely—sometimes to the point of losing their jobs. So on the one hand, management bemoans the fact that employees don’t take initiative, but on the other hand they are quick to punish employees for making mistakes when they take risks. Managers need to recognize and accept the fact that mistakes might happen—but greater good is attained by allowing employees to take initiative.
At Hershey Foods in Hershey, Pennsylvania, chairman and CEO Richard Zimmerman wanted to encourage employees to exercise initiative in their jobs and to take risks without fear of retribution. To encourage such risks, The Exalted Order of the Extended Neck was created. According to Zimmerman, “I wanted to reward people who were willing to buck the system, practice a little entrepreneurship, who were willing to stand the heat for an idea they really believe in.” The award has been given out on numerous occasions, including to a maintenance worker who devised a way to perform midweek cleaning on a piece of machinery without losing running time. Similarly, Google attributes much of its incredible success to failure. Like Zimmerman, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have explicitly stated the importance of “failing forward.”
There are many aspects to good communication, but one of the most important aspects is to provide employees access to it when they most need it, not when management happens to have time for it. For example, many companies have an “open-door” policy, but employees frequently find managers are not available—so employees stop using it. By contrast, there are numerous ways to ensure good communication when it is needed. For example, in many companies, such as Dell Computers in India, managers conduct regularly scheduled “one-on-one” meetings with their employees.
Or you might try opening the doors to improved communication with more high-tech solutions. Hal Rosenbluth, former CEO of Rosenbluth International, was accessible to all his employees through an 800-number “voice-mail box.” Employees were encouraged to call in with suggestions, problems, or praise, and, on average, about seven employees did so every day.
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It is important to periodically assess what obstacles are keeping employees from doing their best work and what elements are helping employees do a better job. Clearing employee obstacles can be an important first step to enhancing employee performance in most organizations.
The most powerful type of recognition occurs at the individual level, one-on-one. All managers need to take personal responsibility to see that they recognize their employees, and they need to keep at it on a daily basis. The best way to do this is to plan for it.
When planning individual recognition, a good (and simple) approach is to use the what, who, when, where, and how format. This planning format doesn’t even need to be written down, but systematically thinking it through will help you.
1. What do I want to recognize? As mentioned, the best recognition is contingent; that is, in response to a specific behavior or performance.
2. Who do I want to recognize? Identify the person or people most responsible for the desired behavior or performance.
3. When should the recognition be done? The best recognition takes place soon after the desired behavior or performance.
4. Where should the recognition be done? The best recognition is personal; that is, delivered directly to the individual being acknowledged—ideally, in person.
5. How should the recognition be done? The best recognition is done in a way that enhances its motivational value to the recipient. Who performs the recognition? Is it done in public or private? Asking yourself these questions will help make sure that the recognition activity has the greatest impact.
Take a few moments at the end of the day to reflect on whose performance you’ve noticed. Write those individuals thank-you notes and leave the notes by their workstations as you leave.
Manage by wandering around! Get out of your office to see, meet, and speak with employees about work they are doing. Take different routes in and out of the premises.
When you read your mail, look for positive items to share with others or at all-department meetings.
Greet individual employees by name and with eye contact. Take a few minutes to see how they are doing. Be sincere.
Make an effort to meet with employees you don’t see or speak with very often. Take a break together, have coffee or an off-site lunch.
Act on good news! Catch people doing something right and thank them for it.
Take time to listen when employees need to talk. Be responsive to people, not just to problems.
Take time at the beginning or end of meetings to share positive news such as letters from customers or ask if there are any praisings from one team member to another.
Remember the 4:1 rule! Every time you criticize or correct someone, plan to praise or thank that same person at least four times.
Think of mistakes as opportunities for learning. Help employees learn from their mistakes; don’t criticize employees for making mistakes—especially not in front of others.
Be quick to thank and compliment others and slow to criticize and judge them.
Spread positive gossip! Tell others what you are pleased about and who is responsible.
Praise publicly; reprimand privately.
Take time to celebrate individual or group milestones, desired behavior, and achievements!
Here’s a list of low-cost ideas that I have collected from companies over the years:
Personal thanks
Thank-you notes
E-mail praise
Voice-mail praise
Public praise
Pass-around trophy
Time with manager, president
Car wash by manager or executive of choice
Employee parking space
Read positive letters from customers at staff meetings
Referenced in company newsletters
Featured in community newspaper
Name days in employee’s honor
Wall of fame—photos of achievers
Team projects scrapbook in company lobby
Certificate of appreciation
Balloons and computer banners
Loan your car to employee
Create an award (Golden Banana, Spirit of Fred, Order of the Extended Neck, etc.)
Time off (extra break, long lunch, 3-day weekend, etc.)
Do a least-favored or menial task for someone else (“Dump a Dog” program)
Victory celebration
Performance passes to use a lending library for books & audios
Coupons to bring employee’s pet to work
Feature in company ads
Confetti committee for spontaneous celebrations
Baking cookies, distributing candy, making ice-cream floats
Cook and serve meal (barbecue, breakfast, etc.)
Management challenge (if goal is met, manager shaves head, dresses in crazy outfit, etc.)
A few other considerations can help your recognition be even more on the mark:
MATCH THE REWARD TO THE PERSON.
Have one-on-one conversations with each of your employees to find out the type of praise they prefer, and to determine how to deliver it in a way that would not provoke jealousy in your department. This is about personal, daily awareness—the annual service awards banquet is beyond the scope of this discussion. Does the employee prefer recognition in private, public, or either? Will a thank you do? Does he enjoy the times when his peers are aware of good performance? How about occasional on-the-spot candy, free lunch, certificate for ice cream, small gift, etc.? Find out what works for individual employees. Establish an action plan that fits the needs of individual employees rather than trying to fit all employees into one big category.
MATCH THE REWARD TO THE ACHIEVEMENT.
Tap into your leaders to recognize deserving employees, for example awarding lunch with the director. Do larger forms of recognition for greater achievements, but remember to do the fun, simple things as well. For example, every couple of months have some members of your leadership staff wheel around a cart of treats to each employee in your office. Ideas include a variety of ice-cream bars/popsicles; granola bars/candy bars; doughnuts/pastries; and so on. Make it fun by doing something goofy (if you serve ice-cream bars, cut out the pictures of them on the box and tape them to your back so employees know what varieties they have to choose from). This is sure to get some laughs and feelings of recognition/togetherness in your department, not to mention the interaction they are getting with leadership.
