This Month on Compensation Café * Merit Increases Are Dead & 2 More

Today on Compensation Café I wrote about the possible death of merit increases as a feasible means of managing (and hopefully improving) employee performance. This year’s average merit increase is 3% -- barely a cost of living increase and not enough of a differentiation between employees who at the top of performance will receive a 4% salary increase as compared to those who meet expectations receiving 2.5% increases.

Where’s the differentiation in that? As inflation rises will those merit increases even be noticed? And even those increases for top performers are reliant on a largely failed annual performance review process. How many of you have dealt with the manager who says:

So what’s an alternative? I propose year-round rewards commiserate with year-round recognition of employee efforts. Those who perform at a higher level are naturally more frequently recognized and rewarded for those efforts.

Also this month in the café I wrote about Communicating Compensation, Total Rewards & Meaning in which I ask how well we communicate total rewards and the value of benefits packages to employees. More importantly, do we fully understand what it is about their total rewards package that most matters to employees?

In my third post of the month, I also spoke to the importance of communicating “dinner” vs. “dessert” to employees – ensuring the base compensation is fair and accurate before laying on recognition and rewards.

Pop over to Compensation Café and join the conversation or share your thoughts on this concept here. I’m really interested in what you think communicating total rewards and undifferentiated differentiation reward practices.

Also, don’t forget I’m moving to my own Recognize This! blog on Monday, May 2. Subscribers will move with me. If you want to subscribe to the corporate Globoforce Blog for new multi-author content on Globoforce news, events, customers and products, please subscribe here.

3 Steps to Help Employees Find the Meaning in Their Work

Recognize This! – It really is as simple as Listen, Tell, Praise.

Psychometrics Canada came out last month with a study on employee engagement. One of the findings buried in the report was more interesting to me, though:

“Those working in government (80.3%) and business (74.4%) sectors are more likely to identify engagement as a problem than are people in education (64.2%) and not-for-profit (54.2%) organizations.”

Why is this? I tend to think it’s because those who choose to work in education and non-profit organizations are naturally much more connected with the “meaningfulness” of their work. I’ve written before about employees ranking “doing something meaningful” as more important to them even than recognition and cash rewards.

The challenge becomes, then, how do you help those in government and business “find the meaning.” Psychometrics own research lends some insight:

“When asked what leaders could do more of to improve engagement, respondents endorse these actions:
• Listen to employees’ opinions (71%)
• Communicate clear expectations (68%)
• Give recognition and praise (58%)”

That’s a pretty straightforward path for managers:
1) Listen – really listen – to me.
2) Clearly tell me what it is you need me to do and why.
3) Let me know when I’ve delivered what you needed. Recognize me!

How well do your managers follow those three steps with you? Do you believe you’re listened to? Do you know what is expected of you? Are you told – in an appreciative way – when you meet those expectations?

Also, don’t forget I’m moving to my own Recognize This! blog on Monday, May 2. Subscribers will move with me. If you want to subscribe to the corporate Globoforce Blog for new multi-author content on Globoforce news, events, customers and products, please subscribe here.

The Failure of the Annual Performance Review

Recognize This! – Annual feedback (if that) does little to motivate, inspire or keep employees on track.

Our semi-annual survey of U.S employees, the Globoforce® Workforce Mood Tracker™, found an overall dissatisfaction and disconnect among U.S. employees regarding both the frequency and effectiveness of performance reviews. (Read the news.)

• 53% received a performance review annually
• An alarming 22 percent reported never having a review at all.
• 24% dread the annual review more than anything else

A measly 7% receive monthly reviews of their work. When you look at all of that, it’s clear that companies have substantial motivational issues on their hands at performance review time. And who can blame the employees or the managers who have to review them? As our CEO, Eric Mosley, said in a press release last week on this topic:

“Providing employees with feedback and recognition only once a year is not only unfair, it minimizes the importance of each and every one of those people to the organization. An ongoing, 365-day review process that accurately measures employees’ year-round performance not only displays achievements, it uncovers the true leaders and influencers across the organization. This type of approach, driven by a strategic recognition program, provides employees with the feedback, appreciation, and direction they need to approach their peak performance level.”

