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Posts Tagged "recognition’

The Confluence of Happiness and Performance = Engagement

Recognize This! – Balancing employee happiness and performance is critical to long-term, sustainable employee engagement and impact.

Earlier this week, I shared insight from Eventbrite Co-Founder and President Julia Hartz on the importance of helping employees understand how they personally and individually contribute to achieving the company vision. In the same interview, Ms. Hartz also tackled a subject I’ve seen more and more in the last few months – should happy employees be our goal? Shouldn’t we, as a business, be focused on performance and results?

I like how Eventbrite arrived at the answer. In Ms. Hartz’s words:

“We’ve discovered that the common denominator of performance and happiness is impact and so that’s what we’re going to focus on. I realized this was the question that had been plaguing me. I wondered if I had sacrificed productivity at the expense of happiness. I then went back to the drawing board and thought about how you elegantly, subtly and thoughtfully introduce this notion of performance into a culture where people are happy and really enjoy their day-to-day. Granted it wasn’t that we weren’t performing as a whole. Rather it was how do we think about the future and setting the bar even higher? How do we think about velocity, quality and happiness?

“The entire last year we’ve kind of germinated through this notion of performance. We’ve discovered that the common denominator of performance and happiness is impact – and so that’s what we’re going to focus on. That’s where we’re going to put our cards and how we’re going to drive the team.”

This is driving to the balance of recognizing the “what” as well as the “how” – understanding that achieving results isn’t enough. We must balance that with the manner in which those results were achieved. In the case of Eventbrite, it’s balancing performance and happiness to arrive at impact.

Impact, to me, is another way of expressing engagement. Employees need to know their daily efforts are contributing to achieving a greater objective or purpose – they are having an impact. This is foundational to employee engagement – understanding what I do has value and, therefore, choosing to give more discretionary effort to achieve desired goals.

You can have a slew of happy employees but no relevant business results. You can also have tremendous results, but nothing but miserable employees. Both models are clearly unsustainable. Find the balance, achieve engagement, and see results sore.

Can Money Buy You Happiness? Find Out on Compensation Cafe

Recognize This! – Don’t ignore the importance of correct compensation in Total Rewards.

Today on Compensation Café I tackle a topic many regular readers might find unusual for me – how money can buy you happiness. The answer lies in how and for what reason you use money.

Check out my post for the three lessons I offer on the importance of correct, balanced compensation, reward choice and the importance of time – and how all this ties back to recent research showing the link between money and happiness.

3 Critical Questions to Ask Before Implementing an Incentives Program

Recognize This! – Incentives and employee recognition are two very different programs. Be sure you’re selecting the right one for your goals and then implementing it correctly.

Once again, a theme seems to be running through my RSS reader – the problem with incentives. Incentives can have a role to play in a Total Rewards solution, but problems often arise when organizations use incentives as the sole or primary method of recognition and reward.

Why is there a problem with incentives?

Simply this – recognition and incentives are two very different things. Incentives state up front for employees, “If you do X, then you’ll get Y.” The stated goal and the end-result reward are known. Recognition, on the other hand, is always a surprise. What is worthy of recognition is clearly defined, but when you are recognized and the reward associated with it are always a surprise and ideally very timely when given. In other words, recognition is: “Now that you’ve done this, here is your recognition.”

Why is this difference between recognition and incentives important?

More often than not, incentives are poorly structured, encouraging and rewarding employees to do the wrong things.

This Wired article shares a terrific example of a grocery store chain monitoring employees on how quickly they complete tasks. Exceeding expectations earns greater rewards, but as a result (in the words of one employee), “The guys who made the scores were sweating buckets and throwing stuff around the place.” Because of poorly designed incentives, work got done faster but poorly, leading to a worse customer experience.

A Harvard Business Review blog post shared several stories of incentives gone wrong, including a bus system in an Asian city that rewarded employees based on on-time route schedules. That only incented drivers to skip stops and leave passengers waiting during peak travel times to ensure they maintained on-time schedules!

