Giving meaningful recognition is all about learning the science behind recognition and mastering the art of practicing this important soft skill.
A soft skill includes all the attributes and personality traits that help employees positively interact with others and achieve success at work. Recognition is just one of those soft skills to develop.
What learning principles will help enhance retention of the skills needed to give effective recognition to employees? Let’s take a look at some of them.
Teaching people how to use your recognition programs takes time and effort. And the education opportunities are best if you repeat them in different ways at various times.
Try to set up the following ways to educate managers and employees on using your recognition programs.
Leaders often barrage their managers of recognition with criticism over a lack of participation and usage of their organization’s employee recognition programs.
Naturally, not all organizations have participation problems. Some are exemplary. They have fought hard for that position. It did not come about easily, nor did it happen overnight.
But never let those who do not understand the intricacies and gifts of what it takes to make recognition happen, believe that they are the “real” recognition givers and know exactly what it takes to get full participation with recognition programs.
Instead, remind them that first things must come first. Teach them how to give recognition one-on-one, whether in person, or by all the communication methods available to them
It’s being expected with more employees working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic that some folks are losing their usual connection with leaders, managers, and peers.
What can you do to stay better connected with all of your employees?
Consider these suggestions if you haven’t already done so.
This post was originally written for Incentive Magazine back in 2010. It’s amazing what can happen in a decade, with so many work from home employees due to the pandemic. Naturally, this only applies to knowledge workers, certain professionals, information technology, and other office workers able to perform most of their job functions at home.
Addenda are made when needed to comply with our current pandemic health prevention or restrictions.
Managing people who work at a distance from a company office is a far different situation than managing those we work with in person. Rather than trying to manage a remote worker the same ways as you would someone in the next office, try these top 10 ways to build trust, inspire confidence and recognize your remote employees.
Keep everyone connected. Make it easy for on-site colleagues to get in touch with remote workers. Telephone systems, instant messaging and voice calling over internet applications enable remote workers to feel connected and a part of the team. [Now we have videoconferencing tools such as Zoom which was founded in 2011.]
Recognize expectations met. Remote workers consistently meet deadlines and expected levels of performance and should be recognized as valuable assets for their focused dedication. Make time to quickly phone them or leave after work voice mails to specifically praise them for their dependable track record.
Encourage transparency. Support remote workers personal needs with family and life by developing transparent sharing of schedules and appointments. Just knowing where they are at any given time helps build trust with the rest of the team who are used to more traditional work schedules. [COVID-19 has required multiple partners, spouses, and children to be home together and juggling personal needs and use of technology and internet.]
Get information out at lightning speed. Ensure your remote team members not only have access to the same formal and informal sources of information as their colleagues in the office but that they even get it before the internals do.
Schedule weekly conversations. Remote workers are often reluctant to seek help from their managers, human resource experts, or external sources. Set up a regular day and time to discuss workloads and assignments, ask and answer questions and concerns to maintain an open line of communication.
Offer time management training. The greatest challenge for remote workers is balancing priorities to get tasks completed. This training should include the unique challenges of dealing with family, friends, and unusual interruptions; and the feelings of guilt associated with working excessive hours. [Many new work from home employees need guidance and productivity tips to deal with isolation and work pressures.]
Declare weekends free. Create clear guidelines and expectations regarding response to e-mails and assignments on weekends. Dedicated remote workers can easily fall into the trap of working 24/7. Encourage shut-down and “off times” with standards on exceptions to the rule to help prevent burnout.
Do remotely special things. Think about what home office employees experience on a regular basis. Now realize what remote workers are missing out on and be creative on trying to recreate that in their lives – sending edible flower arrangements on anniversaries; personalized pens and latest office gizmos; and taking them out for lunch on a specially arranged visit to their hometown location. [While you might not have the freedom to send tangible items, make sure you show them care and concern, and give what you can to support them.]
Empower workers for productivity. Provide training and mentoring on overcoming the challenges of working remotely. Training will help make remote workers more productive and more satisfied with their working experience. Provide the choice of offering this training remotely or in-class at the company location. [There are multiple sources for online training now since in-class instructions is prohibited.]
Managers must learn how to trust. Managers must learn and adapt to managing the ever-growing virtual employees now in excess of 50 million. Learning how to create high-trust relationships must become a core skill for managing the almost invisible powerhouse of remote workers.
Recognition Reflection: What practices have you started doing to better appreciate your new “work from home” employees?
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.
If there is one concern that most organizations have, and that is getting their managers to regularly and consistently recognize their employees. Developing the mindset of the importance of appreciating and recognizing staff for their positive behaviors and personal effort, requires several steps to make this happen. Start using this month’s Top 10 Ways to Get Managers Giving Recognition to guide you on what to do next.
1. Set clear expectations from senior leadership team for managers to become better at appreciating people for who they are and recognizing them for what they do. Have leaders set the pattern and personal example for recognizing staff contributions.
2. Show managers the truth about the impact their giving or lack of recognition has on people. Capture video testimonials from employees and open-ended survey results that show the positive and negative feelings people have about recognition.
3. Provide managers with insight on their department’s employee engagement survey scores and drill down on how the recognition specific questions scored for them. Any score below 65 percent is a sign that everyday recognition is missing in action.
4. Debunk the myth they don’t have time to give recognition. We all have the same 24 hours in a day and giving good quality recognition takes less than 30-seconds to do. Suggest managers at a minimum start and end their day with recognition giving.
5. Hold regular one-on-one feedback meetings with managers to find out how they feel they’re doing with recognizing staff. Get their input on challenges, frustrations, or problems they have with giving recognition and coach them to succeed.
6. Provide managers with all the resources they need to gain knowledge and insights on how to give better and more meaningful recognition to people. Be this through written articles or an archive of video tutorial content that is broadcast out to them.
7. Give managers in-class and online education opportunities to show them how to give effective recognition to people. You can also do this through lunch and learn sessions, management briefing sessions, or delivering webinars by other managers.
8. Don’t forget to set goals with managers on how they intend to improve the frequency and quality of the recognition they give people. Remember to stay on top of their commitments and hold managers accountable for recognizing staff.
9. Use positive reinforcement and recognize managers when they stop to recognize their employees. Making time to recognize the recognizers is something that often gets neglected in our desire to see more recognition happen from management.
10. Invite managers to share in management meetings about the successes they have experienced when they stopped and made time to recognize their employees. Let their peers know of the intrinsic reward that their recognition had in lifting people up.
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.
The 2019 Workplace Learning Report from LinkedIn Learning shows that 59% of companies are spending more money on online learning and 39% less money on instructor-led training.
However, previous educational research has also found that multitasking during educational activities has a negative impact on learning. Will this impact employees taking online courses at work? How can you help staff better prepare for learning online?
We will examine this area of distractions and multitasking. My goal is to ensure your employees can learn recognition skills online without being distracted.