What can you do instead?

Provide true meaning and value: Map all types of reviews (recognition and feedback) to specific company goals or values so you can provide employees with better understanding about the value they deliver to an organization.

Give feedback regularly and in the moment: Reviewing and recognizing employees on-the-spot gives employees the information they need to align their performance to desired goals and values on a daily – not yearly – basis

Be honest with yourself and your employees: Supplement old annual review processes with new recognition strategies to give employees a year-round feedback programs and managers greater workforce knowledge for employee performance optimization throughout the year.

Here's a news clip about the findings:



What else would you do to make the performance review process more timely, realistic and appropriate to employee and employer needs?

Recognition & Reward Program Best Practices

Recognize This! – Reinforcing behaviors in a timely way will always be at the top of my recognition best practices list.

Ascent Group recently came out with their annual Reward & Recognition Program Profiles & Best Practices. The report is well worth the investment. Highlighting just a few of the key findings:

“Reinforce behaviors and reward results. Recognize the right behaviors and communicate such that the employee’s behavior becomes a model within the work group.”

When you define the behaviors that reflect your values, your employees begin to see the values come alive in their daily work.

“Be timely, specific, and communicate! Make sure you recognize behavior and reward results in a timely manner so employees know exactly why they are being recognized.”

Recognition given at the annual banquet or performance review does nothing to reinforce in the moment precisely what it is you need them to repeat. Make sure messages of recognition are specific and reference the value demonstrated.

“Match the reward to the person and the achievement.”

Every person is different. A BBQ isn’t motivating for a person who lives in a high-rise apartment building. A gift-card to a steakhouse isn’t rewarding for a vegetarian. Let your employees choose what’s personally memorable and culturally relevant for them – from 2,500 brands and 25 million options around the world.

“Involve employees in the design and refinement of your reward and recognition programs.”

One of our 10 tactics discussed in Winning with a Culture of Recognition, involving employees – from every division, region and level – turns employees into program evangelists, ensuring rapid program adoption.

“Don’t just offer rewards and recognition for front line employees – extend the program to cover all employees in the department so the entire group is working towards the same goals.”

One of our 5 tenets of strategic recognition also discussed in our book, giving the opportunity to all to participate not only reinforces the needed behaviors and values across your entire workforce, but makes it possible to measure the understanding and demonstration of those values by employee, division, region and company as a whole.

“Look to technology to facilitate program administration and tracking.”

Doing any of this strategically – especially on a global scale – is far beyond the capabilities of an Excel spreadsheet. Take advantage of our Global Strategic Recognition solution to eliminate the administrative overhead, hassle and risk associated with old-school tactical approaches to recognition and reward.

“Measure the effectiveness and impact of your reward and recognition programs.”

Without a strong technology solution, it’s impossible to measure results. Our real-time In*telligence reports let you customize dashboards and reporting elements to deliver the status updates and success metrics your executives demand.

I encourage you to download the full report. Tell me, what other best practices would you highlight for recognition and reward programs?

Top 5 Critical HR Priorities: #5 Performance, Planning, HR Effectiveness

Recognize This! – HR priorities are many. Solving one can be the solution to many others.

Concluding my week-long series on the Top 5 Critical HR Priorities for 2011 from the Corporate Leadership Council HR global agenda poll, is a tie!

Priority 5 for HR in 2011: A Tie! -- Improving Employee Performance, Workforce Planning, Improving Strategic Effectiveness of HR

Improving Employee Performance has a lot to do with management of the company culture itself. Two research studies on this topic seem to contradict each other. The first argues changing culture is hard because it’s “sacred.” If you break culture down into climate, and then into habits, change becomes easier because are more willing to change habits. Based on brain science, the second study argues habits are, in fact, hard to change because doing so is actually painful, requiring a conscious override of “deeply comfortable neuronal circuitry. But (and this is a critical point I think the first researcher would also agree with):

“Therefore, to engender change among people in an organization, it’s important to keep attention focused on the desired end state, not on avoiding problems. This goal-directed positive reinforcement must take place over and over. The most effective way to achieve this is to set up practices and processes that make it easy for people to do the right thing until it becomes not only second nature, but an ethic taken to heart (and to the brain) by the entire company.”