What can you do to avoid poorly structured incentives?

The HBR blog authors suggest:

“Awareness of the problem can help organizations take the next step — effective measures to correct it. Once management teams understand the behaviors that are driven by their measurement and reward systems, they should calibrate to make sure they are incentivizing exactly the behaviors they want from their people. They should remind managers and employees alike of what should be measured and rewarded. They should also be on alert and watch for undesirable behaviors and trace back its connection with reward systems.”

“Make sure they are incentivizing exactly the behaviors they want from their people” – that’s the key. You must be sure the behaviors you are recognizing and rewarding are the ones you want to see. To be clear, you must recognize the “how” as well as the “what” – how the work got done as well as the end result.

HBR also highlights another critical element:

“Purpose has to shine through loud and clear… On the one hand, good measurement systems are needed to track progress, and incentive systems are needed to motivate and align people. On the other hand, it is far more important to stay true to the purpose. We believe the pendulum has swung too far one way, and that balance needs to be restored.”

Recognition done right (after the fact, “Now/that” recognition, not “If/then” incentives) intentionally aligns the purpose of the organization with the desired behaviors (usually the company values) being recognized and rewarded. Most organizations have already defined what they need to see from all employees to achieve their strategic objectives. The trick with effective, strategic employee recognition is now making it a point to recognize and reward employees when you see them living those desired behaviors in their everyday work. Align purpose, behaviors and recognition and you will see measurable success.

Does your organization focus on incentives or recognition? Which do you see as more effective?

The Knock-On Effect of Recognition Done Right

Recognize This! – People are watching. Recognize what you want to see emulated in others.

Yesterday, news broke that the leaders of Facebook, Google, Apple and DST Global have joined together to do something unprecedented in the world of medicine – and in recognition.

Sergey Brin, founder of Google, and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, founder of 23andMe, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and Yuri Milner, founder of Mail.ru and DST Global, gave $33 million dollars to recognize 11 scientists with a $3 million prize each for their breakthrough discoveries and contributions to science.

This goal of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is “recognizing excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life.” A lofty, but worthy, goal indeed.

The recognition of the prize itself for these 11 scientists is undeniably worthwhile

The chairman of the board of the foundation behind the Breakthrough Prize is Art Levinson, who is also chairman of the board of Apple and Genentech. His comments on the Prize: “I believe this new prize will shine a light on the extraordinary achievements of the outstanding minds in the field of life sciences, enhance medical innovation, and ultimately become a platform for recognizing future discoveries.”

That’s the knock-on effect of recognition done right.

When people see excellence recognized, they are encouraged and inspired to continue their efforts along the same vein. I imagine the path to discovery for all of these Breakthrough Scientists was fraught with failure and slow progress. But all of them stuck with it and achieved great discoveries that will benefit all mankind. Any scientist pursuing similar research to cure the incurable likely experience the same frustrations and need the encouragement and inspiration to keep going.

That’s why the same group of founding sponsors has committed an additional $15 million in prize money going forward, recognizing five Breakthrough Scientists each year with $3 million. Indeed, the press release about the prize explains:

“One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Breakthrough Prize will be a transparent selection process, in which anyone will be able to nominate a candidate online for consideration. Also, the prize can be shared between any number of deserving scientists and can be received more than once.”

Lessons for Employee Recognition in the Workplace

Sure, giving deserving employees in our organization millions of dollars from your own pocket is not possible. But there are several lessons to be learned from the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for the workplace, especially if your organization is willing to commit relevant budget (at least 1% of payroll) to strategic, social recognition.

1) People are watching. To get the most from the knock-on effect of recognition, understand that people are constantly watching and noticing what gets recognized and rewarded in an organization. They will emulate those behaviors and achievements, so be sure you are recognizing and rewarding what you want to see more often.

