Retain Top Talent

Here's a radically different approach to thinking about the experience your employees have around engagement, recognition, and culture. You might want to consider an empathy map.

Here's an interesting quiz on identifying where you are in having a systematic, structured, organized, planned approach to employee recognition.

I've been suggesting this idea in the last 8 weeks of doing my Managing Remotely in a Crisis zoom webinar - send everyone company swag. This article reinforces that idea - and breaks down some different recommendations. The big question is whether swag is an effective reinforcement of positive experiences when folks are separated and isolated from being together?

Couple of items I took away from this article was tying recognition back to your values, and that the pace of recognition should be one recognition per employee per month. I've never seen that recommendation before - but I really like the suggestion on pace.

I just had this conversation today with a group of CEOs in my webinar on Managing Remotely in a Crisis. I was recommending that the companies should implement a peer-to-peer recognition system in addition to their other methods of showing appreciation.

An overwhelming number of ideas that you could you use to immediately boost employee recognition. Just pick one for an immediate impact.

Good ideas and reinforcement about employee recognition and appreciation. I liked giving shout-outs on social media to teams and individual employees and having managers write hand-written notes to their subordinates who then post those notes on the refrigerator so the whole family can see how much they are appreciated.

A few core thoughts on how to structure an effective employee recognition program and some of the pitfalls to avoid to prevent failure. It's particularly important in working with remote workers to have a good recognition/reward program.

What a great story that reflects praise, gratitude, appreciation, and recognition. A letter to the parents. Duh! Why haven't I thought of that as a tactic around motivation? How many of you have written a note to an employee's parents?

Usually, I'm posting positive articles with tips, tactics, and recommendations. This article takes a different approach by looking at why recognition programs fail. One interesting learning element for me was that recognition is not frequent enough.

Good basic ideas on recognition, team work, personal development, learning - all of which leads to increasing engagement and productivity.

Here's the key question - why do so few companies and managers shy away from investing in trying to build employee engagement - when we know the impact on retention and productivity?

Is there not enough published information and studies to justify the investment, is there not enough incentive to change, is it not part of your culture, or is it that you just don't know what to do? 

Alarm bells should be ringing! Can you believe the statement in this article in Inc that a survey showed that 80 percent of the reason to leave a company was a lack of being patted on the back?

I've been talking about this simple idea of one element of employee engagement for years - yet out of 600-700 CEOs and executives that I present to annually - very few are doing anything substantial around employee appreciation and recognition.

As the job market continues to heat up over the next decade, be prepared for the exodus due to a lack of appreciation.

More statistics on the value of having a good employee engagement and recognition strategy and process.

"81% of employees say they’re motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation"

That by itself should be enough of an incentive to create a good program. Most companies recognition and engagement programs are either non-existent, left up to individual managers, or so superficial they border on useless.

Second most important element in driving productivity. We wonder as CEOs and senior execs why the productivity of the organization is so bad compared to where it should be.

When people don't feel engaged and appreciated, they give you the absolute rock bottom minimal level of effort that they think you'll tolerate without firing them. Shameful!

I liked the breakdown of different kinds of recognition - and opportunites to recognize your employees. The key is to put in place a rigorous system of recognition vs. a random process based on what each managers wants to do.

Are some of your managers who lead the bulk of your employees having issues about their own engagement. Front line employees observe this attitude and become disengaged when their boss is disengaged.

Here's the quote that reinforced this idea:

"Leader disengagement often happens for the same reasons as employee disengagement. They don’t feel respected by their manager, they don’t feel like they have a say in decision making, and they aren’t kept in the loop in terms of communication. Finally, they usually don’t receive enough positive feedback and appreciation themselves as leaders. Lack of leader motivation and engagement tends to breed cynicism, sarcasm, and negativity in the leader."

Great list of employee reward/recognition ideas broken down in key categories. Are you testing any of these ideas in your company?

Loved the Wall of Happy described in this article. The statistic that rocked me a little was the one about 4 out 5 employees indicated they would work harder if praised/patted on the back.

Thoughtful article summarizing Gallup Employee Engagement Findings and some specific recommendations on improving employee engagement centered around listening/feedback, defining expectations, and recognition.

Pretty simple stuff! Why then are so few companies practicing it? Why do so many managers/executives seem not to care about making changes to raise employee engagement - as in "it's good enough."

This article did a good job separating the ideas of recognition and appreciation. Sometimes, CEOs get confused over which one requires what tactics - or one gets ignored.

Struggling to think of ways to recognize your employees? Here are 20 great ideas. Pick one to start changing your culture and showing your employees how much you appreciate them.

Interesting list of behaviors centered around initiative, proactivity, an self-motivation. In what ways does this number one trait of success get exhibited? How can you recognize and reward it?

I liked how thorough this article approached the idea of teaching the fundamentals of employee recognition. It aligns with our process of making things like hiring and retention a systematic and rigorous process - instead of random events.

I've been talking about this idea for years - great leaders show their appreciation, gratitude, and caring toward their teams and employees.

Not having gratitude and appreciation as part of your core values can be one of the reasons your best performers will be poached in the next year or two.

Fixing a culture where there is a lack of gratitude and appreciation is very simple - why don't more CEOs and Executives take action toward building it into the fabric of their organizations?