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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Of all the recognition behaviors or practices I have studied, it amazed me that one’s voice ranked as the most important behavior in conveying authentic and effective recognition.
But we couldn’t argue with the content validation exercise conducted with employee recognition experts.
That’s why I want you to learn to better use your voice to communicate more meaningful recognition.
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Being unable to get their company’s managers to consistently and correctly use their online recognition programs often frustrates most owners and managers of employee recognition programs.
Yet, there’s an interesting irony to this problem when you ask yourself, how often have we involved managers in the design of our recognition programs? We can eliminate many of our problems if make our programs more manager and employee-centric and give them a positive user experience. (more…)
You hear a lot about mindfulness these days.
Mindfulness is a therapeutic technique for creating a conscious awareness of being in the present moment.
Now, if you couple mindfulness with employee recognition, you will have a greater awareness of the things people are doing around you that merit being acknowledged and appreciated.
By creating more empathetic feelings toward the people you work with you can also show more caring concern for the positive and negative life events that affect them and their families.
You can become better at acknowledging and accepting your own thoughts and feelings, having an environmental awareness, all in a non-judgmental way.
It only takes a few things each day to keep a recognition focus. (more…)
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
One of my biggest concerns about learning employee recognition skills is how companies are relying too much on training.
You are well aware that training is about learning how to do new things especially if you don’t know how. It is providing opportunities to practice those skills and transfer what you have learned out of the classroom, or online course, and into the real world.
But, you may have seen, as I have, that managers often receive the training and nothing really changes.
My advice to you is to make sure you couple any training you provide with education.
Ask yourself if you are educating your people to give recognition versus just training them to do so.
Education is completely different than training. I found that out later in life. (more…)
Giving recognition to people the right way every time is an experience that requires vigilance in doing several things very well.
The following 7 areas need to be done right, consistently, in order to make recognition as positive and meaningful of an experience as possible for each recognition recipient.
Examine the following factors and learn to apply them carefully. (more…)
In my work to help people give real recognition wherever they work, I’ve been able to conduct research on the essential behaviors effective managers do well in giving employees authentic recognition.
I identified a total of 40 behaviors observed in people recognizing one another. These were grouped into 5 categories or domains to help us focus people more clearly on the different types of behaviors.
Then we solicited experts in the field of employee recognition to rank these behaviors by how important they were and the level of positive impact they had and how frequently effective recognizers used them.
What I want to do for you today is give you just the top 5 behaviors that if you will implement and improve upon will make you a better recognizer of those around you.
Are you ready? (more…)
A peer you only occasionally work with has just recognized you.
They acknowledged you for your actions last week with helping them assist with a need from major client account.
You’re questioning the genuineness of the recognition eCard you received in your inbox. It was one of the options available through the company’s online social recognition program.
In fact, you’re even wondering about their intention.
Do ever question what your intentions are when giving people recognition? (more…)