2) Great achievements can come from anywhere, but no single person or small selection committee can see it all. It’s critical to empower all employees to notice and appreciate the excellence happening around them every day. Those in the trenches are the ones most likely to know who deserves recognition. Let them “catch someone doing something good.”

3) Team recognition for team efforts is critical. Programs like “employee of the month” and employee of the year” – when they are the only or primary forms of recognition – are more of a detriment and hindrance to recognition than a help. If people work together to achieve greatness, then recognize all of the people involved.

4) Excellent people repeat excellence and deserve repeated recognition. Never fall into the trap of “Tom got recognized last month, so we can’t recognize him this month for exceeding customer expectations and salvaging a critical client for the company.” If someone does something deserving of recognition, recognize them! Strategic recognition is frequent, timely and very specific.

Do you see the knock-on effect of recognition in your organization?

How to Achieve Success: Rewire Your Brain for Positivity & Happiness

Recognize This! – We can train our brains for positivity, not negativity. And when we do, our brains function 30% more effectively, changing the formula for success.

I enjoy Ted Talks. This most recent one is no exception. Given by Shawn Achor (with high energy and great good humour), “The Happiness Advantage: Research Linking Happiness and Science” unpacks how our brain works (much better on positivity than negativity) and how we change the formula for success to make our brains work better.

Here’s the video (email readers, click through), with my favorite excerpts below (all excerpts are quotations):

Moving Beyond the Cult of the Average

If I ask the question, “How fast can a child learn to read in a classroom?”, science changes the question to how fast can the average child learn to read in the classroom, so we tailor the class to the average. If you fall [outside the average], our goal is to make you normal again. But normal is merely average. What I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, then we remain merely average.

Instead of deleting the positive outliers, I ask why. Why are some of you so far above the curve in whatever category? I don’t want to delete you, I want to study you, so we can move the entire average up.

Perception Is Reality, So Change Your Perception

It’s not reality that shapes us, it’s the lens through which the brain views the world that shapes your reality. If we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single business and educational outcome at the same time…

We assume that the external world is predictive of our happiness levels. In reality, if I know everything of your external world, I can only predict 10% of your happiness. 90% of your long term happiness is predicted not by your external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, we can change the way we can then affect reality.

Reverse the Formula for Success and Get “The Happiness Advantage”

Most companies and schools follow a formula for success: If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. If I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. This under-girds our parenting styles, our management styles the way we motivate our behavior. The problem is it’s scientifically broken and backwards. Every time your brain has a success, you just change the goal post for success…

The real problem is our brain works in the opposite order. If you can raise someone’s positivity in the present, then your brain experiences what we call “the happiness advantage,” which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises… Every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% more effective than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed…

This means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work more successfully.

Train Your Brain for Positivity

There are ways you can train your brain to become more positive. In two minutes, done 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to work more optimistically and successfully. We found in companies that where we asked people [do these things], at the end of that, their brain retains a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but the positive first.

By doing these activities, by training your brain, just like we train our bodies, we found we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.

Question: Are you more focused on the positive or does your brain typically function from a place of “negative, neutral or stressed?”

4 Questions HR Must Ask Itself in 2013

Recognize This! – Traditional approaches to HR roles and deliverables will not meet the needs of the 2013 workplace.

Intuit’s Fast Tack blog did a great job summarizing trends and predictions for 2013 based on PwC Saratoga’s 2012/2013 US Human Capital Effectiveness Report and The Herman Group’s predictions. Specifically, what jumped out at me was the storyline around productivity and turnover.

What’s coming in 2013? Trends show undeniably:

Declining productivity
Increasing voluntary turnover (first time in 6 years)
Increasing high-performer turnover (2 years in a row)

What’s being predicted for 2013?

More hiring, but trained/experienced workers are hard to find
More spending on training and workforce development
High turnover

What’s the storyline? ‘

Employees are fed up with covering the work of three positions. They simply can’t keep up any more and are pushing back, either by leaving entirely or “quitting but forgetting to tell you” (declining productivity).