Managing goals has just as much to do with improving employee performance. An HBR blog pointed out:

“For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions. … No matter what level the employee is at, he should be able to articulate exactly how his efforts feed into the broader company strategy.”

Articulating goals and strategy and appropriately recognizing those who achieve the goals is all well and good for improving employee performance, but that requires retaining key employees, which is likely why Workforce Planning is of equal concern to HR pros. The Corporate Leadership Council says 27% of high potential employees plus another 20% of non-high potentials are actively planning to leave their jobs in the next six months. An Accenture survey found 30% were ready to switch employers. More concerning is results from an American Psychological Association survey showing just over half of employees feel valued on the job. This doesn’t necessarily mean they want higher pay. Only 43% said they receive adequate recognition for their contributions at work.

Solving this last challenge would help dramatically in Improving the Strategic Effectiveness of the HR. As discussed in my Monday post, CEOs don’t see the performance and ROI benefit of employee engagement and employee recognition. The two are closely linked. My CEO, Eric Mosley, explained this well in an article in last month’s Chief Executive magazine:

“If recognition is implemented in a strategic way, it gives senior management a new window into the health of the organization. Acting as a barometer for engagement and employee performance, companies can monitor how often recognition occurs as well as in which divisions, geographies and teams. ... The link between prolonged neglect of consistent recognition and deteriorating company health is not always realized -- the focus is on productivity rather than on what LEADS to productivity (i.e., happy, fulfilled employees who are fully engaged in their work).”

Can you prove the value of what you do to bottom-line?

What is your top priority for 2011:

Prior posts on 2011 Top HR Priorities
Priority 1: Improving Senior Leader Capabilities at Managing the Workforce
Priority 2: Improving Manager Capabilities at Managing Their Direct Reports
Priority 3: Engaging Employees
Priority 4: Managing Organizational Change 

Critical HR Priorities: #2 Improving Manager Capabilities

Recognize This! – Line managers must improve ability to respect, trust and care for their employees, too.

Continuing our look at the Top 5 Critical HR Priorities for 2011 from the Corporate Leadership Council HR global agenda poll, the requirements for achieving priority 2 are quite similar to priority 1.

Priority 2 for HR in 2011: Improving Manager Capabilities at Managing Their Direct Reports

Just as senior leaders must demonstrate respect, trust and caring for the workforce they manage, so too must line managers show the same for their direct reports. But now it becomes much more personal.

RESPECT
Line managers must be careful to remember that respect is a two-way street. If they want the respect of their direct reports, then managers must show respect for their direct reports as well. Dan McCarthy points out, “Respect is not something you only give away when it may serve your needs." The same is true of employee recognition. You don’t show your appreciation for your employee efforts only when those efforts directly work to your advantage. You should also be liberal with your thanks when your direct reports may have performed well in helping another manager, team or department.

TRUST
Trust is often more easily gained by direct managers than senior leaders who are more removed from employees. But as with respect, trust is a two-way street. As Bret Simmons says, “You have to earn it by the way you behave toward them. Your people need to believe that you are competent and that you care.”

CARE
One way to demonstrate to employees you care about them is by taking the time to talk with them, to clearly communicate what you need them to do, praise them when they’re doing it well, and offer constructive feedback when they need improvement. Harvard Business School research showed employees overwhelmingly prefer a manager who is likeable to a person is very skilled but terrible at communicating.

Oft-reported Google research into their own employees (in an effort to “build a better boss) found:

“What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.”

What does that tell me? Employees want bosses to be present, patient and honestly interested in the people they manage. How do you or your managers stack up? Take my quick poll:

My direct manager demonstrates respect, trust and caring:

My direct reports would say I demonstrate respect, trust and caring:

Prior posts on 2011 Top HR Priorities
Priority 1: Improving Senior Leader Capabilities at Managing the Workforce

Top 5 Critical HR Priorities: #1 Improving Senior Leader Capabilities

Recognize This! – Senior leaders need to improve respect for employees, trustworthiness, and caring to better manage the workforce.