MATCH THE REWARD TO YOUR BUDGET.
Realize that you can do a lot of recognition with little or no budget, such as public recognition in a format like Energizers; having thank-you cards on hand for employees to use to recognize one another; a monthly recognition program, such as employee of the month (have your staff vote on who they feel is most deserving).
Effective recognition programs, even at the individual and team levels, require a substantial investment of time and money. Even though the best recognition is free, the time and effort involved still cost money. Let’s consider, for example, an organization in which 100 supervisors are spending, as a realistic average, two hours and $25 a week each on recognition. If the fully burdened cost (hourly wage plus the cost of benefits) of each supervisor is $50 an hour, the time that the supervisors devote to their recognition efforts alone costs the company approximately $650,000 per year.
And that’s just the beginning. Say that ten teams (with ten employees on each team) are spending one hour per person (at a fully burdened rate of $25 per hour) and $30 a week per team on recognition-related activities. That works out to an additional $140,000 per year in real cost to the company. The grand total of this very simple approach to individual and team recognition is close to $800,000! And this is before we even think about adding in the costs of an organizational recognition program.
If you were the CEO of this company, wouldn’t you want to know what benefits the organization was getting for this significant investment of company resources?
A smart CEO, of course, would have no problem with the $800,000 expenditure, provided she was confident that the program was an investment that would produce in excess of the cost. Unfortunately, poor recognition can easily turn a huge investment into a huge expense with low return and major morale consequences for the organization. However, when recognition is executed properly, the benefits far exceed the time and money put into it.
Recognition geared at improving performance is goal-oriented. It is targeted at helping an organization achieve a desired outcome.
People do things largely for the positive consequences they anticipate. Recognition in the form of contingent promises (incentives) and after-the-fact recognition (positive reinforcers) for desired behaviors or results are major motivators of both individual and group performance of all types.
In one of the most frequently cited applications of work performance recognition, Emery Air Freight, now a part of Consolidated Freightways, used positive reinforcement to dramatically reduce its costs of doing business. Emery was losing a lot of money because its containers were not fully loaded when shipped. Workers knew that they were supposed to ship fully loaded containers; the performance expectations had been communicated to them many times. However, while workers reported that their containers were fully loaded 90 percent of the time, a review found that the containers were actually fully loaded only 45 percent of the time. Through the use of positive reinforcement and feedback on performance (primarily just praise from management!), the percentage of full containers increased from 45 percent to 95 percent, saving the company millions of dollars.
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In a similar type of praise-for-performance program, Weyerhaeuser Paper Company increased their logging trucks’ productivity, going from 60 percent to more than 90 percent.
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Although recognizing employees is certainly a nice thing to do, for maximum impact it must be tied to an organization’s goals and values. If your organization has taken the time and effort to clearly establish a core mission, values, and strategies, which it almost certainly has, then your reward and recognition systems should clearly and systematically reward the behaviors and outputs that reinforce those elements.
However, before recognition can help move an organization toward achieving its goals, employees should be thoroughly aware of those goals. And once they are, managers should recognize employees for the actions and behaviors that contribute to successfully achieving those company goals, telling them what goal of the organization they helped achieve and how they helped do so. Before long, employees will start to understand that “this is what it takes to get recognized around here” and begin moving the organization toward its objectives.
Managers should meet regularly with employees to map goals and to seek ideas on how they can work together to meet these goals. In addition, management should identify the kinds of rewards and recognition that motivate employees to try to attain these goals. Having the end in sight and empowering employees to be creative and to develop their own skills and abilities can tap into a tremendous reserve of energy, ideas, and initiative.
Keeping employees focused on goals is best accomplished by providing feedback on their progress in achieving the goals so that they clearly know how they are doing. Use regular performance review meetings as a time to discuss corporate and individual goals with employees. Encourage employees to think outside the box to find new and innovative ways to participate in the company’s success. For example, managers can help employees establish goals that are linked to finding new cost-savings measures or to better ways of conducting an existing practice or procedure.
Traditionally, performance reviews occur once, maybe twice, a year. Consider for a moment the content of most performance reviews: a list of discussion items related to completed projects or tasks throughout the year. More frequent reviews of employees’ performance and efforts to achieve set goals lets employees know where they stand before the work is completed. With proper guidance during the course of the year, many unintentional mistakes or behaviors can be averted. Performance reviews should be given quarterly, rather than annually, to ensure that managers and employees are on the same page regarding their goals and performance. More frequent review discussions should concentrate on goals—of the employee and of the organization—and should always include discussions about the future and about development opportunities for employees.
There’s a big difference between getting people to come to work and getting them to do their best work.
While money or other forms of compensation are important to employees, what tends to motivate them to perform at higher levels is the thoughtful, timely, personal kind of recognition that signifies true appreciation for a job well done. Yet, most organizations, I have found, are woefully inept at building an organizational culture that fosters recognition.
A recognition culture is one in which individuals (regardless of rank, title, expertise, or tenure) freely and readily recognize one another’s contributions. Individuals are trusted, respected, and excited about their own successes and the successes of others in the organization.
THE ZAPPOS CULTURE
Zappos.com’s CEO Tony Hsieh has revolutionized selling shoes online by creating a culture built on the strategy of making people happy. He’s succeeded on multiple levels, including reaching $1 billion in sales. Customers rave about the company’s superior service, and The Zappos Culture Book is filled with comments from employees “enthused” about working for the online retailer. Every year management invites staff to submit 100 to 500 words describing what the Zappos Culture means to them. The text is published—unedited—and used as a manual to show prospective employees and to orient new ones. “At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff—like great customer service or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers—will happen naturally on its own,” wrote Hsieh in a recent blog post.
In most organizations, the executive management team sets the tone for how people are treated. Are employees frequently valued for what they do on an individual basis or are they treated in aggregate as a line item in the budget? Increasingly, executives in today’s most successful and innovative organizations are initiating actions that demonstrate their commitment to valuing their employees in a very hands-on manner.
Simply put, there is no greater strategy for the sustained practice of recognition in an organization than for that company’s leadership to practice recognition and to be seen practicing it. Executives must model the behavior they expect others to follow. Having top managers practice employee recognition sets the tone for the behavior of all managers in the organization and symbolically says, “If I can make time to do this, no one else in the organization has an excuse not to.”
