Recognition Rebooted: A Smarter Approach to Employee Recognition

By Sam Jenniges

Employee Recognition as we know it gets rebooted! For Managers and HR professionals.

What if most employee recognition best practices are wrong? What if it’s not the gift card, anniversary award, or the mug that’s making the difference?  Many organizations assume they are doing fine with their approach to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra K Jenniges
• Release date: May 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733618328

Sam Jenniges

Sam Jenniges, M.S., grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota as the fourth of eight children in her family. Farm life helped her learn quickly that a little appreciation for work well done can increase performance no matter how unappealing the job is! She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA degree in Scientific and Technical Communications and from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia with an MS degree in Organizational Development and Leadership. Sam's early career began on a team of organizational develop­ment practitioners who helped their IT consulting firm differentiate from industry peers through a strong values-based culture. This enabled recruitment of exceptional performers as well as employee and client retention. Career highlights include developing organizational development and leadership certifications, creating a simulation board game (patent pending) used in a major university's IT curriculum, developing world-class onboarding and masters programs, and dozens of customized leadership and training programs. Sam resides in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, with her husband and three children. She enjoys traveling with her family, cooking, paddle-boarding, cross-country skiing, and yes, the Minnesota winters. http://samjenniges.com/

Book preview

Recognition

Rebooted

Recognition

Rebooted

Sam Jenniges, M.S.

Copyright © 2019 Sam Jenniges, M.S.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form by any means, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except for brief quotations in a review or on social media.

Cover design by Michelle Fairbanks, Fresh Design

Book composition by Lori Hughes, Lori Hughes Publishing Services

Graphics by Alicia Bauer, Ally B Designs, and Michelle Fairbanks, Fresh Design

Editing by Liz Thompson, House Style Editing, and Lori Hughes, Lori Hughes Publishing Services

Proofreading by Julie Grady, Grady Editorial Services

ISBN-13: 978-1-73361-831-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-73361-832-8 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902195

Second Edition: May 2019

First Edition: March 2018

To my parents, Alphonse and Elaine,

thank you for being the first to show recognition for valuable work.

Your balance of doing the right thing and breaking a few rules has been priceless.

To my home team, Dan, Olivia, Benjamin, and Simon,

my favorite travel companions and mentors,

I am so grateful for your love, laughter, and

ever-present ridiculous nonsense.

Contents

Why This Book?

Introduction

Why Recognition Matters

Moving Up and Over

Team Donna

Afford the Exceptional: Bensi Corp

Magic Mark

There Goes a High Performer

Why Don’t We Recognize Our Team Members More Often?

Donna’s Employee Recognition Data

What Recognition Is and What It Isn’t

Recognition Defined

Recognition for Performance

Caution! Public Recognition Ahead

Fundamental 1: Rewards Are Not the Same as Recognition

First Recognize, Then Reward (Sometimes)

How to Deliver Authentic Recognition

Recognition Delivery Essentials (TIPSS)

Fundamental 2: How You Deliver Is More Important Than What You Deliver

Fundamental 3: Doing Nothing Is Sometimes Better Than Doing Something

Donna and Mark’s Mutual Admiration

Recognition Delivery Approaches

Reward Talk

Fundamental 4: Recognition Is an Invaluable Tool Available to Every Manager

Objections

The Notebook Lunch and Learn: Recognition Rebooted

The Scoop at Bensi Corp

Seven Measly Minutes

Epilogue

Appendix A – Quick Employee Recognition Tools

Appendix B – Four Main Responses to Recognition

Appendix C – The Notebook Condensed

Appendix D – Recognition Objections: Overruled!

Appreciation

Notes

About Work with Clients

The Recognition Rebooted Training Program

About the Author

Why This Book?

If you are fortunate, your manager recognizes the value you deliver and tells you about it. Most of us, however, are not so lucky and might occasionally find that our managers left a gift card or a company-branded item on our desks, but we don’t specifically know why. When appreciation for your work is communicated well and directly to you, the associated feeling rushes straight to your heart and mind, along with a healthy dose of dopamine. Employee recognition does the business good, too.

Studies of authentic employee recognition have shown that:

• teams who receive praise increased their productivity by 31%, ¹ and

• managers nationwide ² who center on their employees’ strengths can essentially eliminate active disengagement and double the average of those who are engaged (reaching full potential).

Yet 65% of North American employees report that their work wasn’t recognized a single time during the previous year.³ What’s more, according to another study, employees who feel their work is unrecognized are twice as likely to quit their jobs within the year.⁴

Billions of dollars are spent on employee recognition, with most of those dollars having no impact on the organization’s performance. There is a major disconnect between organizations and managers believing they recognize employees and their employees actually feeling appreciated.

