Your Appreciation Tips: Regular Chats = Employee Appreciation

Recognize This: Regular chats with employees are a form of appreciation.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been asking you to tweet your tips for employee appreciation to #appreciationtip. Doing so enters you to win an eBook copy of Winning with a Culture of Recognition or a Kindle preloaded with the eBook.

I've received some good tips. Keep them coming!

This tip came in from @Nancy_Carbone: Have regular casual talks w/employees. Chance 2 lrn abt pros, cons & achievements. It's motivating & shouldn't be annual.

Nancy is correct, indeed. When the primary interaction on goals, achievements, feedback and areas for improvement is an annual performance review, it's no wonder employees become disconnected from their managers and disengaged with their work.

Making time in your day and extending the effort to have regular, casual conversations with your employees is itself a powerful form of employee recognition and appreciation.

Is improving employee engagement on your to-do list? If you're a closed-door, heads-down kind of manager, opening yourself up to your employees frequently and regularly could be a powerful first step in improving relationships and, ultimately, engagement.

Virtual Book Club * Learn How to Bust More Employee Appreciation Myths

I greatly enjoyed our Mythbusters: The Employee Appreciation Edition webinar with David Zinger, founder of the Employee Engagement Network, and Zane Safrit, author of Recognize Your Employees – 52 Weeks, 52 Ways.

The overall theme of the discussion during the webinar came down to the need for employers to pay attention to employee needs. David made the point about “caring made tangible” – the first priority is to notice and truly see what is going on with people around us.

Webinar participants shared their own myths as well, such as: “Certain cultures don’t appreciate recognition.” My bust to that myth is as simple as: “The only qualifying factor for the need for recognition is to be a member of the human race.” Our clients have proven the fallacy of this myth, which I’ve written about in “Overcoming Stereotypes,” my contribution to Chris Ferdinandi’s Do Amazing Things.

The idea of “tangible caring” is at the heart of employee appreciation and engagement. It’s far too easy to overlook the need to engage employees, but vast research on the positive financial and personal boost from recognition proves how critical making the effort is today and in the years ahead. Just one statistic we mentioned in the webinar is that 78% of employees say recognition motivates them in their job.

This boost in motivation is as simple as: “I notice you and your good work. Thank you for it.” What’s our excuse to not give that recognition – every day, to the vast majority of employees?

If you weren’t able to join us, watch the webinar now, then tweet your own tips for employee appreciation and recognition using hash-tag #appreciationtip. If you do, you’ll be entered to be entered to win a copy of the Winning with a Culture of Recognition eBook or Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with the eBook.

Be sure to get your copy of Winning with a Culture of Recognition and then join us for our upcoming Virtual Book Club discussion. We’re planning the virtual book club for early next month. I’ll be sharing more details on how you can participate in the book club as we get closer. I look forward to diving into the book and your thoughts together.

Everyday Appreciation Giveaway * Submit Your Tips to Win!

I’m thrilled that the eBook version of Winning with a Culture of Recognition has arrived! You can get your digital version of the guide to strategic recognition, the fastest and most effective way to improve employee engagement, performance, motivation, and productivity, at more than 60 web properties and digital readers, including the Apple^® iBookstore, Amazon^® Kindle^®, Barnes and Noble^®, and the Sony^® eBookstore^®. 

But for  my blog readers and Twitter followers, I’m also offering a chance to win a copy of the eBook or our weekly prize of an Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with our eBook.

Daily Appreciation Tips: Every business day through April 8, 2011, I, or a Globoforce team member, will share a proven tip for engaging or recognizing employees. Tips will be marked #appreciationtip on Twitter. 

Help me out with tips and be entered to win. Tweet your own employee appreciation tips or retweet mine, being sure to include the #appreciationtip hash-tag. Daily winners will be randomly drawn from all tip submissions. Each week we will draw one winner to receive an Amazon Kindle, preloaded with Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

I’m looking forward to learning from you. I plan on blogging about the best tips I receive, too, with full credit given to the originator. Tweet your tip today!