Employers know they need to hire to backfill positions lost during the recession (as well as replace those leaving), but they can’t find people who are qualified to do the work. Sure, it’s easier for the likes of GE to train employees for the new workplace reality, but it’s not as realistic for small and medium-sized businesses.

The real questions leaders should be asking in2013 are:

Utilization: Are we properly utilizing the people we have today? Have we returned people to appropriate job roles/functions with appropriate expectations as we pull out of the recession (and sit on massive cash reserves)?
Training: Are we offering training programs (pre- and post-hire) to create the skilled workforce we need? Have we developed a detailed understanding of what our critical-to-hire roles require and incorporating these needs into training?
Recruiting: Are we recruiting appropriately for the workforce actually available versus the ideal employee that is difficult if not impossible to find? Are we willing to hire for cultural fit, aptitude and potential, and then train for needed skills? How can we shift thinking to align with this goal?
Recognition: Are we encouraging employees to maintain needed productivity even as we work to stabilize workloads? Are we recognizing and rewarding employees for both what they are accomplish as how they are doing it? Critically, are we creating loyalty among our workforce by helping employees see the meaning and value of their work within the bigger picture.

What trends do you see in HR? What are your predictions among your workforce in 2013? What are you planning in your own career?

Culture Drives Employee Engagement, Not the Other Way Around

Recognize This! – Executives are still missing the mark on understanding what employees need if they’re going to choose to engage fully in their work and achieving the organization’s objectives.

I greatly enjoyed the summary of Deloitte’s Core Beliefs and Culture survey in ChiefExecutive.net. The importance of company culture and it’s foundation – the core values and beliefs – are indisputably important to employees and their ability to engage in the organization and their work. Yet executives are still missing the mark on several points.

Thankfully, executives (94%) and employees (88%) alike agree company culture is important to business success. But there are big misses on several fronts, too.

Employees Say Strategy Is Nothing without Culture

I’ve written several posts on this point. Without culture, strategy cannot be fully effective. Employees agree, yet executives are still missing the point a bit.

“However, there’s more work to be done to close the gaps on other business priorities. The study indicates executives tend to prioritize a clearly defined business strategy (76%) above clearly defined and communicated core values and beliefs (62%), whereas employees value them equally (57% and 55%, respectively). Also, 70% of employees who agreed that their companies had performed well financially said their boss speaks to them often about culture. But only 19% of executives and 15% of employees believe strongly that their organization’s culture is widely upheld.”

Unless all employees – at every level – are committed to living the culture by demonstrating the core values in their daily work (and are reinforced, praised and recognized for doing so), then that last point above will remain lackluster.

What Employees Need to Be Engaged Is Different than Executive Expectations

In nearly every survey that even comes close to this topic, executives, leaders and managers always rank money in some form as most important to employee engagement, yet employees always rank better management (communication, recognition, opportunities to grow and learn, etc.) as what they really need if you want them to engage.

“The Core Beliefs and Culture survey found a consensus (83% of executives and 84% of employees) that having engaged and motivated employees is a top factor substantially contributing to company success. However, executives ranked tangible elements such as financial performance (65%) and competitive compensation (62%) most highly as drivers of employee engagement, while employees rated more highly the intangible elements of regular and candid communications (50%) and access to management/leadership (49%).”

Someday, the cumulative weight of all these surveys will have to sink in for executives. It’s part of my mission to speed that process along.

Executives Don’t Do as Well as They Think at Living the Core Values

Your employees are watching, closely. Are you really living the core values? They are following your lead, so be sure you as a manager as setting the right example.

“Deloitte’s survey indicated a significant gap between executive belief and employee perception, often punctuated by executive overstatement. For instance, 84% of executives believe senior leadership regularly communicates their company’s core values and beliefs. Only 67% of employees feel that is true. In terms of “practicing what one preaches,” 81% of executives compared to 69% of employees believe senior leadership acts in accordance with the company’s core values and beliefs.”

