As a member of Recognition Professional’s International (RPI) for over 15 years, I have been able to learn from, and share insights observed from clients about making recognition happen the right way, with other recognition professionals.
One concern a lot of recognition program managers have is getting the personal commitment and support from their senior leaders.
That’s why I’ve always liked a five-step set of principles from one of RPI’s courses that I think will help you.
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You know your organization has an employee recognition problem.
The last employee engagement survey showed an average of 64 percent for all the recognition statements on the survey. Participation levels with the usage of your online recognition programs are inconsistent with leaders and employees across the organization.
Open-ended feedback from employees tells you that many employees just don’t feel valued and appreciated.
Something has to change. Where do you begin?
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Do your employees know the difference between recognition and rewards? Are managers and supervisors consistently praising and recognizing their direct reports for doing good work on a regular basis? Is peer-to-peer recognition happening through your social recognition newsfeed and face-to-face?
If you had a “no” to any one of those questions, you likely need to send out recognition messaging more often.
It might well be time to communicate what recognition is and why it is so important. You may need to tell everyone how easily they can recognize one another. Show them how to give meaningful and effective recognition.
I have written before about the importance of creating a Recognition Communications Calendar to support your recognition programs and practices. However, I was not as clear as I should have been, about what to include in your advanced communication planning.
You have to be strategic about the recognition messaging you want to convey throughout the company. Here are some quick thoughts to guide you. (more…)
Some of you manage an array of different employee recognition programs and work hard to maintain them and promote them.
While I have written about the need for recognition to be multi-directional in origin and not be owned by managers and supervisors alone, it is still very important to enlist management support.
Your goal should be to get managers excited about expressing recognition to employees and help them prepare to give it face-to-face and online. If you can help them to anticipate when recognition should occur in an employee’s life then they will become eager to give recognition.
Think about the following trigger points to help managers be proactive with recognition giving. (more…)
If you had a magic lamp and were allowed three wishes of the genie that would appear when you rubbed the lamp, what resources would you ask for to help you with managing your recognition programs better?
And, I am not just talking about money alone. There are people and organizational resources you can draw upon that could help drive recognition practices and programs for you.
It’s fascinating how some company leaders bemoan the lack of employee engagement in their organizations. But they won’t invest wisely in one of the top drivers of engagement, namely, employee recognition.
What are the resources you need to really drive employee recognition? Consider the following list just for starters. (more…)
A challenge that one of our subscriber’s faces is keeping recognition in the forefront of people’s minds. Some of you likely experience the same problem.
You can find yourself asking questions of yourself, like:
We are going to explore ways to keep recognition alive and well in your organization. (more…)
I love the work of Robert “Bob” Mager with his framework for preparing learning objectives, and criterion-referenced instruction (CRI), and for his work on dealing with performance problems.
If you haven’t already read his book “Analyzing Performance Problems” and the included process flow, you should. It is a valuable tool to invest in for figuring out why people aren’t doing what you think they should be doing.
According to Mager, there are potentially seven reasons why people drop the ball on performance results. I continue to see these seven reasons highlighted in my work with employee recognition, let alone why things don’t get done at home, or even within my community and church responsibilities.
Let’s take a closer look at these seven reasons. (more…)
Many of you responsible for employee recognition in your organizations have a hard time getting full support and attention of your managers.
Some just don’t get it as far as understanding the importance of recognition in the eyes of their employees.
A few managers rose to their current position solely based upon expertise or technical competency and not for any people skill or emotional intelligence strengths.
Your job is to spark their interest in recognition when they are being bombarded with so many other priorities and distractions.
In reality, we tend to remember two kinds of events in life – major negative happenings and warm, positive activities.
Your goal should be to get managers excited about giving recognition and make it a warm and positive memory for them.
Learn from these four ways to raise the excitement level. (more…)
In your effort to make recognition flourish throughout the organization you always need the support of your leadership team or a key leader.
Unfortunately, the skills or attributes that sometimes cause certain leaders to rise to the top may not be the people-facing skills needed to make recognition happen the way you would like it to.
In fact, sometimes you will find your role is more focused on stopping leaders from stopping recognition giving.
See if you relate to these seven ways leaders can sometimes stop recognition. (more…)
Senior leaders are not always the best recognizers or praisers of employees doing good work. They are where they are for many reasons and it is not often for recognition giving.
My question for you as a manager or owner of employee recognition is, what are you going to do to help your leaders do better with giving recognition?
Don’t sweat that last question.
I am going to offer you some simple ideas to help you help your leaders give better and more frequent recognition to employees. (more…)