2017-08-28 Engagement Surveys

July 13, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

Recognize Greatness!

Welcome back to another edition of Your Greatness Magnified. Work. Family. Life.

This week we are talking about a challenge that many of my clients are bringing to me lately, and that is their engagement survey results are not what they had hoped. So, what can you do about it?

Often times some of the things that we are measuring, such as trust in the organization, and satisfaction with senior leadership, are complex issues and it’s pretty challenging to put a plan in place. The other thing that I see is folks jump into a solution, or they form a big committee before they really understand the challenges. Finally, folks are trying to do so much; they’ve got so many initiatives; their heart’s in the right place, but it’s not sustainable.

Whether you’re just looking at the engagement survey results of your team, or the whole organization, it’s likely going to feel overwhelming. Where are your strengths? What is ONE strength you want to keep driving up and leveraging? Of all the engagement drivers that are low, what is the MOST important to boost? Which one will help pull others up? Which one, when you leverage the top strength, will help you pull up this lower rated variable?

A Case for Elevating Recognition as a Key Driver of Engagement

As you no doubt know, I’m a recognition expert. Why? It’s the single easiest, most cost effective and efficient engagement driver that impacts almost every other driver.

Most engagement survey results have low satisfaction with recognition (tune into a series of future VLOGs to explain why that is). When organizations or teams focus on boosting recognition, amazing things happen. It also pulls up harder to impact drivers including trust, satisfaction with leadership, intention to stay, and continuous improvement (learn more about this data here).

So how do you get started? If your recognition scores are low in your engagement survey, and you are feeling the personal or external pressure to meaningfully turn that around, what is your most important next step?

Study.

You may not have wanted to hear that.

However, creating a plan without all the information will no doubt lead to rework, continued low scores and frustration.

A recognition audit (some prefer the term, ‘needs assessment’) can chart a course for long-term success. Every minute and resource you put into it will produce sustainable dividends. Here are the five crucial steps in conducting a good audit.

Step 1: Study the Relevant Related Data

The very first step is to understand the related data that points to where and why the problem exists. What are your clients saying? What are other indicators from employees, such as safety, injuries, and sick time? Are you seeing, in fact, other evidence that there are challenges within teams, or within your whole organization, where some of your results are low? You already have data in your organization that could have told you, without an engagement survey, that you had a problem with people feeling valued. They communicate it in a host of ways. Not only does this step provide clarity and focus, it also enables you to have baseline measurement data to assess the success of whatever strategies or interventions you deploy.

Please don’t take any further resources (time, money, people) before you have clarity and baseline measures!

Step 2: Observe

The next step is to go out and observe. In continuous improvement circles, they say an essential step in any project is to “go and see”. We cannot make meaningful improvements to engagement sitting in our office or a meeting room.

What do you see looking at the staff room, on the posters on the wall, in the front entrance that clients and suppliers see? Are there indicators that people are recognizing and are able to demonstrate their value? How are people contributing to and improving performance, metrics, and culture? How does the environment communicate: you matter, your ideas matter, you are needed? Can’t find any? Hum…

Step 3: Talk to People

In addition to the observation, we need to speak with people. I did an engagement survey/audit for a hospital recently. I observed nurses wearing different pins. So I asked them, “what do your pins mean?” Some knew where they came from and why they got them, others didn’t. To them it didn’t matter. They were incredibly proud of simply having them (some had lanyards so loaded down I worried about neck strain!)

You may ask:

How do you demonstrate you value a colleague’s contributions? How do they demonstrate it toward you?
When was the last time you had a suggestion, or an opinion, and how did that go? Did you feel your opinion was valued? Why and why not?
What frustrates you around here? What motivates you?
If you had to describe the culture to a new employee, what words would you use?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. And of course, the questions need to fit your culture.

Those conversations, and really understanding what’s behind the answers you receive, allows you to understand just how engaged people are on a day-to-day basis. Once you have that information, it gives you a much broader perspective on what it is you need to focus on, and where.

Step 4: Explore What’s Different Between Groups

What is different between the most satisfied groups and the least? What is different (based on your observations and conversations) in environment, traditions, opinions, experiences, assumptions, daily rituals, etc.? What is working, even a little, that groups could do more of? What roadblocks could be removed, support could be offered (e.g., brief team coaching on how to give feedback), strategies could be shared to drive engagement up? Why is it not worse?

I get this takes time. But it’s worth it.

And sometimes external support can help. I work with small not-for-profits to large multi-nationals in their needs assessments to come up with a solid plan recognition strategy based on their culture – what’s working and improving on what’s not – to boost engagement expeditiously and sustainably.