NOTE: Full contest rules are available.

"Why Recognition Matters"

I'm thrilled with an interview about our book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition, that appeared Monday on The Hiring Site.

In the interview, I answered some of the questions my CEO and co-author, Eric Mosley, and I often receive about the book:

* How is this book different from other management books?
* What exactly is "strategic recognition?"
* What does it mean to "win with a culture of recognition?"
* Why is recognition so important?
* What makes companies with a culture of recognition different than others?

This is just one of great pieces of media coverage the book has received. One of my favorites was this interview on Fox News with Eric:



If you're looking to increase employee engagement, strategic recognition is one of the most powerful, proven tools for doing just that.

Blog Changes * Involve Program Participants & Invite Their Input

I’ve learned a lot in my nearly two years of blogging on strategic employee recognition, including how to offer posts that are useful, interesting, thought provoking. Now I’d like to try something new.

Starting today, I’m changing the structure of the blog a bit to focus my posts on a weekly topic or theme. The Monday post will dive in more deeply into the topic, setting up the posts for the rest of the week, which will be shorter and easier to digest in our time-strapped schedules. I’ll lead each post with the key take-away – the “Recognize This” idea that resonates the most with me.

Let me know what you think. Does the new format meet your informational needs? Would you prefer the old approach or a different approach entirely?

Recognize This: Successfully implementing any new program requires involvement and input from those who will be using it.

In the spirit of these changes to the blog and my hope that you’ll share your input on them, this week I’ll be discussing the second tactic in implementing strategic employee recognition programs: Involve Program Participants and Invite Their Input.

As we discuss in our new book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“A program that improves employee alignment and commitment needs input from a cross-section of employee leaders, from high-ranking executives to hourly workers. Individuals ultimately implement culture change, so gathering input from all levels early is helpful. … As you clarify your vision for recognition, balance the need for broad input against the need for a process that moves forward. … The common theme in successful program design is that the program owners ultimately have authority to move ahead. If everyone you survey has a vote (or veto) you’ll never get out of the visioning phase.”

Think about a new program or initiative you recently implemented (or were part of). Was it created in a vacuum of “people who know what’s best” making all the decisions and then delivering it as a complete package? Or was it a truly collaborative design/development experience before moving into execution?

Tell me your story. With either option above, the outcome could be good or bad. What happened to you?

The Best Tool for Employee Behavior Change: Strategic Recognition

In my posts this  week, I’ve written about the critical necessity of the CEO’s personal values reflecting the company’s values and living up to both consistently. At the individual level, that’s the entire point of strategic employee recognition – bringing your company’s values to life in the day-to-day work of employees.

Let’s be perfectly clear. The point of implementing a strategic employee recognition program is not the “stuff” – the rewards employees choose. Sure the “stuff” is great as a reminder to the employee of the company’s appreciation of their efforts, extending the good feeling of the recognition moment endlessly. But that’s not the point.

The main point of a truly strategic recognition program lies in changing employee behavior – in proactively managing your company culture. As we explain in our book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Social architecture is to culture what a foundation, beams, and joists are to a building. Social architecture is the scaffolding of a company: communication, traditions, authority, privileges, and “ways of doing things.” It includes behavior cues like how people dress and how they talk to one another. It includes how excellence is recognized and rewarded because it’s a way of talking about the implementation of culture. …

“Three components of social architecture deserve special mention here. They are shared values, engaged employees, and united execution. Shared values, employee engagement, and united execution create a high-performance culture. Strategic recognition is the link connecting all three. …

“Strategic recognition adds the ultimate layer of value, which is culture management. Strategic recognition is linked to strategic goals such as engagement, employee satisfaction, or culture change. But also, because you have those tools, you get to then use strategic recognition to manage the culture. In other words, you can emphasize a single value that you feel doesn’t have the traction you need to meet your strategic objectives.”

