Employee Appreciation Day Should Be a Reminder Only

Recognize This: Claiming today as the only day to appreciate employees is just silly.

Today is officially Employee Appreciation Day. What does that mean to you? Because the calendar told you that you should, will you take a moment today to actually appreciate your employees? Or is the day just a continuation your daily efforts to show your employees how valued and valuable they are to your organization?

I argue Employee Appreciation Day should be treated like Mother’s Day. Sure, on Mother’s Day Mom may get some well deserved extra attention and appreciation, maybe “breakfast” in bed made and served by her kids. But is that they only day mothers should be celebrated and appreciated for all they do?

Of course not! When your mom gave you a ride to an extracurricular school event or friend’s party that she didn’t have to, did you thank her? Of course you did! I’m sure you can think of countless other ways your mom deserved your thanks every day.

The same is true for our employees. Today should be nothing more than a reminder that we should appreciate our employees and their efforts every day – perhaps put a bit of extra effort into our appreciation today.

What are you doing to appreciate your employees today? Or how have you been shown appreciation? Tell me your stories – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Help Employees Align & Connect to Increase Employee Engagement * Lessons from BlessingWhite

Recognize This: People need a sense of connection and contribution to truly engage in your organization.

I was honored to host a webinar through Human Capital Institute (HCI) with BlessingWhite’s employee engagement practice leader, Mary Ann Masarech, yesterday. She gave color to the findings of their 2011 Employee Engagement Report.

Key take-aways from the webinar:

·         In every region of the world, more employees planned to leave in the next 12 months, with the percentage saying “no way would I remain” doubling (from 2008 to 2010). Globally, only 30% are fully engaged. 17% are disengaged. Australia/New Zealand and India have the highest engagement numbers; China has the lowest.

·         Employee engagement occurs when employees are making the maximum contribution while enjoying the maximum level of satisfaction. Engaged employees are using their talents to make a difference in the bottom-line.

·         Older employees and those higher up the ranks are more engaged. Mary Ann believes this to be because those in the upper ranks or who have been around longer feel they have more control over their work experience and greater insight into company strategy than those who are younger and at lower levels.

·         Employees closest to customer contact are most engaged. – Sales, HR/Training and Marketing. Least engaged are IT, R&D and Finance.

What does this tell me? People need a sense of connection and contribution – insight into the company strategy, connection to the customers who see the end result of efforts, and the knowledge that their efforts matter.

Mary Ann said in the webinar:

“I’ve heard Derek speak about recognizing and rewarding people for what you actually want them to do to drive your strategy. We found that the disengaged and the hamsters/honeymooners [those who are working hard, but not necessarily contributing well] were most in need of alignment. They need greater clarity about what they need to do, when and how to make the company successful. They are disconnected. You need to make sure all of your business process focus on that clarity piece.”

Register for one of the recast sessions on HCI to learn more about: 

1)      What you should not do to increase engagement

2)      What does work to increase engagement

3)      The responsibilities of executives, managers and individuals for engagement 

“What, Exactly, Do You Want Me to Do?” Factors of Change

Recognize This: Employees may buy into the need for “change,” but they won’t know how unless you tell them in a way meaningful to them individually.

Steve Roesler, author of the excellent All Things Workplace blog, recently wrote on change management. 

He told the story of the company president who laid out the perfect story for why a change in the corporate culture was necessary, getting discussion and total buy-in along the way. Everyone was on board. Then a manager asked: “I just need to know one thing: what, exactly, do you want me to do?”

That’s the crux of change management challenges, isn’t it? People may agree the proposed change is good and the right thing to do, but if they don’t know how to contribute to that making that change happen, you’re not going to get anywhere.

The same is true here. “What, exactly, do you want me to do?” Getting people to agree to the *VALUE* of a proposed change is not the difficult part. Helping them implement the many big and little steps to make that change a reality -- now that's a challenge. Clearly telling people is certainly the first step. But then positively recognizing people and reinforcing those behaviors, efforts or outcomes is critical to making the change real for every employee.

Like I said last month: Seek out behaviors you desire as foundational to your culture. Praise the people demonstrating those behaviors. Repeat. Often.

How successful have change initiatives been in your company? Did you understand exactly what you needed to do to bring about the desired change?

Webinar TOMORROW with Blessing White on 2011 Employee Engagement Report Results

Don't forget to join the webinar I'm doing tomorrow at 3:00 Eastern Time with Blessing White, discussing findings from their 2011 Employee Engagement Report.

Hosted by the Human Capital Institute (HCI), Mary Ann Masarech, head of BlessingWhite's Employee Engagement practice, will be discussing with me surprising findings of this recent report I highlighted in an earlier blog post.

We’ll share with you the post-recession factors impacting employee engagement and how focused initiatives, such as strategic recognition, can impact the organization at different levels to build a comprehensive employee engagement initiative.

Join us for this free, one-hour webinar, as we:

• Define engagement in a way that is actionable.
• Assess current engagement levels by seniority, generations and industry.
• Evaluate the role that leaders play in driving engagement.
• Develop solutions to leverage your leaders and yourself.
• Outline the key drivers of individual employee engagement.
• Understand the implications of engagement for your organization and how to best create an environment in which employees want to engage.


Register now!