There have been complaints and questions of late around aggressive sales practices in some of North America’s major banks.
Whether south or north of the 49th parallel the allegations have been the same – a high-pressure sales environment within the banks leading to unethical behavior by their employees.
From where do these problems arise? And how do rewards get in the way? (more…)
| Date: | March 22, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Appearance: | Being in the Moment on the Job |
| Outlet: | Training Magazine |
| Location: | Excelsior, MN |
| Format: | Magazine |
You have this great, well branded, recognition portal.
It includes a well-designed social recognition platform for all of your employees to use. You’re hoping this will encourage more peer-to-peer appreciation.
You also have a behavioral, performance-focused program where employees can nominate someone for an award for demonstrating your corporate values. Leaders and managers can use the same program to issue points to employees for achieving strategic goals as well as exemplifying the living of the values.
But what if your employees and managers just aren’t into using these programs very well or as frequently as you had imagined.
What can you do to engage your people and ramp up the participation levels of your recognition programs? (more…)
| Date: | March 20, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Appearance: | Top 10 Ways to Maximize Your Social Recognition Program |
| Outlet: | Incentive Magazine |
| Location: | New York, NY |
| Format: | Magazine |
The act of expressing recognition to a person or giving a tangible acknowledgment of appreciation can be such a quick and fleeting action.
Rarely do these exchanges of emotion and feelings last very long.
If you are not careful you can lose the impact of the whole recognition experience.
You should strive to capture these recognition moments in as many forms as possible. Then the recipient of recognition can relive their recognition moment over and over again.
Your goal is make every recognition experience a keeper. (more…)
Imagine if simply witnessing other people receiving recognition could cause employees to stay working for your company longer and increase their loyalty and productivity.
I am going to refer to a scientific study that does not focus on employee recognition but has some interesting and practical significance for recognition giving.
I read this study a while ago from the University of British Columbia called Escaping Bullying: The Simultaneous Impact of Individual and Unit-Level Bullying on Turnover Intentions (Human Relations, July 2012 vol. 65 no. 7, 901-918).
This study obviously addresses the extreme opposite of such positive practices as employee recognition, and tackles the not so nice topic of bullying.
What the study found was when individuals not directly bullied themselves were witnesses (indirectly or directly) to others being bullied they were more likely to leave their workplace than those directly bullied.
Think about the implications this could have on positive behaviours of praise and recognition. (more…)
Personalizing a gift adds an extra touch of meaning to a gift item. Most people’s names can be found on pens, pencils, toothbrushes, balloons and door signs. The key is finding tokens of appreciation or gifts beyond these small items. Look for local craft displays to find vendors of artistic or creative gift items. And check out the specialized stores who only personalize unique gift items and go beyond just the common names already printed on things.
I always love working with leaders on creating their Recognition Strategy documents.
After the organization has created their North Star of a Recognition Purpose and Philosophy statement, it’s usually time to take a look at a gap analysis of how they stack up against industry best practices.
Following that assessment leaders usually have a pretty good idea on the next steps they need to take to improve recognition for their organization.
That’s when it is time to develop a recognition plan to narrow down on four to six focus areas that can be worked on over the next 12 months.
But before I guide people on determining the focus points to work on I always ask people to narrow down on the overall goal for the company.
Thinking about your own organization right now, do you have an idea that comes to mind for your company? (more…)
Vineet Nayar, an Indian business executive, author and philanthropist, and former Chief Executive Officer of HCL Technologies, authored a critically acclaimed management book a little while back titled “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down”.
My colleague and friend, S. Max Brown, had the opportunity to interview Vineet Nayar in Delhi, India for our former Internet radio show, Real Recognition Radio.
HCL Technologies has over 65,000 global employees in 26 different countries in the technology services industry.
Under Vineet’s leadership and vision, HCL changed from a workplace with high attrition and low attraction to being named the Number One Best Employer in India and Best Employer in both Asia and the United Kingdom.
How did recognition and appreciation in the workplace happen because of Vineet’s transformational thinking?
I’ll share some insights I gleaned from the interview. (more…)
Sometimes you can’t see how your efforts are making a difference. This is the same for your employees too. Tell employees how their actions impact organizational objectives and customer satisfaction. It is equally important to recognize the small actions that make an impact. Often we are looking for the “huge” achievement to recognize people for. But the reality is that great achievements are often the result of a compilation of consistent, small, positive behaviours. Make the connection for people when giving your recognition.