The Corporate Executive Board recently shared with us the Top 5 Critical HR Priorities for 2011 from their Corporate Leadership Council HR global agenda poll. Each day this week, I’ll address one priority.

Priority 1 for HR in 2011: Improving Senior Leader Capabilities at Managing the Workforce

Senior leaders constantly juggle innumerable priorities, each often requiring a different capability. Which should HR focus on to help senior leaders improve? I suggest senior leaders can’t hope to manage effectively unless they have the respect and trust of their teams. Their employees must also know the senior leader cares about them as people, not just “human capital.”

RESPECT
Paul Marciano, author of Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work, recently offered seven “critical” ways managers show respect for employees. His way was employee recognition: “Thanking employees and acknowledging their contributions on a daily basis.”

I don't know if Paul listed these in order of importance, but there is no denying that acknowledgment of ourselves, our work, and the value of our contributions goes a long way to telling us we are respected in the workplace. Paul’s last item was trust: “Demonstrating faith and belief in their employees’ skills, abilities, and decisions,” which leads in the next capability senior leaders need to manage the workforce.

TRUST
BlessingWhite’s CEO points out that without trust in leadership, employees question where they fit in the company. Towers Watson’s 2010 Global Workforce Study found “the most desired leadership characteristic is to be trustworthy, but only 47% of respondents agree that their leaders are, in fact, trustworthy.”

Why is this? Les Allan suggests on his Business Performance blog: “It can be more difficult to ascribe honorable motives to a ‘faceless’ leader.” To become more present to employees and “add a face,” senior leaders must show they care.

CARE
In his book The Thank You Economy, “King of Social Media” Gary Vaynerchuck, said:

“I care more about my employees than I do my customers, and I care more about my customers than I do breathing.”

Do you care more about your employees than you do breathing? Do your employees trust you? Do you have respect for them? If not, I can guarantee they do not respect you, trust you, or care about you and your success.

Every Employee Owns Their Own Business

Recognize This: No one owns “human capital” except the individual human.

Any entrepreneurs out there reading this blog? Any small business owners?

I would argue every employee reading this blog is a small business owner – you own your “human capital assets.” You make the decision every day whether you are bringing all of your talent, skills, efforts, creativity and desire to “do a good job” to the workplace.

However, for the vast majority of workers, we cannot rely on a “workforce of one.” We must work with and for other people to get the job done. Perhaps along the way we can have fun, too.

A couple of months ago Fortune magazine came out with their Best Companies to Work For list. While the list itself is interesting, I was more caught by how the Great Place to Work Institute, the non-profit that compiles list, defines a great place to work: 

“A great place to work is one in which you trust the people you work for, have pride in what you do, and enjoy the people you work with.”

Since we all choose to bring ourselves to work every day, I think we can all choose the attitude we bring as well. I choose to trust those I work with, take pride in what I do, and enjoy the people I work with. It certainly colors my attitude every day. I like to think it makes it easier for those who work with me to feel the same.

Do you work in a “great place to work” – even if the company didn’t make the “official” list? Tell me the company and why it’s great!

If you can, join me for my last session at the complimentary IHR Rewards & Recognition virtual conference at 11:00 (Eastern) in which I'll be presenting The Future of Rewards and Recognition.

Limiting Employee Recognition Only Limits Potential Improvement

Recognize This: Putting limits on employee recognition only limits potential impact on employee engagement, productivity, performance and retention.

Adding to my thoughts on appreciation tips that have been tweeted to #appreciationtip (and keep those tips coming) is this one:

"As you sip your morning coffee, remember it's never too early to thank your employees."

I like this tip not for the obvious inference of "recognize early and often," but for the more subtle message of "even new hires can do extraordinary things."

A recognition policy I've never understood is "New hires must be on board 90-days (or some other arbitrary length of time) before they can participate in the appreciation or recognition program."

