Getting your CEO’s or your senior leader’s buy-in to your recognition program proposal can still be a tough act to obtain. But the key to receiving their buy-in is to get their personal commitment first. We invited leading business CEO’s to contribute their personal recommendations for what works with them. Review and apply these Top 10 ideas to get your senior leader’s commitment. (more…)
The Intangibleness factor of recognition is the degree of intangibleness or the intrinsic value over that of the extrinsic value of any act or object of recognition given to someone. This really gets down to the feeling level. The more intangible the recognition is the more appreciated it will be.
On many occasions I am requested to help company leaders with improving employee recognition after the results are back from a recent employee engagement survey. There are usually one or two questions on the survey touching on some aspect of employee recognition and how well the employees feel valued for their contributions.
None of these surveys have ever come back with the employees pleading, “Please stop giving me so much recognition!” Neither has there ever been any social science research found revealing companies are giving too much recognition to their staff. (more…)
In order to get everyone on the same page, spell out the types of behaviours you want to see rewarded and recognized. Managers are busy people and they need to know exactly what they need to do. Lay out the expectations, all the criteria, and how to measure the actions. Give them concrete steps and procedures to make it easy for them to use and do it correctly.
How do you really create authentic, or “real”, recognition?
Managers and employees alike are always concerned with what “others” are thinking when they attempt to give positive feedback to a fellow worker.
The secret behind giving Authentic Recognition is building trust first. That way the giving of recognition is always perceived and received correctly as it was intended. (more…)
It can be hard visiting an organization and then hearing how unrecognized their employees are feeling. Those responsible for employee recognition can often point to the latest employee engagement survey to prove the point.
The lowest scores I have seen hover around the same magic number of only 33 percent of employees feeling valued and recognized for their contributions in the workplace. Which naturally means two thirds of the company’s employees don’t feel recognized or appreciated. That’s a lot of people.
Most of these organizations focus too much of their time on formal award programs and ceremonies and neglect the more important everyday recognition. (more…)
The Relationship factor of recognition refers to the closeness, or distance, of the positive relationship strength between the giver and the receiver of recognition. The closer or more positive the relationship strength is of the giver to the receiver the greater the meaning and perceived value will be of the recognition given.
Harvard Business School had one of its professors come out with a jointly written study they called The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field.
The authors of the study essentially conducted a cost – benefits analysis of an attendance award program that was implemented in an industrial laundry plant. They concluded with a cautionary note on using award programs because of the unintended effects from of using rewards. (more…)
Determine your business and performance targets and then use social recognition to congratulate people on specific behaviours and use instant incentives to reward goals reached. Get this right and you will be very successful. Carefully define what behaviours and actions you really want to reinforce. Remember, whatever you say the behaviours are that is where people will focus their energies on. All you need to do is recognize people when they do the right behaviours and reward people when they get the right results.
Milestones.
You have probably seen them along the highway especially when you sit on the passenger side of the car.
Like the name implies, a milestone is typically a marker placed along a roadside at various intervals but most commonly at every mile or even indicating part of a mile (or every kilometre, depending on where you live). (more…)