How do you deal with receiving public recognition?
For some, having to go up on stage before a crowd or be in front of their peers at a meeting, and receive well-deserved public recognition, can all seem like torture versus the intended recognition.
And yet, in North America, we have a tendency to almost drag people into the limelight to supposedly honor and laud them.
For the extroverts reading this it is easy to forget there are some employees who plain do not like public recognition. (more…)
Too often all the hype, communications and marketing goes into the launching of a new recognition program.
Then there is nothing. All is quiet. You can hear the hum of the photocopier machine.
If you want to keep recognition alive and well and top of mind you need to communicate and market recognition all year long.
That’s why you need to create a corporate recognition communications calendar. (more…)
Employee recognition is everyone’s responsibility, no doubt about it.
But there is something about having the personal support and endorsement of your senior leaders that propels recognition to a whole new level.
The 2015 WorldatWork Trends in Employee Recognition Survey showed only 34% of managers felt they had a high level of support from their senior management team for employee recognition programs.
Your goal should always be to get a senior leader’s commitment to making employee recognition practices and use of recognition programs a high priority as part of your company’s people strategy.
You can then prove to them how recognition can help them achieve the business goals you all want to see reached.
Don’t ever underestimate the value of an executive endorsement for employee recognition. (more…)
Many people ask me if there is a right way in how you provide recognition to your groups or teams.
Some of the issues that crop up and cause people to question things with team recognition are concerns like:
With tough questions like these it is always good to draw upon principles of human behavior to help answer them properly.
Let’s examine each of the issues raised and see what recognition principles we can apply to address them. (more…)
Recognition itself depends solely on valuing people first before you can ever value anything they actually do.
Let me illustrate what I mean with this with an experience I had a few years back while working in Bangalore, India.
I was doing some recognition consulting work for a major global company. We were on the 12th floor of a regular office building and I was meeting with our hosts in the boardroom of their Indian corporate head office.
My client hosts were facing towards me and I was facing them with the window behind them. I couldn’t help but see something that was going on across the way through the large glass window.
It seems a new hotel was being built for a major hotel chain across the way. The concrete framing of the building appeared to be completed and I could see some men working.
What I am about to describe will help you question the intent and purpose of employee recognition where you work. (more…)
Make your recognition successes a visible experience – always with the permission of the people involved. Share stories of the positive behaviours and actions employees demonstrate to help reinforce similar results from others. Use all of the available communication channels. Create cascading email blasts throughout the company. Put things front and centre in your newsletter and on your intranet or recognition program website. Use LCD screens, posters, tent cards and storyboards to get the messages out. Do all you can to spread the word. Recognition works!
There is a lot a talk lately about diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
A simple search of the combined terms yielded results of over 148 million references.
And I was recently asked a question about how employee recognition comes into play with both diversity and inclusion.
I think the question being asked was more about whether effective employee recognition practices can have any impact on diversity and inclusion.
Here are my thoughts. (more…)
The only good thing about having to visit a doctor’s office is the strong possibility of picking up a magazine to read that you don’t subscribe to or seldom have chance to read.
I came across an old Reader’s Digest magazine on one of these visits.
Inside I read an interesting article written by Lisa Bendall all about “The Science of Being Nice”.
The article looks at the benefits of “doing good” for other people. It’s taken from a social scientist perspective and the innate sense of altruism or self-interest.
Is there any real benefit to being nice? I’ll examine this from some of the scientific findings available. (more…)