Please chime in in comments, but tell me if you’re in management or are an individual contributor – what do you value most? What do you most need to be engaged in your organization?

Why You Can’t Rely on Compensation (nor Raises) for Employee Engagement

Recognize This! – Compensation and praise/recognition are very different and fulfill very different employee needs.

Let’s be honest with each other and – more importantly – with our employees. Raises during the last several years have not even covered cost of living increases. There certainly isn’t enough differentiation in pay increases to support “pay for performance,” either. As you can see in the research excerpt below, an 0.8% more increase in salary for top performers over “average” certainly doesn’t constitute pay for performance as traditionally put forth.

“Pay awards have risen slightly in January 2013, compared with the end of 2012, but could simply be due to a ‘beginning-of-year bounce.’

“This is according to the latest research from pay analysts XpertHR, which looked at details of pay awards made so far in 2013. It found a median pay award of 2.5%, with half of awards ranging between 1.5% and 2.8%.

“Pay awards in the three months to the end of December 2012 were recorded at a median 2%, unchanged on the three months to the end of November.

“However, XpertHR pointed out that during 2011 and 2012 pay awards also rose in January before dropping back again, and 2013 may witness a similar pattern.”

This lack of differentiation on the compensation front is precisely why it’s critical to always remember that pay and praise are two entirely different things. After a certain point, you do not motivate through salary. Remember: Cash compensates. It does not motivate. Praise and recognition need its own “currency” to be effective.

In an article on Envisia Learning yesterday, Wally Bock explained this better than I:

“Money is a hygiene factor. There must be “enough” salary and benefits or people don’t feel like they’re being treated fairly. Increasing the money may get a temporary bump in effort, but it doesn’t last long.

“Praise, on the other hand, is a motivational factor. Increase meaningful praise and you’re likely to get more effort.

“[Monetary] compensation and praise are also delivered differently. Salary and benefits are set on high, far above the level of most workers. For them, compensation is the environment. It is what it is.

“Praise is delivered by the boss. If you want to increase effective praise in an organization, the best way to do it is choose people more likely to succeed as bosses and teach them how to deliver meaningful praise.”

The only recommendation I’d add to Wally’s is praise doesn’t have to be delivered only by the boss. Indeed, it mustn’t be. Praising others for the good work happening around them every day is the responsibility of all employees. That doesn’t mean bosses are off the hook. No, praise from bosses is important. But no single manger, regardless of how good he or she is, can see everything. All employees need to be involved in “catching someone doing something good” and praising them for it.

Is a salary increase the only acknowledgment you receive annually on the value of your contributions at your job? How does that make you feel?

The Need for Recognition at Work Is NOT Generational

Recognize This! – Everyone needs feedback and encouragement on the work they do, regardless of generation.

It seems I’ve written a few posts recently on “Questions I’m frequently asked.” Here’s one more: “Derek, what are the differences in how the various generations should be recognized?” Or sometimes it’s phrased a bit more bluntly: “Derek, don’t you see Gen Y demanding more recognition and that having a negative impact on recognition overall?”

My usual answer is this really isn’t a generational issue, but a stage of life challenge. Those of you not in Gen Y, think back to your first “real” job. Didn’t you often seek out validation that what you were doing was the right thing to do or way to do it? Don’t we want our newest employees asking these questions? Shouldn’t we as managers and mentors be looking for opportunities to give Gen Y employees frequent feedback to help ensure they are working up to potential?

This topic became top-of-mind for me again today when I read the latest “Corner Office” column in The New York Times, featuring Ben Lerer, co-founder and CEO of the Thrillist Media Group. In the interview, Ben responded to a question asking if he thought about the culture he wanted to create in company by saying:

“Not in any way aside from being affected by the way I felt very mistreated by a manager I had in a previous job. Part of the problem was that I was young and immature and I sort of walked in on Day 1 out of college and had this attitude of, ‘Give me the keys.’ But I ultimately didn’t like going to work because of the way I was treated, my work suffered, and I didn’t have confidence in what I was doing. And ultimately that led me to decide to leave.

