How To Get People Ready To Give Better Recognition

If you want to get everyone giving better and more effective recognition to people, you will probably have to educate and train them on how to do that the right way.

However, before you even start any education and training to teach recognition giving skills, there are a few things you should do beforehand to guarantee success. These preparatory steps will help you to get people ready to give better recognition. 

Check out this list and put at least one step into practice this coming month. 

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Are You Really Giving People Recognition on Purpose?

Do you know why you recognize people?

If you haven’t thought about why you appreciate and recognize people, take some time out to articulate your beliefs and reasons for recognizing the people you work, play, and live with.

For me it is about appreciating people for who they are, independent of any work they do, and valuing everything that a person brings with them to the workplace. It’s about recognizing people for all that they do—both the insignificant and the amazing things people do. 

Recognition is about valuing people and their contributions. It is the transferring of positive feelings and emotions from one person to another, in response to an employee’s positive behaviors or actions.

What is your purpose for giving recognition?

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How to More Effectively Approach Milestone Recognition

Career milestone award or service award recognition programs have been around for many years.

Over those years there have been the customary plaques, symbolic crystal awards, and gold watches—and these used to start when a person reached 25-years of service.

But as tenure reduced significantly with economy and business changes, and retention of employees was harder to maintain, career milestones now begin at 5 years and 5-year increments thereafter. Today, you will find many companies now start career milestones at an employee’s first year of service.

The reality is, whether you give an employee something tangible or not, they always have a workplace anniversary every single year.

How do you plan to make the next round of your milestone recognition celebrations more meaningful and effective?

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How To Craft a Clear Purpose for Recognition

I love reading the latest business books and business magazines that inspire me to think about employee recognition in a fresh new way.

For example, in the September-October Harvard Business Review (HBR) there’s a great article on Put Your Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy by Thomas W. Malnight, professor at IMD, Ivy Buche, associate director, Business Transformation Initiative at IMD, and Charles Dhanaraj, a professor at Temple University. 

Now, as you would expect from HBR, these academics are addressing purpose as it relates to business strategies. But I instantly saw the application of the principles in this article towards creating a recognition strategy.

Are you ready?

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If You Want To Give More Recognition, First Figure Out Why

I have seen where after a poor performance on the recognition measures of a recent employee engagement survey that the CEO tells all the leaders and managers to go out there and give more recognition to people.

You can probably guess why the senior leader asked them to do that. The reason was to improve the recognition scores on the next engagement survey.

This mandate from on high doesn’t work.

Giving more recognition to the people you work with for the sake of the numbers is not why you want to recognize others more.

It is not about numbers and measuring the occurrence of recognition. It is about giving recognition more purposefully.

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How You Can Make Recognition Giving a Regular Habit

It’s easy to get distracted by technology, people, and competing priorities in our lives and not recognize the great things people do around us. And then there are our workloads, which are often overwhelming, and stop us from interacting with people.

You might struggle with naturally being good at giving recognition. You were not outstanding in academic or sports at school. Home might not have been an exemplary place to receive praise or accolades.

Knowing how to give recognition is not always easy. You may be asking yourself:

  • How do I give better recognition?
  • How do I give recognition more frequently?
  • How can I recognize more people?

Let’s tackle these questions by learning how you can make recognition giving a regular habit in your life. (more…)

What Is Your “WHY?” For Giving People Recognition?

If you don’t know why you are giving recognition to people then why give it at all.

You had better define what your why is for recognizing people before you attempt to praise someone. And it had better be a good enough reason to get you excited about it.

People will quickly see through you and hear well enough whether you are being authentic or not. Don’t even think about faking recognition. (more…)