On an individual level, what keeps people from acting on their best intentions to recognize employees more frequently? Usually, you can raise managers’ levels of awareness about the importance of recognizing employees, and you can have them practice their interpersonal skills so they can increase their ability and comfort level, but you can’t force them to keep up the desired behavior once they get back on the job. I’m convinced that the ratio of success increases when we help people develop an individualized strategy and support plan to stay committed.
Following are several tactics I’ve seen work in a variety of organizations. Try them, adapt them, and combine them.
LINK THE ACTIVITY TO YOUR DAY PLANNER.
For many people, the key to changing their routine is to make the new behavior part of their current planning and organizing system. I’ve been successful at getting analytical, task-oriented managers to start praising employees more by getting them to think of their people as “things to do.”
ELICIT THE HELP OF OTHERS.
Managers are likely to have significantly better results when they involve others and discuss what they are trying to do. They could have people work with a partner for recognition activities; this could be a colleague they met in a training session or someone from a different area of the company with whom they want to keep in touch. They could exchange action plans with specific times for follow-up and discussion of progress. In this “buddy system,” the partner acts as a designated monitor, counselor, and enforcer all in one—essentially, a soul mate to encourage and act on the new behaviors.
Alternatively, at the next staff meeting, a manager can say, “I’m going to be trying some new tactics and would appreciate your feedback on it. Specifically, I’m going to be acknowledging people when I see them doing a good job. I’m trying to do this in a timely, specific way. Let me know how it feels to you and give me feedback as to how I can do it better.”
HOLD ONE-ON-ONE MEETINGS.
One systematic approach for making more time for your employees is to start holding one-on-one meetings. Set a minimum acceptable standard for “face time” with each employee. One employee might want feedback on a project she recently completed, another may want to get advice on how he can improve a working relationship with another employee (they may try to figure it out through role-playing), and another person might want to discuss career options and skills she would like to learn on the job.
SCHEDULE TIME FOR RECOGNITION.
You can also provide structures or systems in your work environment that will encourage praise. Some managers save time at the end of every staff meeting to ask if anyone has any praise they’d like to share. Typically, people do. Other companies schedule “bragging sessions” with upper management in which they update (and celebrate) the progress of major projects.
One of the biggest challenges in recognizing others is doing it in the midst of the daily operations of your business, when you—and your employees—are the busiest. The Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida, offers an excellent example of how to provide recognition under pressure. Instead of viewing “being busy” as an executive excuse for why they didn’t recognize employees, they focus their energies on new and creative ways to do more recognition. For example:
• When surveyed, Dolphin employees reported that managers weren’t around much when things were busiest. As a result, management initiated “Five-Minute Chats” where all managers were assigned ten employees who didn’t report to them. Their assignment: to check in with each employee for five minutes over the next 30 days.
• During busy days—when employees simultaneously checked more than 1,000 customers in and out—supervisors set up refreshments and balloons in the employee area behind the hotel check-in counter. Supervisors were there to cheer employees on and to jump in during employee breaks.
• Dolphin management started using “Wow!” cards, trifolded wallet cards made from different colored construction paper in which employees and managers could provide a quick written thank you to others who “wowed” a customer or another employee. “Captain Wow,” their very own superhero, dropped by regularly to thank them and acknowledge their work.
No matter what your business, look for the times when you and your employees are most under pressure and develop ways to thank, acknowledge, and recognize employees during those times. Doing so can be the best pressure-relief valve you’ll ever have.
Even the best recognition program doesn’t last forever. To keep your program fresh and the energy for it high, you need to periodically review what’s working well (and what’s broken) with the program and then revitalize it.
At Johnson & Johnson, employees were asked what items and activities they valued most. It turned out that more than half of them didn’t consider the organization’s traditional years-of-service awards to be meaningful recognition. What they wanted was recognition that involved their families, such as receiving a basket of goodies or movie passes for the whole family. The company made the necessary adjustments. Through this experience, Johnson & Johnson learned a very important lesson: One of the keys to recognition success is consistently surveying employees, not assuming that management knows best. It may very well be that years-of-service awards are important to your employees. The point is: Find out.
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One of the best ways to revitalize a recognition program is through the use of motivators. Here are just a few of the possibilities:
VARIETY
Sometimes simply adding a new celebratory activity can do wonders to revitalize recognition. Brainstorm the ways in which variety can be added, without necessarily changing any of the core aspects of the program. For example, during a one-month period, you might recognize all employees who praise or nominate another employee for an award.
NEW RECOGNITION OPPORTUNITIES
Establish new opportunities for recognition and celebration. Even within a well-defined area of recognition, you should be able to identify many new recognition opportunities. For instance, if you have individual safety awards, establish a new category for team safety awards.
NEW RECOGNITION LEVELS
Choose new triggers for recognition. To make sure employees do not feel you are constantly changing the rules for recognition in your organization, be consistent in what you recognize, but add new levels for greater forms of employee achievement.
ENHANCING THE SCOREKEEPING PROCESS
Make use of this powerful measurement and feedback mechanism. Providing new scorekeeping methods can have a significant revitalizing impact on recognition programs. For example, one organization posted huge scoreboards throughout the company to call attention to its revitalized recognition program; another created a giant recognition “utilization thermometer” for the lobby to track the number of employees who participated in the company’s recognition program.
More important, top managers need to use the program daily to show that they really believe in it. They need to point out recognition opportunities for other managers to consider and encourage those managers to use available recognition programs.
One of the best strategies to sustain recognition is to measure its impact. Once its benefits become clear through data, recognition often becomes institutionalized.
An old management maxim says, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Recognition is no exception. Justifying the time, effort, and expense of any recognition program means demonstrating its impact, which requires that you be able to determine a baseline and any change—ideally, improvement—in that baseline.
Using Donald Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating the impact of training (a “soft” behavioral discipline), we can identify four levels of measurement for recognition:
LEVEL 1: REACTION
The first level of measurement is often obtained at the end of a training seminar or resource simply by asking employees, “How did the training feel to you?” using a scale of 1 (didn’t like it) to 5 (thought it was excellent). With recognition, this measure often surfaces in employee attitude surveys. When morale is low, employees typically rank one or more of the following items very low:
• My manager recognizes me when I do good work.
• My manager makes time for me when I need to talk.
• My manager has discussed my future career aspirations with me.
• I feel appreciated for the work I do.
• I feel I’m a valuable member of the team/department.
Surveying attitudes can be a useful way to determine whether employee perceptions of the company are improving and a way to quantify the level of individual, group, and organizational morale.