It all comes back to your values. Are your company values just a plaque on the wall, or are they something your employees truly understand, living and demonstrating them in their daily work? If you want your values to come alive – if you want your employees to actually demonstrate those values in their everyday tasks – then you must recognize your employees, regularly and frequently, when they demonstrate those values. “Joe, great job dealing with Customer X yesterday. You were put into a tough situation with elements, like the product launch timing, out of your control. But you helped the customer understand our timelines and how we could help him in the meantime. The customer left happy and you fully demonstrated what we mean by Respect for Customer.’ Well done.”

If you can do this successfully – if you can bring your values to life – you will fundamentally change the behavior of your employees so they are in alignment with your company values, allowing you to manipulate your social architecture.

Are You Recognizing or Valuing Your Employees?

Do you have an employee recognition program in place? If you do, what’s the purpose of that program?

The obvious answer: “Recognizing employees.” Now for the trick question – is recognizing your employees enough?

That sounds odd, indeed, coming from a person committed to helping companies implement truly strategic employee recognition programs. But this difference in “recognizing” and “valuing” is one of the things that sets strategic recognition apart from the much more common tactical programs.

Based on recent research conducted by Kenexa, they explain the difference this way:

“One of the more common inquiries on employee engagement surveys is some variation of, ‘I receive recognition when I do good work.’ The norm score across industries and countries for this question is about 55 percent favorable. Meaning, on average, about half of all employees feel they are appropriately recognized. At the best companies—the top 10 percent—the score is about 66 percent favorable. …

“Compare this to the inquiry, ‘I feel valued as an employee of this company,’ which is much less frequently asked (indicating that many organizations don't even see the value in asking about employees feeling valued). The average score here is 41 percent favorable, with 32 percent marking an unfavorable response. In other words, on average, less than half of the employees in a typical organization feel valued as an employee and one-third actively believe they aren't valued. …

“Recognizing an individual means successfully completing a project. Valuing someone is letting him or her know that you are glad he or she is on the team and that things wouldn't be as good without them.”

Adding the element of “valuing” to every recognition you give to an employee – indeed, requiring that “value statement” in every recognition – is what can make your program strategic. Getting this right at the very beginning of program planning and design is critical. That’s why we make it part of our first tactic: “Establish Program Goals and Objectives.” As we wrote in Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Your goals must be specific to your organization’s ambitions, market position, and challenges. Take time to define these goals clearly, for without them, recognition will not be taken seriously as a strategic initiative. … We often say they don’t teach recognition in management school, so most managers are ill-equipped to make use of it and must be trained. … Naming your program ambitions in detail also informs program design.”

The average employee doesn’t know how to properly recognize their colleagues, much less value them. Correcting this as a program goal will set you on the path to strategic recognition.

The Golden/Platinum Rule of Business

Given unlimited resources (and unlimited understanding from the powers that be), what would you want to change in your organization?

Knowing what’s broken, what’s not delivering desired results, what’s simply not registering high enough in employee surveys is the first step in fixing a problem. It’s also a key question in the first tactic of creating a strategic recognition program – “Establish Program Goals and Objectives.” As we discuss in our new book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Often the goals of a recognition program begin with the question, ‘What do you want to change?’”

If you fail to establish clear goals for a program before you begin designing it, then you’ll always lack direction for what you’re trying to accomplish and you’ll never be able to measure success. To figure out those goals, it’s often helpful to look at what you’d want to change, whether it be problems or deficiencies in an existing incentive, recognition or employee rewards initiative or in the overall culture of the company.

A post I wrote on “Employee Trust in Its Death Throes” sparked a good deal of conversation in the HR blogosphere. Charlie Green of the excellent “Trust Matters” blog took my post and dove into the issue much more deeply. I encourage readers to click through and read the comment stream to Charlie’s post. In my comment, I focus on something I’d like to see change in organizations:

“[Create] the new golden rule of business: Look out for each other’s best interests.”

