Recognition Preferences Are Never Static So Be Sure To Check In First

I sat in an employee recognition session at the IMA Summit last week at the Snowbird, Utah resort. A participant I know shared their experience with the group that opened my eyes to a very important point of view.

You can sit down with each of your employees and ask them questions about their recognition preferences. Your online recognition and reward programs may automate the entry of recognition choices and how they prefer to be recognized. You can do this with onboarding or any time during their career.

However, what this individual raised was a critical point. Employees’ recognition preferences are not static. 

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Recognition Is Always About the Recipient and Never About You

Real Recognition™ is all about transferring positive feelings and emotions that you felt about someone’s actions and conveying those feelings to the other person. That way they can feel similarly as you did about their meaningful behaviors. 

When expressing recognition to a person, this is not about your aggrandizement. Recognition is not an ego trip for highlighting you as the giver of the praise. Giving sincere and authentic recognition must always focus on the recipient, the person you want to acknowledge. 

How can you make sure the recognition you give a person is about them and not about you?

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Overcome Cultural Differences With The Right Recognition Training

I often get asked about dealing with recognition in different countries and my experience with teaching people how to get recognition right. 

So, what about cultural differences? Do you have to teach distinct behaviors to people from each country? 

My observations may surprise you. 

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Do You Know How Much Great Recognition Means to Staff?

Research is a fascinating thing to do.

It allows you to ask the questions you are curious about. You also get to ask those questions of people in the real world and find out answers. And you can even go further, if you really want to. You can compare your findings with other groups of people and see if there are any correlations. 

I love to ask questions about employee recognition. 

So, I ask you, do you know how much great recognition means to people?

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Read These Top 10 Blog Posts of The Decade

As we prepare to enter a whole new decade and move into a future still to be determined I cannot help reflecting on the most popular posts from the past decade. They shed some light on where readers minds are and what they need to learn to make recognition better.

I hope you will benefit from reading these previously shared posts in order to ride into 2021 with confidence and clarity of thought about your recognition strategy.

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Know Everything You Can About The People You’re Recognizing

When you want to give amazing recognition to people, you must know everything you can about the people you are recognizing. 

Recognition people feel is much more about the person than it ever is about any action on their part. Recognition is more than they do something, then they get something. 

Real recognition is about appreciating the whole person and recognizing them for what they do. 

Recognition is mostly an intangible expression of acknowledgement and valuing of an individual or a team, for their positive behaviours, their personal effort, or contributions they have made. 

The key is making your recognition very personal. Let’s explore how you can do that. 

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How To Appreciate Your Administrative Professionals Virtually

It is Administrative Professionals Week and on Wednesday it is Administrative Professionals Day. Make sure you do something special to acknowledge these hardworking professionals who make your work run smoothly and keep you organized.

Following are eight ways to consider on how to appreciate these special people even virtually in this time of remote working because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Take Time To Find Out What Is Meaningful To People

Some people raise the concern that to expect their managers to recognize their employees is too much on top of everything else they are doing.

However, since it is employees or associates who provide the goods and services that produce satisfied customers, appreciating your people is the very least you can do.

What they need to do is to raise managers’ level of intrinsic motivation for recognizing, praising, and rewarding staff, so they can become proficient at giving recognition and willing to do so every chance they get.

One way for people to give better and more meaningful recognition is to first find out what is meaningful to each of their employees.

I will review with your key ways to teach and help supervisors and managers to practice this needed skill.

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