1,001 Ways to Engage Employees

Bob Nelson

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781632658708
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

"Share these ideas with key members of your company. Together, select a half-dozen ideas that resonate with all of you. Next, devise a plan to systematically implement these. And watch your company grow both in profitability and as a great place to work." —Inc.com Employee engagement has been consistently cited as a top and growing priority by CEOs, managers, and human resources leaders across the country. From bestselling author Dr. Bob Nelson will help move any organization from just measuring the need to engage employees to actually changing management behaviors that will lead to a stronger culture of engagement. Your organization will become more effective at both attracting and retaining talent and maximizing the contribution of your employees. 1, 001 Ways to Engage Employees:

• Categorizes specific research-based factors proven to impact employee engagement.
• Cites hundreds of examples of what other companies are doing to enhance employee engagement—ideas you can use right now.
• Offers practical insights and advice from hundreds of clients Dr. Bob has worked with.
• Highlights the key research on employee engagement you need to know and use.
• Is the only resource on the market that guarantees behavioral change on the part of your leaders that will deliver desired results.

Employees are your company's most important asset. Attracting the best, getting them to do their best work, and keeping them in the organization are critical to your company's success. 1, 001 Ways to Engage Employees gives you all the powerful tools you need.

RECOGNITION

There are lots of reasons why managers can't provide positive reinforcement to their employees at work, but just one reason why they must find a way:

It really works.

Recognition, thanking and praising employees for doing good work, is the number-one driver of employee engagement, significantly representing 56 percent of employees' perception of engagement where they work. This might be surprising because thanking someone is such a simple thing—almost common sense—when dealing with others. Yet, most employees report they don't get very much genuine, sincere thanks where they work. In fact, in one survey only 12 percent of employees report they receive meaningful recognition where they work, and 34 percent reported that they didn't find meaningful those things their company did to recognize them.

Yet this commonsense notion is far from common practice in most organizations today. Why is that? In my twenty-five years of working with this topic, I think it's because we often confuse the behavior of recognizing employees with things that are associated with recognition (money, gift cards, points, pins, plaques, and so on).

In fact, in my doctoral dissertation on the topic, I posed a simple question: Why do some managers use recognition while others do not? I found that a manager's access to tools, programs, or a budget for recognizing employees was not significant in causing them to actually recognize their employees. Translation: Employees feel special from the act of being recognized in a timely, sincere, and specific way by someone they hold in high esteem when they have done good work. This is also why many companies that spend millions of dollars on recognition tools, items, cash substitutes, and merchandise still often have a major portion of their employee population report that they don't feel valued.

According to the Aberdeen Group's employee engagement research, “By acknowledging an employee's positive behaviors and demonstrating appreciation for employee contributions, that individual worker will continue those behaviors, stay engaged with the company, and feel motivated to perform.” Sixty percent of best-in-class organizations (defined as those in the top 20 percent of aggregate performers in their study) stated that employee recognition is extremely valuable in driving individual performance.

Managers and organizations struggle to systematically recognize employee performance when it happens. The notion is commonsense but far from common practice in business today; managers tend to be too busy and too removed from their employees to notice when they have done good work and to thank them for it. It doesn't take much: A survey of American workers found that 63 percent of the respondents ranked “a pat on the back” as a meaningful incentive.

On recognition: Our people want it; our people need it; and this is a cost worthy of being spent according to the feedback we get from our people.

—BARRY SALZBERG, DELOITTE

The widespread lack of rewards and recognition programs at a time when it is most needed is particularly ironic because what motivates people the most tends to take so little time and money to implement. It doesn't take a huge bonus check or a trip to the Bahamas or a lavish annual awards banquet to get the best out of people. It often just takes a little time, thoughtfulness, and energy to notice what employees do, thank them for it, and encourage others to do the same. Here are some other simple forms of recognition any manager can use:

• When you hear good news, act on it! Share it with others and thank those responsible.
• Take a few moments at the end of the day to reflect on whose performance stands out. Write those individuals thank-you notes and leave the notes by their workstations as you leave.
• Take time at the beginning or end of meetings to share positive news, such as letters from customers, or ask if there is any praise due from one team member to another.
• When you read your mail, look for positive items to share with others or at staff meetings.
• Take time to listen when employees need to talk. Be responsive to people, not just problems.
• Make an effort to meet with employees you don't see or speak with very often. Take a break together; have coffee or an off-site lunch.
• Remember the four-to-one rule: Every time you criticize or correct someone, plan to praise or thank that same person at least four times.
• Take time to celebrate individual or group milestones, desired behavior, and achievements.