LEVEL 2: LEARNING
The second level of evaluation deals with what participants actually learned during the training session. Kirkpatrick defines learning as the “extent to which participants change attitudes, improve knowledge, and/or increase skill as a result of attending the program.” It is typically easier to determine what new knowledge or skills participants acquired than it is to determine the ways in which the training changed their opinions, values, and beliefs. Tests are the most frequent method of evaluating learning.
As it applies to recognition, we can measure if certain skill or awareness levels have changed based on recognition training or the rollout of one or more recognition programs. Managers can be asked (before and after recognition training) how important it is to recognize employees, how often they should do so, in what types of situations, and in what ways. In a seminar they can be taught guidelines for effective praising and be allowed to practice the skill with feedback from others. Other measurable recognition skills include knowing how to praise publicly, how to write a persuasive nomination for an employee award, and what forms of recognition work well for different types of performance.
Managers need more than an academic understanding of the importance of recognition. They must have specific skills associated with effective recognition techniques and be comfortable using those skills. Tracking progress as managers acquire these skills can thus be a significant measurement for any organization.
LEVEL 3: BEHAVIOR
The third level of measurement involves the impact of the training back on the job. Trainees can learn and demonstrate new skills and then never use those skills after they return to work. This form of evaluation can be time-consuming and costly, involving direct observation, follow-up interviews, and surveys—of participants as well as those with whom they work. It is somewhat easier if the measurement is established as part of the program (for example, a tracking report), not as a separate activity to be done later.
For recognition, we can measure how frequently a manager recognizes his or her employees, perhaps by the increase in use of available recognition tools and programs. We can also track the number of employees who receive a written praising from managers, peers, or customers; the number of employees nominated for awards; the number of managers who make nominations; the number of formal awards given; and so on.
This data can be useful in examining variations over time by manager or department, by level in the organization, or by facility. Comparisons can be done of corporate offices versus field operations and among different regions, and so on.
LEVEL 4: RESULTS
If the recognition isn’t getting desired results, it doesn’t matter how people feel about recognition or how good they are at using it—something must change. Even when the intent of a program is simply to increase employee morale, indirect measures exist (or can be built) to examine the results of the program’s effectiveness beyond morale.
Here are some examples of questions you can ask about results:
How much are sales incentive programs helping to increase sales revenue?
What is the impact of employee suggestion programs on improving the business?
How much do attendance programs reduce absenteeism?
Are customer service awards improving customer retention?
Are team awards enhancing inter- and intradepartmental cooperation?
Are safety recognition programs increasing safe behavior and reducing on-the-job injuries?
Are quality awards programs increasing product quality?
Usually results are defined as the bottom-line outcomes of the organization (such as profits, sales, and so on), but the tendency to reduce everything to financial terms is dangerous because it trivializes many nonfinancial organizational effectiveness measures. (Kaplan and Norton’s “balanced scorecard,” which is currently revolutionizing management thinking about organizational evaluation, is a response to this “bean-counting,” quantifying mentality.)
In addition to the traditional bottom-line results, there are countless intermediate results called “organizational effectiveness” indicators. These hundreds, even thousands, of operational measures exist in every organization and include manufacturing efficiency, inventory levels, lost-time accidents, order entry accuracy, abandoned calls, defects produced, equipment utilization, cycle time, and so on. These indicators are also Level 4 measures. Conveniently, organizational effectiveness indicators already exist and can be used without any additional investment.
Begin with the end in mind. One of the added benefits of good measurement, especially at Level 4, is that the more recognition activities and programs drive significant organizational performance and strategic results, the easier it is to justify the effort and funds to support them. We all want to have recognition programs that are rewarding for employees, easy to use, and readily applicable on the job—and that improve the organization’s performance in meaningful ways. To do this, you must reverse the evaluation strategy and begin with the end in mind. First, clearly understand your employees’ needs and wants. Then define the results you desire to ensure that the program can achieve them. Starting with a clear idea of your audience and the goals and performance you want from them will strengthen the link of recognition to results now and in the long term.
The profound implications of these four levels escape most people. But remember: What you measure is what you are likely to get. The level where you focus most of your attention is where you are most likely to see results. Obviously, measuring at all four levels is most likely to achieve the most complete results, but you should measure other levels only if you feel it is necessary to obtain feedback from them.
Recognition has been around for eons, but trends in recognition and rewards change from year to year. Following are some of the most significant new trends in recognition and rewards in recent years.
Increasingly, recognition can come from anyone at work, not just from one’s manager. Following are some examples of peer-to-peer recognition, which should make up the basic foundation of interpersonal interaction for any strong recognition culture.
Some agencies of QSource, the Memphis-based nonprofit health care management expert, erect an “Angels Among Us” table in the office. When someone nominates a peer for doing something exceptional, they decorate the table as a tribute, including a copy of the nomination, an explanation of why the person is being honored, photos of the staff member, and flowers.
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At Montana’s Cookhouse, the large restaurant chain based in Mississauga, Ontario, employees praise their peers’ work in external and internal customer service, health, and safety. Feedback is entered on the company’s intranet site and sent to the person’s manager, who reads the note to staff; notes are posted on the website. About 1,500 comments were filed in the first nine months of the program.
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Employees at S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., the global manufacturer of household cleaning supplies based in Racine, WI, nominate and give standing ovations to their peers for remarkable performance.
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At La Posada at Park Centre in Green Valley, AZ, employees give each other “You’re a Star” cards, which can be redeemed for money or days off.
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Julie Blind, administrative director of business services for Sierra View District Hospital in Porterville, CA, designates a “Pal of the Week” in which she asks everyone in the department to do or say something nice to the person in the course of the week. The designation rolls over to another member of the department and the previous designee is responsible for reminding everyone to do something nice for the new Pal the following week. The honor continues until everyone has served as a Pal and then the process repeats. Members of Julie’s department also use “Kindness Coins”—simple medallions—to thank others for their help and actions. The coins represent an emotional currency of personal appreciation that has a real payoff to those that receive them.
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At KFC restaurants in Australia, workers rewarded colleagues with “Champs” cards, for cleanliness, hospitality, and accuracy. Recipients were entered in drawings for prizes, such as movie tickets, car washes, or babysitting. Yum Brands Inc., the Louisville, KY, parent of restaurant chains KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, believes peer recognition helped lower turnover, which measured 181 percent for its hourly restaurant workers in 1997.
