People have often wondered how I started off in health care and then somehow made the switch to employee recognition training and consulting.
It all began when I started my master’s degree program at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, to become a speech-language pathologist.
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It is amazing when you look back at life. You can see root beginnings of getting into the professional field you ended up in.
Where did this interest in employee recognition begin for me? I often thought it was because of my experience in healthcare and seeing the poor effect of non-specific feedback with patients.
Maybe it had its beginnings even further back.
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Organizational leaders often want to know the impact recognition has on people centered metrics. To find out how their recognition practices or their recognition programs have on measures like employee engagement or employee retention can cost a great deal if running a full scientific and analytical evaluation.
One way to ease the cost burden and still collect a powerful indicator is to conduct estimation analysis. Estimation analysis is a simple method to analyze data, employee perceptions, and interpret results.
It is important to remember that in conducting estimation analyses, that you are using an imprecise science to calculate the level of impact, or perhaps the amount of improvement gained.
Consider how you could use estimation analysis in your review of employee recognition practices and programs in your organization.
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Imagine if each person gave recognition just one percent better than the last time that they recognized someone. That’s all it takes to enhance your recognition practices and optimize the usage of your recognition programs. One percent improvement is all it takes. And here are some ways for you to give better recognition than anyone else every day.
Roy is no longer writing new content for this site (he has retired!), but you can subscribe to Engage2Excel’s blog as Engage2Excel will be taking Roy’s place writing about similar topics on employee recognition and retention, leadership and strategy.
In life, I strive for a basic level of minimalism. I still have a lot of things, but I continually get rid of some things I no longer need or use so I can focus more on what’s most important to me—such as family, friends, joy, and freedom. Minimalism can make a real difference.
However, when expressing recognition to the people you and I work with, there is no need for minimalism with how you communicate your praise and appreciation to them. That means, as I have said before, that those meaningless, short phrases like “good job” and “well done,” don’t work.
If you’re still using them, you’ve gone too far with decluttering your recognition messaging.
This post is all about showing you the importance of telling people the difference their positive actions make on others.
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Most recognition strategies and plans for recognition depend on moving the bar on whatever metrics you have for program usage and employee perception of recognition.
The gap analysis of where your recognition status is today and where you want it to be tomorrow relies on the program metrics you have. The challenging part about program usage metrics is that they are all lagging indicator measures.
Lagging indicators do just that, they lag behind on indicating whether you achieved the results you wanted. By the time you get the output measures on a program, it’s hard to do anything about them that will make a future change.
Is there anything you can really do that can change this? Is there one important thing you can do that will make recognition happen?
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Designing and developing recognition programs take a lot of thought, planning, and creativity.
The best way I can recommend beginning is to consider the distinct programs falling under a pyramid. And like building most structures, the foundation is critical because it holds everything built on top of it.
That’s why you build your recognition programs from the bottom up.
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Recognition does not come naturally to everyone.
Leaders at the top of your organization should show the leadership competency skills that they expect from their direct reports. Leaders should help others to lead.
But that isn’t always the case.
Your goal for each organizational leader is to get them to inspire and value the contributions of one additional person every day.
How do you teach your leaders to be amazing recognizers of your staff?
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The question of when to recognize a person, or whether what they have done merits being rewarded, is a common issue especially for managers.
I believe you must start with defining what you mean by recognition and what rewards are first. Once there is agreement throughout the organization on these two definitions, you will be in much better shape to guide and prescribe when to use each of them appropriately.
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Some people seem to be just a natural when they are out and about in the company as far as appreciating people for who they are and recognizing the wonderful contributions made by employees.
There will always be others who have a much harder time in recognizing others. For whatever reasons, such as not being recognized as a child, perhaps more introverted, or plain uncomfortable with knowing what to say or do, recognition doesn’t happen.
But the great news is that giving awesome recognition to people is a skill anyone can learn.
When you know what something hard to do looks like, such as a new skill you have to learn, observe those people that do it well. Then all you have to do is reverse engineer how they do the task or skill and then you can replicate this ideal performance and do it yourself.
What does awesome recognition look like? How can you learn to master this art and science of giving meaningful and effective recognition?
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