Why? Are they not likely to do something extraordinary during those months? Personally, I can think of countless examples of a new hire, with their fresh eyes and clear perspective, seeing a challenge or opportunity long-timers had struggled with and arriving at a simple, elegant solution. Should they not be recognized and appreciated for that, just because "they haven't been here long enough?"

What do you think? Are there any good reasons for a 90-day (or similar) moratorium on recognition for new hires?

Performance Appraisal Games on Compensation Café

Recognize This: Performance appraisal/salary increase games make everyone losers.

I blog regularly on Compensation Café. Last month, my posts dealt with the games we play with performance appraisals and salary increases.

In my first post, I outline three of the most common games and their hallmarks.

Game 1: Relying on the Appraisal as the Primary Means of Feedback

Game 2: Ranking Performance

Game 3: Differentiating based on Pay Increases

In my follow-up post,  I discussed that although many have advocated just dropping the performance appraisal, in reality these have become so embedded in the people process, removing the annual review entirely is simply not feasible or desirable in most organizations.

The answer to “what should we do instead?” lies in solving the inherent problems with the games we play in the first place:

1)    A general dearth of feedback in the workplace today
2)    A company culture that tolerates head-in-the-sand management
3)    Reliance on too few tools for accurate performance assessment.

Hop over to the Café and read the full posts, then come back and tell me, have you ever played one of these games (unwittingly or otherwise)? What other games do you see being played with employees? How else would you recommend solving the problems we play with performance assessment? What other ways of assessing performance more accurately, fairly and frequently would you recommend?

Also, don’t forget to tweet your tips for employee appreciation and recognition using hash-tag #appreciationtip to be entered to win a copy of the Winning with a Culture of Recognition eBook or Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with the eBook.

Differentiating Employees: Why Not Let Them Do It Themselves?

Recognize This: No one knows the contributions and achievements of an employee as well as everyone does.

In Monday’s post, I discussed the problem of differentiation creep in the workforce – how the percentage of exceptional employees is increasing as the percentage of poor performers is decreasing.

What’s the solution to the problem? The Workspan article (“Measuring Employee Performance the Right Way,” January 2011. Membership required.) gets close:

“People need to know how they are doing, and individual performance feedback should come as soon as possible on a direct basis when employees achieve, or fail to achieve, their objectives – project completion, outstanding service, missed targets, goal achievements and so on.”

I agree with that statement 100% -- but it doesn’t go far enough. If you truly want to differentiate employees, let them do it themselves. Let all employees recognize excellent behaviors, actions and results demonstrated or achieved by their colleagues. Require specifics on what was done and why it was important. Now you have a much more complete picture of employee achievement throughout the year – from the wisdom of crowds. 

What are your solutions for differentiation creep?
 

Also, don’t forget to tweet your tips for employee appreciation and recognition using hash-tag #appreciationtip to be entered to win a copy of the Winning with a Culture of Recognition eBook or Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with the eBook.

Differentiation Creep

Recognize This: No one wants to be “the bad guy” in performance reviews and differentiation.

Ever since “Neutron Jack” Welch popularized the “differentiation” approach to performance management in which employees have been segregated by their managers into performance levels of top 10%, middle 80%, and bottom 10%, people managers and HR pros responsible for them have tried to make differentiation work.

The problem for managers is trying to (somewhat) arbitrarily lump employees into these categories in a once-a-year effort to remember an entire 12 months’ worth of performance and achievements. The problem for employees is average and low performers don’t realize their performance is not exceptional.

The result? Differentiation creep. Workspan magazine (“Measuring Employee Performance the Right Way,” January 2011. Membership required.) recently published research showing:

“While high performers are increasing in relative numbers by leaps and bounds, there is also a depletion in the population of low performers.”

Why is this happening? Two reasons:

1)      Managers don’t want to make the hard choices of who appears in the bottom 10%, or they’ve truly hired well and none of their employees are poor performers.

2)      Managers lack enough insight into employee contributions to make correct differentiation decisions.