Think about it. If we’re all looking out for each other’s best interests, then that means I’d have tens to dozens of people looking out for mine. And if we’re consistently doing that, it’s natural that we begin to care more about those we work with.

Skip Weisman, blogging on an entirely separate topic, introduced the Platinum rule:

“Do unto others as they would like to be done unto.”

This is much more difficult than the traditional golden rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” because the golden rule presumes everyone wants the same things you do. The platinum rule requires you to step outside that comfort zone and actually come to know and care about what the other person wants, likes and needs.

But you can’t achieve the platinum rule unless you first adopt the new golden rule of business. Regardless, both are critical to goal setting in strategic employee recognition programs – look out for the interests of others, notice them, appreciate their efforts, and recognize them in the way they want to be recognized.

What about you? Did we get these new rules correct? Did I miss a “silver rule?”

Remembering the Tactical in Strategic Recognition Planning

Are you a leader or are you a follower?

That question is pretty easy to answer if you’re honest with yourself. This one is a bit more difficult. If you’re a leader, are you a strategic leader or an operational leader?

What’s the difference? I read an interesting article in last month’s Talent Management magazine that defined the differences this way:

“Strategic leadership is a critical building block for setting the tone and direction in an organization, but it is through blending with good day-to-day operational leadership practices that these strategies come to life.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re a strategic leader or an operational one. The importance lies in knowing what you’re good at or what the situation calls for. At some point, someone must set the strategy – whether for a project or for a company – and someone must lead the effort to see that strategy accomplished.

The same is true when implementing a strategic employee recognition program. As we outline in our new book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition, the very first tactic in building a strategic recognition program that can not only change your company culture but give you ability to directly manage it is “Establish Program Goals and Objectives.” The very first question to consider when planning a recognition & rewards program is:

“Why are you doing this? Without real, detailed goals, the practice of engaging and motivating employees can become ‘recognition for recognition’s sake,’ another old-school program lacking accountability and relevance.”

The rest of this week I’ll be diving into this topic of the importance of program goals and objectives more deeply. As the Talent Management article pointed out:

“Another area where strategic and operational leadership practices come together is in the creation of a high-energy, passionate work environment. The way leaders treat employees influences the way employees treat customers. Again, executives have to take a strategic and operational approach to address the job and organizational factors that drive positive intentions and subsequent performance. One without the other will not achieve the desired results.”

“Drive positive intentions and subsequent performance” – there’s no better way to accomplish just that than through recognition that deliberately and specifically calls out employees when they demonstrate those positive behaviors you’ve identified as critical to success. And there’s no doubt doing so influences and encourages them to perform similarly in the future.

As you dive into 2011 budget planning, are you considering the strategic as well as the organizational factors that lead to the work environment and company culture you desire?

Analytics & Employee Recognition: Finding the Recognition ROI

An article in the Harvard Business Review last month discussed the value of analytics in HR, describing how detailed analytics let, for example, Best Buy prove the value of a 0.1% increase in employee engagement at a particular store is an additional $100,000 in the store’s annual operating income. The article points out:

“Analytics takes the guesswork out of fresh management approaches. … Analytical HR collects or segments HR data to gain insights into specific departments or functions. … Data needn’t be perfect to be appropriate for analysis – just sufficient to understand trends that matter. HR can no longer confine employee data to its silo; organizations need access to those data to be successful.”

What kind of analytics do you look for from your Human Resources numbers? Beyond compensation and Total Rewards budgets, I mean? Turnover? Retention? How about employee engagement or employee recognition?

Do you think those last two are too “soft” to measure? That there is no value in measuring the amount of recognition given, to whom, or for what reason (beyond keeping track of the budget)?

We’ve proved that false in our new book Winning with a Culture of Recognition in which we discuss how properly measuring and reporting on recognition allows you to actively manage your company culture to drive greater employee productivity and performance on precisely those objectives you’ve identified as strategic, but always within the parameters of the values you consider important.

