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Caught In the Act – Part 1

How to acknowledge people without turning them off

By Jody Urquhart

Does acknowledging employees compel them to explore their potential further, or is it more of a mindless clacking of cliché expressions? Is your recognition program a superficial ploy encroaching on your staff’s need to be candidly recognized? Don’t be disheartened, because many organizations suffer the same twisted fate. Everybody likes to be acknowledged and appreciated for their efforts, but only if they are rewarded and acknowledged in a way that is genuine, not with a hollow act of little substance. Include employees’ input in the way you salute their efforts. Most companies have a formal way of acknowledging employees with such things as annual award banquets, top sales awards and certificates. If your award program doesn’t stimulate a thunderous reception it may be because it is too generic. There are some major pitfalls to generic award programs:

1) The reward is handed down from management and reinforces imbalances in power;

2) It can be patronizing to receive a small award for a large accomplishment;

3) The accomplishment is often a team effort. It fosters resentment when just one person gets the reward;

4) It creates a healthy type of competition;

5) The reward usually occurs annually or semi- annually; encouraging performance needs to take place on a daily basis;

6) Salary raises are nice, but seldom are they what motivates people to do their best on the job;

7) Top performers are often the same people every month. So a formal award system may become a program that continually acknowledges the same people. How is this helping the rest of your staff? It’s not, and you may be causing resentment.

8) The most common flaw of award programs is they often reward people for doing work they were supposed to do anyway.

Why are formal awards systems so popular then? There is one main advantage to formal awards; because they are formal, they are easy to administer. All you need to do is calculate how close (or how far) people get to their goal, find the “top achievers” and acknowledge them with your standard reward. This advantage is also the major disadvantage. Formal awards are just that; formal! They are a “mass acknowledgement” program. They can be very impersonal and don’t take into account the strengths, accomplishments or efforts of individuals. They don’t take into account an employee’s input. Formal award systems recognize one narrow aspect of the job (usually something that increases revenue, like sales) and a few employees that are good at achieving this goal. Instead, informal recognition programs focus on spontaneous, sincere and personal appreciation of employee efforts.

The Art of Appreciating Others

Appreciating others is a brilliant and creative act. Managers need to notice and nurture chronic acts of achievement. Yet how many managers consider appreciating others a part of their job responsibility? Not many.

Personalized Rewards

Personalized reward systems might work like this:

a) In a coaching session, ask your employees what they want to accomplish over a time period (next week , month or year).

b) Let them set the goal (i.e., clean and organize my desk and workspace next week).

c) Make sure you are both clear. “What will this look like when you accomplish this goal?”(i.e. clean desk top, files alphabetized). How will you know if this has been accomplished?

d) Set a time frame to achieve.

e) Ask: how would you like to be acknowledged or rewarded for this accomplishment? (i.e. change my schedule so I can go to my son’s hockey game next week).

The employee decides the goal and the reward. For a goal to be effective it needs to be measurable and have a time frame. We know we can’t measure the intangible aspects of the job. That is why it is really important that employees be clear on what it will look like when they have accomplished the goal (i.e., what would showing more initiative look like?).

Award the Intangible

Usually performance evaluations focus on mental functions like comparing, copying, compiling, analyzing, coordinating and synthesizing information. These are important parts of the job, yet this is only the icing on the cake. In a recent survey of chief information officers, 85 percent of respondents said they look for well-developed soft skills, such as business acumen and interpersonal skills, when evaluating job candidates. Sixty-eight percent said soft skills are more important today than they were just five years ago. The survey was conducted by an independent research firm, which polled 150 executives from the nation's 1,000 largest companies. (PRNewswire) . In an employment interview, typical questions are about how well people relate to others, how well they deal with conflict, etc. Soft skills. So we hire people for these qualities, yet rarely do organizations reward and develop employees for having or developing them. Why? Soft skills are hard to identify and measure. How well someone deals with conflict isn’t easy to determine, let alone measure.

Reward people on so called “soft skills” like relations with others. Evaluate how well employees communicate, negotiate, deal with conflict, work with others, handle change, handle stress, manage others.

How do you evaluate soft skills? Try to define and recognize them in the person and help coach employees on soft skills.

· Get them talking, solicit their input with questions like:

· Tell me about a work situation that irritated you. How did you respond?

· How did you resolve a conflict with a coworker or client?

· If you wrote in our company newsletter and had to describe yourself in only three words, what would those words be? (develops personal awareness).

· Talk about any risks you took this week. What was it like, what was the result?

· What are two or three examples of tasks that you do not particularly enjoy doing? Indicate how you remain motivated to complete those tasks? (this develops self motivation).

Reflection allows employees to examine their progress toward developing behaviors.

The first step is recognizing what the “soft skills” are that need to be developed, and the next step is developing them. Set goals to develop soft skills like dealing with conflict, taking controlled risk and more. Have employees come back weekly or monthly and talk about the goals and how and if they met them.

You could also have annual awards for showing initiative, taking risks, contributing to the team and more. Staff would vote for their co-workers in these categories throughout the year. Hand the awards out at a yearly event. Have employees also briefly write down why they vote on each person, collect the responses weekly and you will have a really good idea of how well people work together. Also, you are getting your staff’s input and they are helping you catch others “in the act “of doing well. You can use this feedback to acknowledge employees at their next coaching session.

How do you acknowledge people for developing soft skills? There is really only one way. Catch them in the act.

We will discuss this in more detail in Part 2 of this article!

Other Resources:

Fast Feedback, by Bruce Tulgan.

The 8 Best Practices of Exceptional Companies, by Jac Fitz-Enz.

Constructive Appraisals, by Roy Lecky-Thompson.

Bob Nelson, author of the best-selling 1001 Ways to Reward Employees (Workman Publishing, 1994) and 1001 Ways to Energize Employees (Workman Publishing, 1997)

Performance Appraisals, by SHRM Information Center.

Comments to: ido@idoinspire.com

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About the author:

Jody Urquhart, a popular speaker and writer, is recognized in Canada, the United States and Europe, She has presented her signature topic, Joy of Work, to 65 organizations last year alone. Her monthly column on the same subject appears in over fifty trade journals. Jody is also an associate speaker for the Individual Development Organization in Vancouver where she works with Bill Clennan, the Dean of Canadian Speakers.

Jody holds diplomas in Professional Speaking and Writing from Mount Royal College and in Management and Marketing from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. She studied Management for three years at the University of Calgary. Her business experience includes management positions in both the banking and retail industries. Jody is a proud member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and holds the distinction of being one of its founding board members. Jody is the author of the book “ALL WORK & NO SAY TAKES THE PASSION AWAY”. To order your copy, or to discuss having Jody speak at your next meeting, feel free to email her at ido@idoinspire.com