To help you determine what your next step is – whether that’s on your own or you’re exploring the possibility of working with someone external – why not jump into my calendar? I want to help you. My end goal is that every workplace will be a great place to work where folks know they’re valued. However that happens, I want to help.

Tune into some great upcoming VLOGs that continue to dive into the current state of engagement in North America. You can subscribe to My YouTube Channel or follow my weekly VLOGs. I also have plenty of free resources for you to help boost engagement that’s free to you anytime here.

Be well, and be great.

2017-07-24 – Remember Your First Job?

July 13, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

‘How do you find the love of your job the way you loved your very first job?’

This topic has been inspired by a number of coaching clients I’m working with one-on-one and in my virtual program. They just aren’t feeling that excitement and love, that ‘Joie de vivre,’ that, “jump out of bed in the morning,” feeling. There’s no “easy button” to help clients reconnect with that spark, but it does happen and we try to ensure it doesn’t go out in the future.

In my home life, my 14-year-old son is ready to get his first job. He’s still excited at the prospect of having money in his pocket, getting free food and having a legitimate excuse to stay up late. I want him to love his job, and keep that lovin’ feeling.

When was the last time you thought in your job, ‘I really hope I get a big assignment and get to work overtime, so I can stay late?’ The same thing that excited us as kids, probably doesn’t excite us now as adults, and yet, there’s still lots of lessons from when we were kids that we can apply, that help us to ground ourselves and orient us to what was great.

I want you to picture your very first job. Picture the feeling you had. That’s what we’re trying to get back to. Here’s what I learned in my first job that, when I remember and live by these lessons, I’m my most fulfilled.

Lesson #1: Relationships Matter

I figured out quickly that connection matters, and I really cared about building trusting relationships. My first job was babysitting, and you can’t fool the parents or the kids. Unless everybody loves you, you are not coming back.

Relationships matter. Put in the work with the customer and colleagues, and you get more work.

Lesson #2: It’s All About Referrals

People often make job decisions based on referrals. Whether you are in sales, own your own business, or even looking for your next job, people are more likely to trust a referral from somebody they trust than what’s in a bio, RFP, on LinkedIn or your resume. I’ve seen folks nail an interview or RPF presentation and then one reference paints a less than glowing picture. Suddenly, that candidate’s no longer in the running.

Lesson #3: You Can’t Fake It

Kids are amazing ‘BS’ barometers. Somehow as adults, we seem to lose our detector and stop trusting our instincts. One of the most important things about your first job is to show up ‘authentic’; if you think that’s too ‘soft’ or ‘fluffy’ a term, try to think about a time you just knew someone didn’t have the goods. If you didn’t listen to the warning signs, you probably lived to regret your decision. And please be sure to invest the time helping others to see your greatness.

Lesson #4: Say Something Out of Your Depth

The other thing I learned about my first job was, when you are out of your depth, it’s better to say something…and sooner rather than later. As adults, we often feel we need to keep it to ourselves. That’s one of the reasons we’re not excited about our jobs anymore. We need to work harder, take on more, redouble our efforts — ‘Okay, yes, I’ll take that project. I’ll do it off the corner of my desk.’ ‘I’ll take that promotion and figure out how to do it.’ All the while not asking for help or even mentorship. We spend so much of our time doubting ourselves and playing catch-up.

In actual fact, as a kid trying to get that job, for example, babysitting for a family of 8 kids, we would say, “I can’t do it alone. I’m going to need to bring a friend with me.” We have to be able to know where our limitations are. Advocating to spend time with a mentor, hiring a coach, getting more direction, or scaling back temporarily are all ways we can ask for help when we’re stretching; if someone doesn’t feel you deserve support, is that the right place for you?

Lesson #5: Don’t get Taken Advantage Of

Finally, know when you are being taken advantage of. As a new babysitter, I had a few clients who would come home late, time and time again. Eventually my parents intervened, saying, “It’s a school night. You are not going to be there until midnight!” That gave me the cue that I could assert myself rather than continue to put up with broken promises and unreliable people.

As adults, no wonder we are no longer excited about our jobs anymore when so many of us are consistently feeling like people are taking advantage of us. What is the worst that would happen if we set some ground rules, renegotiated our contract, or drew a healthy line in the sand? Maybe it’s not a risk you’re willing to take, or, maybe it is…

What can you do about it right now so that you love your job again? Which of these five lessons applies to your current work situation?

And I’m curious, what were your lessons from your first job? What’s important to remember, right now, here, wherever you are in your career or your business? Please comment and reply!

Please share this VLOG post if you think somebody else will find this valuable.