Back to that Best Buy result I mentioned in my first paragraph. What if that Best Buy store had increased employee engagement by 10%? What would that mean? Just by simple math, that one store could have increased their annual operating income by $10 million.

That’s no small change. Now keep in mind our customers regularly achieve employee engagement increases in the double digits after implementing strategic recognition programs based on our best practices. And they do it in less than a year after implementation.

What would adding $10 million to your operating income mean to you?

The Power of Thank You * Free Webinar THIS Thursday, October 28

Today on Compensation Cafe I wrote about the power of a simple "thank you." In a series of studies, scientists have now proven that saying "thank you" increases the likelihood of future help by 100%. Surprisingly, this isn't because people narcissisticly need to be thanked. Pop over to Compensation Cafe to find out the real reason behind the power of thanks.

In the same vein, Eric Mosley and I will be leading a free webinar on our new book Winning with a Culture of Recognition. Join us this Thursday, October 28, at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET/4:30pm GMT for a webinar packed with case studies on the power of simple appreciation, strategically applied.

Eric and I will be specifically addressing:

• How to strategically manage a company culture using the power of employee recognition
• Why recognition is the fastest and most effective way to positively impact employee performance
• What recognition program components foster employee engagement and deliver bottom-line profits
• How recognition has evolved from a tactical program to a strategic management discipline


Click here to register now!

Winning with a Culture of Recognition * Webinar Oct. 28

As regular readers of my blog know, I'm quite excited about the launch of our first book, co-authored by me and Globoforce CEO Eric Mosley, Winning with a Culture of Recognition.

Abishek Mittel, author of the Mumblr blog, had this to say about the book:

"I particularly liked their concept of Strategic Recognition programs which make recognition a modus operandi for businesses, rather than remaining something that is elitist, infrequent and often not intrinsically motivating. Indeed, recognition, if measured and managed well, can help companies drive behaviours that benefit it. The authors make use of a “Values Distribution Graph” to track the percentage of employees recognized across departments for demonstrating behaviours aligned with the Values and Mission of the organization. It is powerful! Imagine if the data tells you that more people are being recognized for producing “reliable results”, whereas the focus of the organization is really on innovation (risk-taking)!"

If you'd like to know more about the book or ask us questions about creating a culture of recognition in your firm, join us Thursday next week, October 28, at 8:30am PT/11:30am ET/4:30pm GMT for a webinar packed with case studies.

Eric and I will be specifically addressing:

• How to strategically manage a company culture using the power of employee recognition
• Why recognition is the fastest and most effective way to positively impact employee performance
• What recognition program components foster employee engagement and deliver bottom-line profits
• How recognition has evolved from a tactical program to a strategic management discipline

Click here to register now!

If you have any questions you'd like to submit earlier, please let me know in comments.

Why You Should Care about Your Company Culture

What role do you think the culture of your company plays in the company’s success? Wait. Let’s back up. What do you think your company culture is? Intimidation? Get it done at any cost? Supportive? Innovative? How does that culture influence people’s attitudes and actions?

Towers Watson recently published a report that removes all doubt about the importance of culture in high-performing organizations:

In a high-performance organization, workplace practices must actively influence the employee behaviors needed to execute its strategy and reinforce its market focus. …

When the culture and strategy align, both people and functions work toward a common purpose. … Culture, and all the systems that support it, must reinforce and reward these actions, behaviors and attitudes.

I think we can all easily agree that employee behaviors and actions are what ultimately execute company strategy. But the challenge is company culture often does not encourage the needed behaviors and actions or doesn’t tie them directly to company strategy. Again from the Towers Watson report:

Many companies’ cultures are not aligned with their business objectives, because their leaders, who by and large focus on the financial and operational aspects of the business, simply allow corporate culture to evolve. In some cases, the responsibilities of day-to-day management intrude, or leaders do not have the tools necessary to identify and close the gaps between culture and strategy.