Are you seeing differentiation creep in your workplace? Before I share solutions on Wednesday, how do you solve differentiation creep? 

Also, don’t forget to tweet your tips for employee appreciation and recognition using hash-tag #appreciationtip to be entered to win a copy of the Winning with a Culture of Recognition eBook or Amazon Kindle pre-loaded with the eBook.

“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?

Employees Don’t Know Your Objectives & Don’t Care

Recognize This: If you want your employees to care about your strategic objectives and work to achieve them every day, you better make it clear what those objectives are in their daily work.

How about some frightening statistics to shake up the middle of your week? (Quoting from Fake Work research as cited in TLNT):

• 87% of employees are not satisfied with the results of their work at the end of most weeks
• 73% of workers say their organizations’ strategies and goals are not translated into specific work tasks they can execute.
• 70% of workers do not know what to do to support their organizations’ strategies and goals.
• 81% of workers do not feel a strong level of commitment to their organizations’ strategies.

Let’s boil that down. People don’t know what you want them to do, don’t know how to do it anyway, don’t particularly care, but at least they’re somewhat dissatisfied for it at the end of the week.

Spouting strategies does little to align employees with your goals. It’s not that employees don’t want to help the company achieve its strategic objectives. It’s that they don’t know how. That’s where strategic recognition comes in as a very powerful tool for communicating both what the company needs down and how each employee contributes to that. When you thank an employee – specifically and with details – for achieving an objective (including a description of the work and the objective) it becomes clear to the employee how they are helping.

Do you know your company’s strategic objectives? Do you know how you contribute to achieving them in your daily work? Do you care?

Global Integration of People Systems Delivers More to Your Bottom Line

Recognize This: Global integration of talent systems delivers 38% more Return on Equity (ROE).

Why should you care if your talent management systems and programs align with your company values and strategic objectives? Simple – you’ll see a much higher return on equity (ROE).

Ernst & Young reported in the January 2011 issue of Workspan Magazine (“Think Global, Act Global,” membership required):

“Companies that aligned their talent management programs with their business strategy enjoyed a 20% higher annual return on equity (ROE) over a five year period than those that did not. Returns were even more dramatic among those companies that integrated talent management programs, processes, and IT systems/processes on a global scale. These companies experienced an ROE over five years that was 38% better than those that did not.”

That’s precisely why we strongly advocate in our strategic employee recognition programs that customers:

1) Align business objectives and company values with reasons for recognition to make these come alive in the daily work of employees

2) Launch their programs to ALL employees in ALL global locations simultaneously, both to prevent any employees from feeling like “second-class citizens” if they’re not included in the initial launch, and to ensure program consistency on a global scale

3) Integrate recognition with performance management systems

Not only will you gain a much more complete and accurate understanding of how well your employees know and contribute to strategic objectives, you’ll also dramatically increase your return on equity.

Not a bad reason to go global and go integrated.

You CAN Manage Your Culture. Behaviors Are the Key.

Recognize This: Changing and managing your culture is simple, but not easy. It begins with finding and praising the behaviors you want to underpin your culture.


We’re often asked about our book Winning with a Culture of Recognition: “Is it really possible change and proactively manage a company culture?”

Unequivocally, yes! And doing so is relatively simple. But it’s not easy.

The steps you need to take to change and manage the culture you want are fairly straightforward, as discussed quite eloquently in a recent Strategy + Business article, “Stop Blaming Your Culture,” by Jon Katzenbach and Ashley Harshak, but finding the courage, diligence and desire to take those steps is not easy.

The first step – an important realization – is that you cannot deny the power of the culture you already have. Rather, you have to find ways to work within that culture to encourage only those behaviors you want to see influence the new culture you desire and to discourage behaviors you don’t. Katzenbach and Harshak put it this way:

“You need to focus on specific behaviors that solve real problems and deliver real results. This, in turn, enables people to experience the results of thinking differently. Experience becomes a better teacher than logical argument.”