Be well and be great!

2017-05-01 Get Off Dissatisfaction Autopilot

April 13, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

A good friend called me the other day. She’s feeling down, down, down about her job. Never has she felt so unappreciated. Morale is at an all-time low. Undervalued, forgotten about, not consulted – that’s how she experiences her day-to-day reality.

It was strange to get this call from her; never would I categorize her as a “complainer”. Something has shifted.

Can you relate? I know I can.

There’s been times in my career when I really haven’t felt valued and it’s incredibly deflating. You may feel that you don’t want to give much more than you have to because you know they are going to take it; you don’t feel you are getting much in return.

One of the things I shared with her is the need to feel appreciated and valued is a basic emotional need that we have. One of the fathers of modern day psychology, Carl Rogers, provided this over the course of his long career.

As a recognition expert, I see the impact of organizations and teams where people are valued and their uniqueness is appreciated. Their contributions and successes are celebrated and shared. They have an important role. I also see the negative impact on relationships, productivity, intention to stay and focus when people don’t feel valued.

There is a spectrum of reactions depending on how valued individuals feel. As a result, there are many reactions. Here’s a free resource for you to better understand and have conversations in your workplace about how valued people feel and natural reactions: Feel Valued? 4 Possible Reactions.

4 Reactions to Feeling (or Not Feeling) Valued

Antagonist

The antagonist can create a bit of a ground swell. If you don’t feel valued, maybe you are going to check in to see if others don’t feel valued. If you don’t feel valued, then maybe we are not going to offer any more discretionary value. It’s a more passive-aggressive way managing the overwhelming frustration of coming into work every day when you don’t feel appreciated. We have to deal with our human emotion and lack of feeling appreciated somehow. For some, “stirring the pot” is what brings attention to the important issues with value of people and their contributions.

Anarchist

The anarchist has a reaction in moments not feeling valued. It’s like something sparks a visceral reaction. It’s a more aggressive way of describing that inner sense of your need to feel appreciated. When you’re not being valued, you can make my presence known in another way. And it will be very hard to ignore!

Apathist

The apathist is the person who does the absolute minimum. It’s not that you are lazy or bored, it’s that you feel so uninspired, unappreciated, underutilized you choose to give your attention and energy elsewhere. It’s a passive approach – you come in, do what you need to get done, you leave. You don’t feel you matter anyway, so a little less effort won’t be noticed. It might be a test if anyone will notice – you feel invisible as well as unappreciated.

Activist

The largest majority of folks I find in the workplace are activists. You try to advocate, get people involved. When you notice some of the signs (any of the above four reactions), you try to acknowledge others and rally them. You’re not necessarily a cheerleader, you truly believe everyone has value, so you find ways to demonstrate that in your words and actions. People are loyal and trust you as a result. There are lots of ways people can play the activist role, but the common factor is the activist sees their job as trying to help people feel valued in their own small way.

I share these four ways as I am sure you have played all four of these parts at some point in your career. I know I have! Which one are you now? Are there some members of your team that are important contributors and yet demonstrating behaviours that aren’t so helpful? Are you ready to be an activist for them now if you currently are not?

For more on “Greatness Magnified at Work”, subscribe to my YouTube Channel and come back anytime for free resources to leverage the exponential power of recognition to retain top talent, fuel healthy teams, and sustain healthy bottom-line results!

Professional Satisfaction Part 3

January 12, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

Click on the image for the YouTube Video !

Welcome back!

This is our third part in this VLOG series, looking at how we can ensure we’re satisfied at work. We’ve been focusing on recognition; having already explored self-recognition and team recognition, so where do we go next?

Organizational Recognition.

If you’re a staff member or a middle manager, you may be wondering: is this my job? Isn’t this HR’s job? Or the CEO’s? Is this something that I can truly impact? Maybe you have your doubts you have influence, but you have plenty of influence.

For those of you who are in senior leadership roles, or owners of the company, I hope you’re paying close attention. Not only is this going to ensure that you’re better able to retain your best talent, but this simple fact is, it’s going to save or make you money.

But of course, it’s not just about money…

It’s about people – although the two are connected. There are three major things that make the difference between engaged employees and deflated ones.

Before we jump in, feel free to listen to this great resource, a breathing exercise. Body Scan Stress Break

Why the am I giving you a breathing exercise when we’re talking about organizational recognition? It’s something you can offer your employees at no cost that is about their well-being…and that’s a clue to my first non-monetary motivator. Enough with the suspense – let’s dive in!