And no wonder: Managers across the globe lack training in recognition delivery and have even been unfairly expected to be naturals at recognition. In fact, only 14% of companies provide the necessary tools and training for recognition delivery.⁵ Since people leave organizations largely because of their relationships with their managers, one of the skills a manager needs is the ability to sincerely recognize and appreciate work well done.

We do a lot with employee recognition, but as with a lot of companies, it isn’t always seen that way by employees.

—Executive of an international health services organization

I wrote this book because the more I researched and spoke with leaders (and colleagues and friends and strangers in the coffee shop), the more compelled I became to determine why something that can be so simple and that can have such a big payoff for both employees and employers is, at best, scarcely and ineffectively (and, at worst, dysfunctionally) delivered across most organizations.

Recognition Rebooted invites you to rethink the outdated notions of employee recognition and rewards for a smarter, more deliberate, and effective approach. For every leader who influences the work of others, this book will address the costly and preventable lack of effective recognition delivery, and includes tools you can use starting today.

Using two main characters in a fictitious business allows us to imagine how recognition works in most businesses (i.e., well-intentioned but ineffective) and how a few purposeful and thoughtful changes can improve both morale and productivity.

Let’s cut the noise and misconception out of this terrifically important management responsibility and opportunity. You’ll find it makes a real difference to your team’s attitude and performance, which ultimately affect your bottom line.

Introduction

When many of us think about employee recognition, our first thought is about what reward we might purchase for a particular employee. This isn’t surprising: Recognition is estimated to be a $46 billion market, with 87% spent on tenure rewards, ⁶ though such rewards have little impact on an organization’s performance. This means that:

1.our reward-driven recognition programs are largely powered by the people deciding the budget rather than by a supervisor with direct knowledge of the employee’s performance, and

2.our decision to recognize our employees often starts with whether or not we have a budget to do so.

Rather than focusing on an effective approach to recognizing work well done and feeding our employees’ intrinsic motivation, we seem to blindly rely on external rewards to motivate our teams. It’s not working. In spite of the many and varied recognition (reward) systems in place across organizations, research has found that:

• only 32% of the U.S. population is fully engaged at work ⁷ and only 13% worldwide, ⁸ and

• 70–84% of employees are job hunting at any given time. ⁹

Highlighting the ineffectiveness of existing recognition (reward) programs, 75% of organizations have a recognition program, but 58% of their employees aren’t aware it exists.¹⁰

Why then, since recognition impacts employee performance and retention, do we often miss key opportunities to foster loyalty and to grow our number of high-performing team members? Something is wrong. Employee recognition is either not occurring effectively or, more typically, not taking place at all.

As a manager, you will impact 70% of your employee’s engagement experience.¹¹ You have more influence on your team’s performance than anyone else in the organization. That’s good news! Yet, for most of us, recognition doesn’t come naturally. Our intentions are good, but successful, effective recognition delivery is difficult without recognition tools and training. Leadership and management are woven together. Of course, managers must plan, organize, find efficiencies, and so on. They show leadership by inspiring, influencing, and developing others, which helps increase retention and performance. In short, you are practicing true leadership when you are providing recognition as part of everyday interactions with your team.

Your employees want to be recognized for work well done. Because providing such recognition is at the heart of being a great leader, your business will benefit, and you and your team will notice measurable results.

Why Recognition Matters

Moving Up and Over

So it’s true, then?

Mark glanced up as he placed a stack of file folders into his moving box and replied, Hey David, so what’s true?

That no matter how far up we move in the organization we never escape the stacks of paper.

I’m not gonna lie—sometimes we just need to see the paper version.

Looking at the piles of folders, binders, and books in Mark’s office, David said, Apparently heaps of it.

Don’t be a judger; though I will say that every time I pack up my office, I do a little purging. So, unless I can restrain myself, I fully expect to replace all of it and more, in my new job.

That sounded about right for David, too. He walked over to the bookshelf to lend a hand with the packing and offhandedly remarked, I still think it was very big of Donna to help you move up and over to a different division.

Yeah, what can I say? It was something about the benefit to the organization, my career growth, my skills. . . . Shall I go on?

Rolling his eyes, David said, "You know, it gets lonely being the sole witness to this charming side of you. But before you can interrupt me, back to my point that Donna is one excellent boss! She’s got the organization’s back and your back, and she knows that helping you advance helps elevate her career. Us. You. Me. It’s the working person’s trinity, really."

A winning combination for sure. It did take her some time to find her people-management stride, but you know Donna, a quitter she is not! I’ve learned from her leadership growth, and I’ve benefited from her unending support. And with her clout, it is paying off for the trinity, as you call it.

I’m just not so sure I’d be as mature as she is about letting my team member move on, even if it is across the hall, laughed David.

Sure you would.

Yes, of course, I would.

"I honestly feel ready for this role, the level of leadership, and the challenges that I know will come with it.