Or, for a practical example they use in the opening paragraph of the article:

“It would have been easy for Gray (new commandant of the US Marine Corps) to blame the damaged organizational culture for the problems he inherited, and to launch a formal, full-scale change initiative. But instead, he began to praise and seek out elements of the old Corps culture, such as the ethic of mutual respect.”

Seek out behaviors you desire as foundational to your culture. Praise the people demonstrating those behaviors. Repeat. Often.

Simple, but not always easy.

What’s Your Company Culture? Look at the Behaviors.

Recognize This: Your company culture is a reflection of the behaviors you tolerate.

What exactly is culture, especially in the business context? Can an organization really have a culture? The answer, unequivocally, is: “Yes!”

Understanding your culture and, more importantly, knowing how to proactively manage it is an entirely different discussion.

Carolyn Taylor, author of Walking the Talk, explained culture and its importance in the workplace this way:

“Culture is the patterns of behavior that are encouraged or discouraged over time. These behaviors will either facilitate business performance, or they will hinder it. They will either be aligned to values that will build your brand and reputation, or they will not.”

Carolyn’s take on culture reinforces my own and Eric Mosley’s in our book Winning with a Culture of Recognition:

“An organization’s culture is so much more than a slogan or poster. Culture is nothing less than the aggregate of tens of thousands of interactions every day. Leaders of great companies reinforce their values by rewarding and celebrating the behaviors that express those values.”

Globoforce’s culture (in addition to being a culture of recognition) is one of “others first.” For example, in our daily work we tend to put the needs of our colleagues ahead of our own. I’ve seen it repeatedly where someone will drop their own priorities to help another on a project that perhaps is a greater priority overall. And these people are consistently recognized and appreciated when they do.

What behaviors does your culture reinforce? A desire to “win” at all costs (even if less than desirable behaviors are required to win)? A commitment to improve the surrounding community (even if profits may be a bit less)?

Is Your Company Culture Worth Firing Someone Over?

Recognize This: If company culture is truly important to you, make it a major portion of your performance review process.

Online shoe company Zappos, famous for offering employees thousands of dollars to leave, has made the news again with its performance review process.

Forbes recently reported a speech given by Zappos founder and CEO Tony Hseih, particularly this statement:

“Fifty percent of our performance review at Zappos measures how you are furthering the company’s culture.”

50%. That’s an astounding percentage. But more importantly, think of it this way. If Zappos is putting that much emphasis on culture in the performance review, that means they must be doing an outstanding job of communicating what, exactly, it means to advance the company culture in your daily work. If they didn’t, they’d be opening themselves to a massive lawsuit.

Are you so confident in your company culture – and in how well it is communicated to and, more critically, understood by your employees - that you’d make “advancing company culture” 50% of your performance review?

Do you think culture is important enough to require this?

Say “Thank You” Unexpectedly to Motivate More Powerfully

Recognize This: Unexpected appreciation is a far more effective motivator than a predictable reward.

A friend, trying to explain to me the joys of parenting immediately after venting about the challenges, sent me this article in Slate. To be honest, the parenting stories didn’t stick with me as much as this observation:

“If you give animals a predictable reward—say, a shot of sugar every time they press a lever—you can get them to press that lever quite regularly. But if you want irrational and addictive behavior, you make the reward unpredictable. Pressing the lever produces sugar, but only once every 10 tries. Sometimes, the animal might have to go 20 or 30 tries without a reward. Sometimes it gets a big jolt of sugar three tries in a row. If you train an animal to work for an unexpected reward, you can get it to work harder and longer than if you train it to work for a predictable reward.”

And that is precisely the difference between incentives and recognition. Irregular, unpredictable, but highly desired praise for work well done, work demonstrative of company values, work that contributes to strategic objectives, work that keeps the team running smoothly – most certainly encourages and, dare I say, motivates employees to want to continue those behaviors.

It’s proven in the scientific literature, too. If you thank someone, they are 100% more likely to help you again in the future than if you don’t. It’s simple. But the meaning and power of true, sincere appreciation is limitless.

Would you (do you) work harder when you know there is a possibility of recognition for your efforts or when you know you’re working to a predetermined reward? Why?