Wellness Programs

You’ve probably got a lot of really talented staff who have trained in yoga – or maybe even laughter yoga; perhaps you have fitness instructors or dance instructors working for your organization. If you’re a bricks-and-mortar organization, maybe you’ve got a room in your organization that really isn’t serving much of a purpose. See where I’m going, here? You can draw on the talents and passions of individuals, recognizing their greatness, and leverage it to say to the rest of the organization, “we know you work hard and deserve a wellness break.”

For a very small investment, you could put some personal training equipment in there and folks can work out during the day. People who get their energy and unwind through physical activity now have a space and outlet for that at work. What an amazing way to show that you care about their wellness.

A fitness room isn’t the only way to do this. Virtual reality is coming; you can find lots of relaxing tools and strategies that people use in virtual spaces to relax and gain their wellness back in the middle of the day. There are infinite possibilities for wellness in the workplace; adding some tactics or tools for this is also a wonderful way to tap into your best talent, by figuring out who already has some strategies that they can bring to the rest of the team!

Professional Development

Many organizations spend on average 2% of their profits on professional development. For some of the higher performing companies, that number is a lot higher. How much are you investing in the personal and professional development of your staff? Well, the verdict is still out on that. However, there’s a lot you can do to be developing your people while they’re working!

Do you explore trends and innovations together? When you have a meeting, do you make sure to include something motivating and energizing that draws on people’s strengths and interests? Do you bring experts to your staff to learn about the latest technology or regulations so they’re up in their field?

What are you giving back to folks who give so much discretionary effort to you? Why is it important? Because they have an option not to, and they may just choose to opt out of doing so, if they don’t feel like they are getting back something in return.

After all, as we’ve discussed in a past VLOG, money isn’t always honey.

For this advice, I’d like to thank Michael Kerr, a humorous and wonderful speaker and very good friend of mine. If you know my background in human resources, you probably aren’t surprised to hear this. In fact, if you want to check out our interview you can go here, and see all about the research behind how money isn’t always honey.

There is very little evidence to say that money is a key motivator and driver – and yet almost always that is a core and pivotal element in our recognition strategies. Perks and benefits matter to a point, but why don’t you ask the folks who work in your organization if that’s what’s most important to them. Ask them how important it is, compared to all kinds of other ways that we could use self, team, and organizational recognition.

So what’s the last non-monetary motivator I have to share with you?

Variety

For the love of Pete, keep mixing it up! Variety and the element of surprise create exponential energy.

Kim Shepherd, an incredible CEO of a virtual recruitment firm Decision Support, and my absolutely wonderful business mentor, is always saying, “Build exponential energy in a great culture by keeping recognition surprising.” If you’re going to give someone a bonus, for instance, why not surprise them? Don’t give them a cheque; put it in their bank account and make them think, “why the heck do I have all this money in here?”

If you’re in the not-for-profit sector and people are coming in for leadership development, for training, or even just in for the day, do something that surprises them. It will make them smile and realize that the organization and the people running it really do see them as human beings, that they really do care.

Those are some of the tips I have for you today. I really hope you found it valuable and that you’ve hopped onto the resources that I have and as always, I’d love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. That way you can’t miss one single moment of value about, how do you continue to build a healthy, happy, strong workplace and to be able to bring your greatness to the workplace each and every day!

Professional Satisfaction Part 2

January 12, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

Are You Ready for Part 2?

This is not the first (or last) you’ve heard about rekindling our passion in our job. In particular, we want to feel satisfied at our job.

The second thing we’re going to talk about in this VLOG series is such a missed opportunity when it comes to being able to retain our top talent. When we employ this next strategy, we will save money and resources by not having to constantly recruit and retrain new folks. But more importantly, we will also enable people to be more productive and satisfied while they are working for our company or organization.

It’s about team recognition!

Team recognition can be peer to peer, and it can also be department to department. I suggest that you identify what mechanisms you have in your workplace that allow this to happen. Are you encouraging it to happen, or instead is there fighting and competition between departments and teams?

There’s another piece I suggest you reflect on: How do you build recognition rituals into your teams, team meetings, retreats, training, orientation (and the list goes on)? Do you find ways of building it in so it’s consistent? How do you get to a point where it may even be a ritual that people start to acknowledge what’s already working before jumping into a meeting right away? There are many ways you can do this, but I’ll share one with you right now:

Resource Gossip

In a past VLOG, I talked with you about resource gossiping. If you haven’t seen it yet, here is the link! The important reason why we need to resource gossip is because it is so easy, like we saw in last week’s business study, for us to turn to the negative. It is so easy to focus on the negatives and only see what’s not working, when in actual fact, so much of what we have within our team relationships is working. Resource gossip brings social glue to teams that are falling apart. Why do we need to fall apart when we can talk about each other in a healthy way?