“I remember being regularly publicly humiliated. I’d send out an Excel spreadsheet that didn’t have first and last names broken out into separate fields, and he sent a ‘reply all’ to the entire company telling me how stupid I am and how bad I am at Excel. There were so many situations where I remember being just made to feel inferior and stupid, no matter how hard I worked. I was a kid out of college and I was not qualified to do some of the work I was being asked to do, but I did my best. And when my best wasn’t good enough, I was told I was very stupid, essentially.”

Here’s a highly motivated employee whose desire to go above and beyond is destroyed through public shaming. How much more could this bright, entrepreneurial employee have given to this company if, instead, he’d been given public praise and private coaching and mentoring?

My advice is to stop thinking about recognition in terms of generations in the workplace and start thinking about it strategically as a powerful form of feedback that can motivate and inspire when done right.

Do you think the need for recognition is generational?

3 Recognition Lessons Observed in India

Recognize This! – The power of strategic recognition knows no boundaries.

I recently had the opportunity to travel a bit in India. How excited I was to pick up a Times of India newspaper on my first full day in the country to encounter the article pictured at right.

In “India Inc rewards staff to tide over slowdown,” there are quite a few points made that prove my oft-cited truism that recognition has real power globally – across all cultures and nationalities.

1) Recognition Is Particularly Powerful in Difficult Economic Times

Recognition is about far more than a pat on the back. Strategic, social recognition conveys to employees how valuable they, their contributions, and their behaviours are to the success of the organization. Making this message clear is never more important than in a stressed economy. As the article points out:

“The general sentiment at an organization during a downturn can be draining with discussions surrounding cost control and return on investments. Companies are, therefore, now walking the extra mile by strengthening existing rewards and recognition programmes and setting up new ones to drive performance.

“Companies have realized that recognition can reinforce desired behaviour in employees, helping them achieve targets. In a Gallup poll, 82% of employees said that the recognition or praise they receive at work motivates them to improve their performance. So companies are tweaking such programmes to make them more attractive.”

2) Recognition Done Right Rewards Behaviors, Not Just Outcomes

I’m pleased to see our best practice of strongly linking recognition to company values and the behaviors behind those values taking center stage at Indian companies:

“Employee engagement at Ambuja Cements is aimed at working towards improved outcomes on safer work places, improved productivity, better customer satisfaction and enhanced profitability. The company wants to build this into the culture of the organization.”

3) Attitudes Are Shifting from Jobs Being All about the Money to an Enriching Work Environment

In India as elsewhere in rapidly rising economic powerhouse countries, a maturing employee base is realizing more and more the benefits of growing a career in one organization with a strong employee brand vs. constantly job hopping in search of more pay. A key element of building that strong employee brand is strategic recognition. (Other research also shows that employees who view their company favorably do a much better job of delivering on that company’s brand promise for the customer.)

“While India has suffered less than many other economies during the global downturn, there has been a marked change in the outlook of employees and employers. The opportunistic, job-hopping Indian employees of recent times are realizing they cannot sustain that trajectory, with its lack of opportunities for learning and development. Employers are also finding themselves under examination from candidates who are looking for long-term career prospects. Recruitment discussions are moving away from the boom-time focus on ‘how much money?’ and ‘when will I get an increase?’ to ‘what is the business plan?’ and ‘how will this enrich my career?’”

And one final parting thought from this Indian article:

“Engaging the entire team in the potential success of the organization in tough times helps in extending the success during the recovery, and beyond that.”

How true. What is your organization doing to engage employees today? Do you see those efforts building a stronger company once this recession is well and truly behind us?

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