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Anyone at Spectrum Chemicals & Laboratory Products in Gardena, CA, can give anyone else a written note of thanks that includes a $25 gift certificate for Trader Joe’s or a restaurant of their choice. Most often, the person offering the thanks personally presents the note and certificate to the honoree in front of the sales department. Individuals are also allowed to give themselves a Thumbs Up award for those times when they are the only person who knows the specifics of their achievement.
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Human resources employees at software maker Symantec Corporation, based in Cupertino, CA, give each other “Serendipity” awards. At the end of the quarter, the HR VP randomly selects names among the recipients for prizes worth $40 to $50.
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“We call it our Recognition Fish Line,” says Nikki Sturgeon, employee services coordinator in Human Resources for Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ontario. The fish line is a voice mailbox used to leave anonymous appreciative messages for anyone who has been caught doing something right. The messages are recorded on notes, attached to a special “fish” ribbon, and sent to their managers who then get to recognize the individual personally. Because of the ease and simplicity of leaving a message, it is widely used by all levels in the organization.
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At aircraft manufacturer Boeing, based in Chicago, employees complete an online form and the program automatically sends e-mails to the giver’s and the recipient’s managers. The company publicizes the program by sending fliers to employees’ homes and through monthly e-mail reminders. Employees receive electronic cards or points that can be redeemed for merchandise.
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ComDoc in Uniontown, OH, encourages employees (they refer to themselves as “partners”) to recognize each other as “Passionate Partners.” “One partner sends an e-mail or letter recognizing a ‘Passionate Partner’ to me,” says Judi Adam, manager of corporate administration, “and I, in turn, send out a ‘Passionate Partner’ e-mail to all ComDoc partners, recognizing that person for their accomplishments, good deeds, acts of kindness, or whatever it is for which they are being recognized.” Often this prompts other partners to send appreciative e-mails to the Passionate Partner. It further reminds everyone to think about others who need recognition.
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LaPorte Medical Group in LaPorte, IN (part of Memorial Hospital and Health System of South Bend), has a program called Secret Pals. Denice Boyce, RN and clinical supervisor, created the Secret Pal concept. In November of each year, employees are invited to participate in the program and are given a sign-up form and helpful hints. The sign-up form asks for information such as birthday, wedding anniversary, employment anniversary, and favorite restaurants, foods, movies, hobbies, and so on. The Secret Pals committee knows who is assigned to whom and monitors special recognition opportunities, keeping people informed so they can give additional recognition. At a get-together in December of the following year, people find out who their secret pal was for the previous year. Then they draw a name for the upcoming year. Says Denice, “I have been here at LaPorte Medical Group for thirty-two years. It’s like family and it’s because we respect and recognize each other.”
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Toronto-based Scotiabank, one of North America’s premier financial institutions and Canada’s most international bank, is well known for its award-winning Scotia Applause program. Multidimensional and web-based, it was designed to help strengthen employees’ focus on Scotiabank’s corporate values and on delivering exceptional customer service. It includes formal recognition of top performers, online training, and Peer Recognition certificates, which allow employees to recognize each other for “living” the corporate core values. Employees earn rewards points that are redeemed for items in an online merchandise catalog. The need for greater employee engagement was heavily marketed in 2006, resulting in a record 500,000+ peer recognition certificates sent by employees recognizing each other.
The Sterling Group, a property management firm based in Mishawaka, IN, has a Silver Star program, an example of how a little effort—and minimal cash outlay—can create positive results. The program encourages employees to recognize each other with a special note that contains a personalized message of appreciation. They also have informal events such as summer barbecues, Cinco de Mayo celebrations, and chili cook-offs.
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Wells Fargo has an electronic peer-to-peer praise program called E-wards that allows any employee to recognize any other employee for doing a great job. It’s made up of three parts:
• E-cards are online thank-you cards that anyone can send to anyone else with a copy going to a recognition mailbox for tracking purposes. Those being thanked are entered into a quarterly drawing for prizes. In their first year alone, Wells Fargo employees used 1,600 e-cards.
• E-wards are used to praise consistent performance over time based on five values of the organization (leadership, “e-novation,” teams, entrepreneurship, and customer service). The electronic award goes to the nominee’s manager for approval. The awardee then gets a certificate with the details of the achievement and a scratch-off ticket for a gift worth $50 to $250. In its first year, 900 e-wards were distributed in the organization.
• Ride the Wave is a once-a-year celebration for select recipients of the E-card or E-wards recognition. Senior managers review nominations, select the 70 most impressive achievements, and invite the winners to attend a three-day, off-site special event with a guest of their choice. The event combines professional development with fun and includes even more recognition.
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Bank of America has a similar program that uses electronic thank-you cards. They also provide electronic tool kits to managers that show them how to make recognition more meaningful to employees.
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Colin Service Systems in White Plains, NY, has recognized employees with awards such as Most Helpful Employee and Nicest Employee. Coworkers vote for the employees they think should win the titles, and executives make the presentations.
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Walmart.com has a recognition program called “Tell me something good!” in which associates can report on good work that is done by coworkers.
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The Cleveland, OH, office of accounting firm KPMG gave each employee a box of thank-you notes to use and send to fellow coworkers.
Employees at Oregon-based Flying Pie Pizzeria restaurants complete a “This Paycheck Brought to You in Part By” or “TPBTYIPB” form after seeing a team member create a remarkable result—one that will help increase revenue, and help employee paychecks clear the bank. Employees fill out two to ten forms every night and post them on a bulletin board for the week, and the Store Leader chooses two or three from the week that seem especially valuable, types them up, and writes comments on why they are exceptionally good for the restaurant; for example, “This act helped us sell more of product X than ever before.” Then the forms go to the restaurant owner, who comments again; for example, “This act was great because it can be repeated by any employee.” The resulting document is stapled to paychecks with about ten other TPB stories to inform and inspire others. The TPB is given as a monetary award, too. Every quarter of the year, the restaurant has a random drawing, and each published TPB from the 13 weeks gets two names dropped into the hat: those of the person who did the great action and the person who captured and shared the action. A total of $500 is awarded ($50 each to ten people). Another one: This $100 cash award is given for an action that will save or earn the restaurant more than $100 in the next two years. The story is published and posted for everyone to see, and a copy of the story is kept in a binder so that crewmembers can be inspired and see how simple it is to win the award.