At the same time, some 80 percent of managers feel they are pretty good at recognizing their employees, which is a big part of the disconnect. If managers feel they're providing recognition, but employees feel they aren't receiving it, who's right? Since employee engagement stems from employee perceptions, they have the upper hand on the matter, and managers need to find ways to provide more recognition and with greater frequency.

It's not that difficult to provide more recognition, anyway. The basic behavior is quite simple. The best recognition has the following components:

• Soon: Timing is important. The sooner you acknowledge someone after a success, the more that behavior or result is reinforced, and the more likely it will be repeated.
• Sincere: Good recognition comes from the heart and rings true to the recipient. You can't just go through the motions if you want recognition to be valued.
• Specific: Some of the sincerity in any praise comes from specifics, that is, evidence that what you're recognizing an employee for is valid and important.
• Personal: Whenever possible, you should praise others directly, ideally in person.
• Positive: Provide only 100 percent positive comments. Avoid the temptation to add a “yes, but” or other critique. Save that for a developmental conversation!
• Proactive: Have a sense of urgency in showing gratitude to others. When you see something, say something!

Once you have established a baseline of providing employees timely, sincere, specific, positive praise and recognition, you can build upon that with other forms of recognition they value.

To successfully grow employee engagement in your organization, you must make recognition a foundational part of everyone's work life. It is critical to driving engagement and improving organization performance. In this chapter, you will find a collection of fresh examples representing the rich variety of practices others use to recognize their staff.

Dena Saddler, an HR generalist with Infinite Electronics says, “I always do, but should not, underestimate the power of a simple ‘thank you.’ It should be specific about what the person did and why it was important. But mostly, it should say something about how the person's action helped you, made your day better, or made your life easier.” When Saddler worked for the City of Dallas, she gave and received a lot of thank-you cards using their Thank You program. The city provided cards to every employee, who then decided to give a card to whomever they wanted—upward, downward, across, and sideways. The cards included a place to identify which of the city's values the person's action represented. “But it was mostly the handwritten, heartfelt description and why the action was so important that was most meaningful to the recipient,” says Saddler. “Anyone who was lucky enough to receive one of these thank-you cards was anxious to display it in their locker or on their bulletin board, maybe to get their attention every day, maybe to remind them about why work is important, really. It's not the money; you can get that at any job.”

“‘Praise in public, punish in private.’ I'm not sure when or where I originally heard that statement, but I live by it,” says Jeff Rogers, CEO of Job Hunter Pro, a virtual company with team members from Portland, Oregon, to Atlanta, Georgia. “As a former vice president of human resources and the current CEO of a company that focuses on people, I wish more managers would embrace that simple phrase.”

Joanna Adams, a supervisor for Highmark, a health insurance company in Wilmington, Delaware, writes:

I am a supervisor at my current job, and recognition is always something I have valued and held in the highest regard. I have a number of staff working under me, and I always take the time to not only acknowledge when they have excelled in some way but also to build upon their bench strengths, that is, their potential. Most employees work hard because they want to feel they matter to their employer. A hallmark of a good employer-employee relationship is not only recognizing when someone has done a good job but also for the potential they may offer. Because of that mentality, I have found my staff on the whole works harder and has a fierce loyalty to me because of that relationship. So we both end up benefiting in the long run.

Bren Anne of Bren Anne Public Relations and Marketing in Ontario, Canada, has five staff members that perform different specialties; most work remotely most of the time. She reports:

I know it sounds cliché, but we reward positive outlook with paid lunches and days off, and we offer to take on a task to help the other team member. For example, a client's needs may require a difficult resolution—maybe a client who needs a theater with a certain seating arrangement. A positive outlook remark might be, “Frustrating as it may seem, I know we'll find the perfect place for his event.” When I catch positive comments, the individual gets rewarded: I do one of their tasks that day, they get a paid lunch and afternoon off, or might even get the day off, whatever my team member prefers.

Recognizing positive, on-brand behaviors within an organization is critical in keeping employees engaged. People appreciate being recognized by their supervisors, management, and peers, and it demonstrates the organization is committed to its people.

Core Creative, a Milwaukee-based advertising and bran...