What’s the tool that identifies and closes the gaps between culture and strategy? Strategic employee recognition. As Eric and I explain in Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“Organizational culture is the most powerful force in business, and yet it is one of the most neglected (and misunderstood) attributes of any organization. Every organization has a culture, whether it is the culture the leadership wants or the one that has come to exist through inertia and management neglect. …

“Understanding your company’s culture and shaping it deliberately, based on your values, is critical to achieving your strategic objectives. It is critical to gaining competitive advantage. …

“Strategic recognition adds the ultimate layer of value, which is culture management. Strategic recognition is linked to strategic goals such as engagement, employee satisfaction, or culture change. But also, because you have those tools, you get to then use strategic recognition to manage the culture. In other words, you can emphasize a single value that you feel doesn’t have the traction you need to meet your strategic objectives.”

Do you have tools you need to identify and close the gap between culture and strategy? Are you equipping your managers with what they need to help their employees see the connection between their behaviors and actions and achieving the company’s strategic objectives?

Winning with a Culture of Recognition * Launched Today!

Today is a very exciting day for me and for Globoforce. Our first book, co-authored by me and our CEO, Eric Mosley, launched today.

In Winning with a Culture of Recognition, Eric and I address the question: How do some of the world’s greatest company cultures succeed? The answer: They’re strategically managed using the power of employee recognition.

It really is that simple – the power of a “thank you,” strategically applied, gives you the ability to directly manage your company’s social architecture and, ultimately, culture. Winning with a Culture of Recognition demonstrates how strategic recognition is fastest and most effective way to impact employee performance and productivity and deliver positive bottom-line profits.

In the book, we give you a step-by-step guide for creating a culture of appreciation with strategic recognition. We share with you the stories of several of the world’s most respected companies who have achieved just that and the business benefits they’ve realized through simple appreciation, tied specifically to their company values.

I’m particularly proud of the advance praise we’re receiving for the book:

From Dan Pink, best-selling author of Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us: “Recognizing mastery, communicating purpose, encouraging autonomy, Eric and Derek offer practical guidance on how to create a company culture that feeds our true motivators,”

From Bill Catlette, co-author of the Contented Cows books: “A must read for any organization that wants to unify a global workforce, Winning with a Culture of Recognition captures the essence for why recognition is critically important for any organization that wants to engage employees and create a better culture. With case studies, industry data, and expert tips, Eric and Derek demonstrate why recognition is no longer a tactical HR program; it provides real business value. This book is a welcome addition to the business and HR shelf.”

Order your copy today on Amazon. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Causation Found: Engaged Employees Generate More Financial Success (not the other way around)

Engaged employees create financial success. Gallup has found causation.

“We find that the path from the individual engagement elements to financial performance is stronger than the path from financial performance to engagement.”

What does that mean?
Focus on the people first, not the numbers. If you have more engaged employees, they will generate greater financial success.

If you choose to focus on the numbers first, believing (wrongly) that employees will become engaged because they work for a financially successfully company, then you will actually realize less financial success.

Why should you care?
Gallup puts it well:

“If employee perceptions are the main cause of financial performance rather than the reverse, we know that managers can take action to improve employee perceptions and therefore have an impact on the bottom line.”

How do you do it?
So what steps can managers take? As Globoforce CEO, Eric Mosley, and I say in our new book Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

"The connection between engagement and higher performance is obvious, and while there are many ways to inspire engagement (and even more to kill it) all involve communicating and rewarding desired behaviors based on defined values.

"Done right, recognition communicates the right behaviors, rewards and reinforces those behaviors, and gives a sense that the organization values employee contributions. Done right, recognition is management’s positive way of creating engagement.

"Engaged employees are important contributors to the company’s culture and continually reinforce values that support the company mission as well as the bottom line. At its most powerful, recognition continuously propagates and reinforces desired behaviors throughout the company."