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In the past, rewards that were primarily used in the incentive industry were formal merchandise, such as etched crystal and logoed jewelry, used in formal recognition programs. Then lifestyle and family incentives became more the vogue. Now one of the cutting edges of new employee incentives is found in experiential rewards.
Dimension Data Canada Inc., the network-related technology company, appointed a Chief Fun Officer in its Toronto office, a title given to an employee who’s willing to create fun. CFOs get a budget to organize monthly activities, such as paintball or bowling.
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Chicago-based Radio Flyer, Inc., a toy products company, hosts a Heritage Celebration that includes an all-staff party and the Radio Flyer Olympics, where employees compete in tricycle races and doughnut eating.
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Brainstorm Marketing in Des Moines, IA, rewards employees with a trip to Kansas City in appreciation for completing a project.
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Circles, a Boston marketing company, gave CFO Hugh Merryweather a choice of an experience as part of his anniversary reward with the company. He opted for a Red Sox baseball game with special perks and took his young son with him.
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San Diego–based Quantum Design rewards employees for extra effort by booking time for them at a senior executive’s ski condo. The rent is being paid anyway, and employees feel refreshed after being away from the city for the weekend.
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Dominy & Associates, a top San Diego architectural firm, takes all of its 25 employees and a guest of his or her choice on an all-expenses-paid, week-long skiing trip to Mammoth, CA. Company founder Lou Dominy says, “We like to create memories.” The company always plans a stop along the way to tour one of the buildings the firm had built or renovated, adding to the sense of pride and team building the trip creates.
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Marsh, Inc., the insurance brokerage subsidiary of New York City–based Marsh & McLennan, hosted top performers and their partners to a trip to a Phoenix dude ranch.
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Flying High Pizzeria restaurants, which are headquartered in Portland, OR, offer annual raft trips. One trip of note: The company took 64 people to Costa Rica for a week, an event mentioned in AP wire stories around the globe.
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Texas Roadhouse, the Louisville, KY, restaurant chain, held its 12th annual “managing partners” conference in New York City. Over 1,000 employees and vendors were treated to a stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, an evening at Radio City Music Hall, and a Charlie Daniels Band concert.
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Restaurant Equipment World (REW) of Orlando, FL, hosts million-dollar parties for everyone in the company when a department reaches $1 million in sales. REW treats employees to ventures outside the office to avoid workday interruptions, as well as to give employees a greater opportunity to bond. Trips include group cooking lessons, pottery classes, bowling, laser tag, zip-lining, and visits to a factory to make chocolate. Behind-the-scenes employees are included and recognized, too. REW spends just under $50 per person for its recognition events, about $500 to $1,000 per party.
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Another trend in incentives is the increased use of wellness and work–life balance incentives for employees.
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Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing maker based in Ventura, CA, told employees in a speech, “You can take time off, whether it’s two hours or two weeks, as long as your work gets done and you don’t keep others from doing their work.”
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A Boston-based economic consulting firm, Analysis Group, focuses on maintaining an ideal work–life balance for every employee. Female executives account for about 30 percent of the principals and 40 percent of directors. Staff members are eligible for 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, with options for extensions. Several female employees work either less than full-time or part-time from home. The firm limits the number of business trips workers must take.
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FTEN, the New York City–based financial technology firm, offers its employees a holistic approach to wellness, including nutrition, exercise, and stress-reduction workshops. Workers also receive a healthy, free daily breakfast and bimonthly in-house massages. New hires work at ergonomically designed computer desks. With more employees adhering to a diet and exercise regimen, FTEN anticipates that its medical costs will drop.
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New York City–based Rand Engineering & Architecture provides free yoga classes and an on-site gym. They also let working mothers regularly bring their babies to the office or take a leave of absence without jeopardizing their position or tenure.
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Protective Life, a financial services and insurance company based in Birmingham, AL, uses the Virgin HealthMiles incentive platform to help employees become healthier. The company also offers an on-site health clinic, massage services, a nutritionist, and health education programs. Just over 60 percent of Protective’s employees are enrolled in the Virgin HealthMiles program. Desktop kiosks are available for employees to take biometric readings such as blood pressure, weight, and body fat measurements. Employees get credit for using the kiosks each month, and points accrue for walking, running, or doing aerobics. They are rewarded with gift cards and cash. In a 12-month period, employees can earn up to $400 in cash or choices of gift cards, which are also available via the Virgin HealthMiles platform.
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To encourage a more balanced work life, employees at Eddie Bauer, the clothing store chain based in Bellevue, WA, are allowed to “call in well” and take time off.
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Accounting giant Ernst & Young uses a program that focuses on pre- and postmaternity counseling and support. The firm provides a coach to work with the mother before she leaves to have her baby and talk about what life will be like when the baby comes and how she can manage work and life when she is ready to return. She is also paired with a mentor internally who has been a successful working mother.
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At Sprint, the telecommunications firm based in Overland Park, KS, sales representatives are eligible for “lifestyle awards.” Through the program, a sales representative can submit receipts for personal expenses, and the company can elect to reimburse them.
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“No one person is more important than anyone else on the team,” said co-owner Steve Coombs of Downtown (Spokane, WA) Honda. So, to promote teamwork and build a healthy work culture, he “let go” some of the car dealership’s top salespeople. “There are no prima donnas here.” The Washington State Psychological Association named Downtown Honda one of the most psychologically healthy workplaces in the state.
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HR NETworks’ annual planning meeting one year was held at a spa. The meeting room was reserved for six hours, with massages scheduled afterward for all eight employees.
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Since Western Virginia Water Authority started offering wellness programs and financial planning seminars, they report that their voluntary turnover rate has dropped from 8.93 percent in fiscal 2007–2008 to 2.28 percent in fiscal 2009–2010.
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At its headquarters in Sugar Land, TX, all employees of Heavy Construction Systems Specialists (HCSS), a Houston, TX–area software developer, are eligible to receive $100 annually for each good result from an annual health screening. “The wellness initiative seems to be a win for both employees and the company,” says founder and chief executive Mike Rydin. The company-paid annual health insurance premiums fell to $2,318 per employee in 2008, from $2,950 in 2004. The company credits this to its wellness program and to its introduction of a high-deductible health plan coupled with health-reimbursement accounts—to which the company contributes $1,000 to $3,000 annually for employee and dependent out-of-pocket health expenses.
