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A Carrot a Day: A Daily Dose of Recognition for Your Employees - page 141

MAY 15

Keep your eye on the calendar.

A FORMAL AFFAIR

When it comes to formal recognition, just how often is often enough? Here’s the scoop: formal rewards—from company milestone awards to performance and service awards—should be presented at least annually to the majority of your team members . Most sophisticated companies we work with ensure that 40 percent of their work force receives formal awards for outstanding performance at least once a year.

MAY 16

Blending the home and the office.

MAKE IT A FAMILY EVENT

Invite the family of a recognized person to attend a recognition event in his honor . Performance awards, service awards, sales awards and other recognition are wonderful opportunities to bring family members in to work. And remember, a retirement celebration should never be held without the honoree’s family in attendance. You can even ask those family members to add a few words of their own.

MAY 17

Goofy awards keep work fun.

ON THE LIGHT SIDE

Create a unique traveling award—we’ve seen rubber chickens, stuffed animals, planks of wood, and all sorts of odd things—that means something to your organization. For example, the person who has the rubber chicken this week was voted the most flexible the week before. Kind of goofy, we know. But these are the types of things that keep work fun.

MAY 18

“Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a bigger thing well, too.”

—David Storey, novelist and playwright

MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

What if football fans reserved their applause for a touchdown or field goal only. No one yelled encouragement. No giant foam No. 1 hands waving in the air. No enormous painted bellies. It would take away a lot of the fun and excitement. And much of the players’ motivation.

The same goes for the office. Don’t hold back recognition until a project’s completion. Celebrate the little landmarks along the way. Recognize small achievements that move you in the right direction. The momentum you create will help carry you toward your ultimate goal.

And if you come in with your stomach painted blue … well, good for you.

MAY 19

Remember the times you were recognized?

SHARE THE MOMENT

Show your employees that company values aren’t just for the line workers; they impact management’s work, too.

To do this, schedule time during staff meeting to talk about the times you have been recognized for living the corporate values. Explain how those same values impact your choices today.

MAY 20

The Dirty Dozen of Why We Don’t

EXCUSE NO. 5

“BUT THEY WILL EXPECT MORE PRAISE!”

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. They perform. You give praise. They perform again. You give praise again. Hoping to get more praise, they perform again. And that’s a bad thing?

Here’s the real problem: generic, perfunctory praise that comes across as insincere. Get involved, be specific and lay it on … meaningful praise, that is.

MAY 21

There’s no better strategy.

GET THEM INVOLVED

The next time you meet for a high-level strategy session, ask to invite an outstanding employee to participate. Sometimes the best recognition is involvement in the meetings that impact the employee’s work. It shows you respect their ideas and talents and gives them personal ownership in the company’s overall direction.

When your opinion matters, you matter, and the more engaged you’ll be.

Buy on amazon.com >>

Gostick A., Elton Ch.

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