If you want a detailed guide on how to use strategic recognition to increase employee engagement, Winning with a Culture of Recognition is available this Monday, October 4 (or pre-order now on Amazon). Learn how other companies applied strategic recognition and the results they achieved.

It’s time to finally kick the “bottom-line first, people second” approach to the curb once and for all.

Get Your How-To Guide for Managing Company Culture

What’s your company culture? Are you aware of how powerful your company culture is?

This is the main theme of our new book, Winning with a Culture of Recognition, which I co-authored with Globoforce President & CEO Eric Mosley. Here’s just a taste of our approach to company culture:

“Organizational culture is the most powerful force in business, and yet it is one of the most neglected (and misunderstood) attributes of any organization. Every organization has a culture, whether it is the culture the leadership wants or the one that has come to exist through inertia and management neglect. Businesses are societies, and society and culture are inseparable.

“Understanding your company’s culture and shaping it deliberately, based on your values, is critical to achieving your strategic objectives. It is critical to gaining competitive advantage. … Applied correctly, culture management through recognition is one of the most powerful, effective and, most critically, positive ways to drive the success of your organization as measured by improvements in operating margins, income, and customer satisfaction.

“This book serves as a guide for business leaders to harness the power of that culture to achieve the company mission. Think of the hallmarks of your culture—your company values. These statements of desired behaviors and actions suggest and—when followed properly—reinforce your culture.”

And this is even more vital to understand as we work to recover from the recession. As I said in a recent article in EmployeeBenefit News:

“Employees are experiencing fear and uncertainty. For many, the economic crisis has been a shock to their systems. For this reason, companies need to move away from a transactional contract with employees - that is, simply relying on salary and bonuses to communicate a job well done - to creating a psychological contract to rebuild confidence and trust. … Employers can accomplish this with employee recognition programs, which entail year-long feedback and encouragement, and foster a general positive atmosphere.

"A great recognition program is one that's built to reinforce what the company wants to achieve in the marketplace, to reinforce their values and reinforce their strategy. … A great recognition program becomes a continuous reinforcer of a positive, forward-thinking culture of the company; the employees themselves reinforce that culture."

Pre-order your copy of Winning with a Culture of Recognition today to learn more about how you can proactively manage your company culture to rebuild that psychological contract with your employees.

Winning with a Culture of Recognition * Order Your Copy Today!

I am quite excited to announce the coming availability of Winning with a Culture of Recognition: Recognition Strategies at the World’s Most Admired Companies, a new book co-authored by Eric Mosley, Globoforce’s CEO, and me.

In Winning with a Culture of Recognition, Eric and I look at why only 25% of employees choose to truly engage in their work – because most managers fail to recognize high performance and connect it with company culture. For the first time, employee appreciation emerges as a sound management method that moves recognition from anecdotal morale-booster to data-driven business discipline.

In today’s economic environment, compensation is only part of the employment contract. Employees need to know their efforts are valuable and that they are contributing to achieving the company’s changing strategic objectives. And they want to know their company actually lives the values displayed on the plaque on the wall. Seeing these values come alive in their own work and the work of their colleagues, then being able to recognize and appreciate peers for demonstrating these values, is critical for increased performance and productivity.

Strategic recognition programs are the key for employers who need to create a culture of appreciation, recognition, and reward, giving executives the tools to create and manage a culture of appreciation for competitive advantage.

In Part I of Winning with a Culture of Recognition, we dissect the powerful link between recognition and culture, how you can use recognition to manipulate your company culture, and the difference between strategic recognition efforts and the more common tactical recognition and incentive efforts many companies still use today.

In Part II, we give you the practical steps to build a strategic recognition practice and ensure program success.

Check out a review of our book in SHRM's HR Magazine (subscription required).

Winning with a Culture of Recognition is available for pre-order today. Stay tuned during the next several weeks for a few key excerpts from the book.

I look forward to hearing your feedback!