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Censeo Consulting Group, a strategy and operations firm based in Washington, DC, takes an unconventional approach to client work. Most consultants work from home and spend minimal time at client sites. Some even work outside Washington, DC, though many clients are based there. The emphasis on work–life balance has helped the firm recruit many experienced consultants from other firms and top business schools. It also saves clients money, since they traditionally pay for consultants’ travel costs.
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NetApp, the data storage and software company based in Sunnyvale, CA, treats its employees like family. When marketing director J. P. Gallagher was diagnosed with cancer and took several months off, the company heavily supported him and his family. His wife was pregnant, and employees set up a night nanny and the delivery of dinners to their home for six months. The company held his job and raised $30,000 in his name for the American Cancer Society. NetApp has helped him build a database of gastric-cancer patients around the country and made a significant contribution of equipment to his foundation. “I get a little choked up when I think about it. It just shows you what an amazing place this is,” said Gallagher.
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At Wegmans, the food market chain based in Rochester, NY, employees are regarded as “family members” and encouraged to talk with everyone else in the company, no matter the level or title. Nugget Market, the supermarket chain based in Woodland, CA, also encourages its employees to get to know each other. There are no televisions in break rooms, helping to develop deeper interpersonal relationships. Because socially invested employees earn more at IBM, the technology and consulting firm based in Armonk, NY, started a program to foster interpersonal relationships.
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Bruce Power, based in Tiverton, Ontario, offers incentives for employees to use its extensive wellness program, and for exhibiting healthier and personal growth behaviors.
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One of the world’s largest providers of employee incentives, Maritz, Inc., headquartered near St. Louis, MO, offers a wellness program called Healthy Frontiers for its employees in conjunction with their health care provider, Great-West Healthcare, based in Denver. The program supports two major strategies for the organization: wellness/prevention and education/consumer awareness. The program provides participants with comprehensive information, support tools and tests, and activities via a Web portal. Participants earn points for completing activities, and the points are seamlessly integrated with Maritz’s Exclusively Yours points system, to be reimbursed for upscale merchandise and experiences from their 2,000-item catalog. Participants can choose from a variety of six-week programs, each designed to help adopt healthy habits. They can easily track progress on goals via a Web portal, get assistance from a health coach or medical expert, and get online access to registered nurses 24/7. Lab results are sent directly to employees without employer access, helping to ensure privacy and confidentiality for every participant.
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Companies and employees are also becoming more politically correct and environmentally aware in their use of incentives, as well.
Chicago-based toy products company Radio Flyer, Inc., has an employee-run environmental-issues committee that has held a presentation on global warming and launched a campaign to get employees to reduce their carbon footprints both at home and at work. They also introduced a new benefit where employees get paid 55 cents a mile to ride bikes to work. The workplace efforts extend to Radio Flyer’s office in China.
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Genentech, Intuit, Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical, and others offer healthier foods and programs that can also slash environmental waste. As companies expect low-fat or low-calorie menu items to help reduce health care costs, they also are adopting greener policies such as turning cafeteria waste into compost. For example, Cox Enterprises in Atlanta has gone green: Food-service packaging is produced using sustainable, renewable sources. Plates and bowls are made from sugarcane, and cups and salad plates are made from corn—both degrade within 60 days. San Diego State University only uses trans-fat-free oil for cooking—which they recycle to produce biofuel for campus vehicles. They have a food-composting program, and leftover biodegradable food scraps are used for campus landscaping. In one year alone, 50 tons of waste were converted to compost. “Some of the changes were initiated by students and faculty,” says Paul Melchior, director of dining services.
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Dow Chemical, based in Midland, MI, which has a goal of reducing health risks to its employee population by 10 percent by the year 2014, provides healthy foods in cafeterias and vending machines. Dow has about 43,000 employees globally. “This needs to be a company-driven effort,” says Karen Tully, global health-promotion leader with Dow. Food choices include fresh fruit, yogurt, baked chips, peanuts, and granola bars in vending areas.
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SAS in Cary, NC, a provider of business intelligence and software, offers heart-healthy entrees and vegetarian items at each of its three on-site cafés. Break room options are also heart-healthy: free fresh fruit, reduced-fat whole-grain crackers, and nuts. The on-site health care center offers full-time nutritionists who can create personalized eating plans for employees. “It’s a growing initiative,” says Julie Steward, SAS food-service manager. “We got more comments on the healthy food initiative than we’ve gotten on any other initiative we’ve done.”
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Businesses that provide food services to employers also say there is a significant demand for sustainable foods and healthier options. Bon Appetite Management in Palo Alto, CA, provides food services for such companies as eBay, Yahoo, Best Buy, and Oracle. They use organic, local, and sustainable food, with programs that include direct purchasing from small local farmers and a healthy options program with vegan and whole-grain items.
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The final category of the latest incentive trends is the increased use of charity incentives and the support of employees for community service. Following are examples of this category.
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At McCormick & Company, Inc., a manufacturer of seasonings, spices, and frozen foods based in Baltimore, MD, employees are encouraged to work on one “Charity Day” Saturday every year. Employees donate their pay for the day at time and a half to a charity. More than 90 percent of employees participate!
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Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, MI, encourages employees to participate in various activities held locally during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Race for the Cure runs/walks. Employees sign up their own sponsors, who write checks directly to the charities involved.
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At Decision Analyst of Arlington, TX, the 200 employees choose a family to adopt for Thanksgiving and bring food to be delivered to the family for the holiday.
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Robert W. Baird, a financial services company based in Milwaukee, recently introduced a new program that allows associates to take one paid day per year to perform volunteer service. In addition, many of its departments and branches organize food drives and holiday gift-giving events and support fund-raising walks for local charitable organizations.
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Kaiser Permanente’s corporate offices in Oakland, CA, join together for a team-building activity every December. This type of fun activity pulls people together and the final product is auctioned off for charity.
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Texas Utilities Company encourages its 13,000 employees to participate in charitable activities and gives time off for employees to volunteer for charities of their choice.
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Tom Thumb, the supermarket chain based in Houston, TX, encourages each store to select a local family in need of assistance and matches whatever funds employees raise.
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For $5, employees of participating divisions of Lee Company, apparel makers headquartered in Merriam, KS, can “buy” the right to wear jeans to work; all proceeds go to the Komen Foundation.
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D.D.B. Needham Worldwide, a New York–based advertising agency, gives all employees a day or an afternoon off the job to work with a charity or homeless shelter of their choice or to clean up a local park. This activity is often combined with an open house at the company for the supported charities to share what they do for the community with all employees.