These are just a few of the strategies you can use to build recognition rituals into your teams. I’ve given you some resources before and I hope they’ve been helpful to your team culture. I hope you really consider jumping onto this one (resource croaking – gossiping) in particular, so that you have some fun, new and unique ways to build and practice team recognition. It’s by far your easiest way to boost engagement in your workplace and organization. If you are serious about being satisfied in your job, and promoting teams that are satisfied in their roles, why don’t you share this post with other people who, like you, are invested in making things better? And while you’re at it, why don’t you subscribe to my YouTube channel because I’d love to be able to keep giving you ideas about how to have healthy, happy workplace cultures!

Professional Satisfaction Part 1

January 12, 2017 by Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have passion in your job?

It’s such a shame that so many Canadians don’t. In fact, in a Conference Board of Canada 2016 report, it’s a longitudinal study that’s followed Canadians over the last ten years, unfortunately, what they found is that engagement levels are still low. In fact, it’s remained relatively unchanged for five years.

What do studies like these measure?

Some of the following are considered in this and other studies:

Confidence in senior leadership; their vision, and communication
Relationships with managers and coworkers
How interesting and how challenging our work is
Our personal and professional growth
How much we feel recognized
Our autonomy

This is where opportunity comes in! Don’t we all want to be, and deserve to be, passionate about our jobs? Don’t we all want to be engaged, and to be able to contribute value to our workplace? It seems that we all want that, and yet so many Canadians are frustrated that they can’t or don’t have it. This is where we leave the opportunity open for people – amazing talent – to walk out the door. We all have a choice. Every single day when we leave work, we all essentially have the choice of whether we continue to show up the next day. If you’re in human resources, if you’re leading a company, if you’re a manager, or especially if you own a company, this should be something that keeps you up at night. If your people are not engaged, are they going to come back to you? Or, are they already creating plans to find their next opportunity – one where they feel more valued and engaged, something that fits across all those dimensions of engagement I mentioned earlier.

In this three-part VLOG, I am going to share with you the three core areas that we can focus on to increase engagement. These core areas can apply to any industry, and do you know why? They all come down to a very simple concept, and one that is measured very closely in the study I mentioned, recognition. Recognition happens at three levels, and in this VLOG we’re going to talk about recognition of self. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll dive into recognition at a team level, and then at an organizational level.

I also want you to be able to access this resource here (The FROG Intention), that I have made available because it will help you dig even deeper into this very first concept of self-recognition.

Why do we start with self-recognition?

Self-recognition is often misunderstood and completely ignored in the workplace. Are your people confident that they have talents, skills and passions that are valued? Do their peers want them to be able to use them? Are they seeking them out and asking them to utilize their talents and skills? Do folks have the confidence to be able to speak up and have to voice to say, for example, “Sharing my skills on that project is something I want to be able to contribute”?

In some of my other VLOGS, I talk about the negativity that happens in the workplace. This is often a sound indication that people don’t feel recognized, and may not even recognize their own talent anymore. If you have a workplace or a team where there is a toxic culture, there’s a very good chance that people are not feeling very good about themselves.

There is real business evidence that if we don’t have workplaces that promote appreciation of our top talent, that talent will leave. So I share with you, as I say, a link to some strategies – a repertoire of tools that you can use to focus in on your teams, to really bring out and bolster that self-recognition. It comes from a book that myself and my co-author put together called, “The FROG Effect Workbook”. You’ve probably noticed my FROGs™ earlier, peppered throughout these blog posts; FROG stands for, “Forever Recognize Others’ Greatness™”. If you’ll forgive my spelling error, I also like to use the anagram FROOG – for “Forever Recognize Our Own Greatness”. That is the foundation of the house of successful recognition. It is from that foundation that we can build high engagement cultures. Recognizing our own greatness is virtually free, it doesn’t take a lot of time, and it is one of the most important investments that you can make in yourself and your organization’s talent. It will keep you competitive because we are in a talent shortage that shows no signs of easing until 2030. So please tune in for the next two VLOGS to learn about two more core tenets of recognition that can help your talent stay engaged and passionate. I am eager to share with you the next pieces in this equation that equals stronger, healthier, and more engaged work environments. Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you don’t miss out on a single VLOG!

In the meantime, my name is Sarah McVanel. Be well and be great!

Recognize Greatness!

‘How do you find the love of your job the way you loved your very first job?’

Welcome back!

Are You Ready for Part 2?

It’s about team recognition!

Resource Gossip

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have passion in your job?

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