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At The Thomson Corporation, publisher of the Canadian HR Reporter, employees are nominated and the winning employees choose a cause to which the company donates cash.
When employees of Heartland Dental Care in Effingham, IL, bring in 10 percent over its sales goal, if the entire dental office agrees, earned proceeds from the office can be donated to a charity of the employees’ choice.
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Four Seasons Flower Shop in Poway, CA, uses a “Good Neighbor Day” in which on a given day the store distributes a dozen free roses to anyone who comes into the shop, on the condition that the person keep one of the roses and pass the rest of the bunch on to someone else, instructing the next person to do the same. Barbara Bertran, the store’s owner, obtained the support of several other local businesses to sponsor this event, in which they distributed some 10,000 medium-stemmed roses.
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The Austin (MN) Medical Center changed its employee rewards program to “Chamber Bucks,” a move that put thousands of dollars back into the community. The rewards program issues monetary amounts for workers who are recognized for several things, including years of service, birthdays, outstanding service, and going above and beyond. Chamber Bucks are used the same way regular money is used, but they can only be used at one of the 350+ businesses that are members of Austin’s chamber of commerce. “The changes reflect our commitment to the community and to providing better value to staff receiving recognition,” says Rod Nordeng, vice president of organizational support. “The feedback has been positive, which is a good thing for staff and patients alike.”
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First Commonwealth Corp., based in Indiana, PA, operates branches in several western Pennsylvania counties and prides itself on being a community bank. When Jeanine Fallon, senior vice president, received the company’s prestigious Golden Tower Award, she was cited for her service to the community, including the Dress for Success program, which helps disadvantaged women in the region gain and retain meaningful jobs. “I was so honored. It says a lot about the company that they are concerned about the community,” says Fallon. “We are a community bank, and we’re really showing our true colors.”
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Traditional awards and awards programs can also be effective—with or without added perks. At Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), annual community service awards are given to employees who have made outstanding contributions in the community, plus the company matches on a two-for-one basis any employee or retiree donation to a social service organization or college.
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When Texas Roadhouse held its 12th annual “managing partners” conference in New York, attendees also spent time stuffing 10,000 gift bags with cookies and iTunes cards for soldiers abroad, served meals to the homeless at a local church, and painted ceiling tiles for children’s hospitals across the U.S.
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The soft drink company PepsiCo, based in Purchase, NY, encourages associates to get outside by offering them plots of land to start organic gardens and luring them on head-clearing walks with lush outdoor grounds. Patagonia, the outdoor apparel store headquartered in Ventura, CA, sent a manager to Patagonia, a vast area spanning Chile and Argentina, to work for three weeks as part of its efforts to help set up a 173,000-acre national park.
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Intuit Inc., a Mountain View, CA, tax and financial software provider, lets employees use their recognition awards to make charitable donations to organizations such as the International Red Cross. Graham Co., an insurance broker in Philadelphia, PA, allows employees to take time off to volunteer. Bellevue, WA, accounting firm Clark Nuber launched “Caring, Serving and Giving,” a program that lets employees apply for grants of up to $500 to fund community service projects.
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Bath and body products company Thymes, based in Minneapolis, helps employees lead enriching lives by offering them volunteer opportunities. The organization has an employee volunteer committee—who are paid for up to eight hours a year—that helps nonprofits such as Art Buddies and the United Way. At Coles Salon, also in the Minneapolis area, employees walk for breast cancer or give proceeds from haircuts to support the Ronald McDonald House. Employees of Securian Financial, the financial services firm based in St. Paul, MN, spent a day packing supplies and delivering backpacks to a school full of disadvantaged kids.
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Employees of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant based in New York, convinced company leadership to make Pfizer medications free to all former U.S. employees who had been laid off. The program, MAINTAIN, had a big morale-boosting effect within the organization. Employees donated their own money to the program, with the Pfizer Foundation matching all employee donations.
SEVEN IMPORTANT LESSONS
IN MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES
1. YOU GET WHAT YOU REWARD. Be sure you have clearly defined what you want to get, then use rewards and recognition to move toward those goals.
2. WHAT MOTIVATES PEOPLE, MOTIVATES PEOPLE. What is motivating to individuals varies from person to person. To be on target, ask employees what they want.
3. THE MOST MOTIVATING REWARDS TAKE LITTLE OR NO MONEY. Try a sincere thank you, providing information, involvement in decision making—especially as it affects your employees.
4. EVERYONE WANTS TO BE APPRECIATED. Competent people, quiet people, even managers want to know that what they are doing is important and meaningful.
5. ALL BEHAVIOR IS CONTROLLED BY ITS CONSEQUENCES. Positive consequences will most quickly lead to desired behavior and enhanced performance.
6. MANAGEMENT IS WHAT YOU DO WITH PEOPLE, NOT TO THEM. Tell employees what you want to do and why. By involving them, you’ll more easily gain their commitment and support.
7. COMMON SENSE IS OFTEN NOT COMMON PRACTICE. It’s not what you believe or say—it’s what you do. Practice recognizing people and their achievements on a daily basis.
What is the best way to motivate employees in challenging times? Surveys, studies, and discussions with employees from all walks of life in all industries have revealed a very simple formula for successfully rewarding employees: Treat your employees with respect, pay them fairly, and recognize and reward them when they do good work.
Although money is a motivator, it is not the only one, and it does have its limitations. Often, simple, creative, no-cost ways to show your appreciation in a timely way can have a greater impact on your employees in making them feel special and motivating them to rise to the occasion in difficult times. If you don’t recognize performance when it happens, you won’t get the results you most want.
Praise is important to today’s employees and comes in several forms: personal, written, electronic, and public. You should recognize employees for small accomplishments, as well as the big ones when those occur. You should also recognize both individual and group accomplishments.
Once you’ve applied the principles and ideas discussed in this overview, you will be well on your way to shaping a more motivating workplace. If you keep at it, you will soon have employees who are dedicated to your (and their) success, and a work environment in which people are excited about their jobs, enjoy their coworkers, and want to do the best work possible each and every day. Not only will this give your organization a competitive advantage, it will also make you proud to be a leader in a culture of recognition. You will have created the kind of work environment we all dream of—an environment that puts people first, and rewards and recognizes their contributions to their customers, coworkers, and organizations. Your job, however, will not be done. To sustain the results you obtain, you will need to keep at the changes and challenges over time. Motivation is a moving target and requires an ongoing community.
