employee experience Archives - Greatness Magnified

What to do When People Reject Recognition

November 14, 2019 By Bai-Leigh Leave a Comment

Are you ever hesitant to recognize people…I think I know why…

Have you ever praised someone and had your recognition rejected? You probably wonder and ask yourself what did I do wrong, I don’t get it? I was trying to do something positive by telling the other person “you deserve this”, “I appreciate you and you’re doing a good job” but the reaction I got was not at all what I was expecting (or even downright offensive).

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Let’s get some perspective. When we can do that, it’s easier to not take it personally.

For example, maybe it’s not about the recognition at all. The other person may be going through something their life that is making it difficult to accept recognition at that moment. Perhaps they lack self-confidence to be able to receive positive feedback. And let’s not forget that as Canadians, we’re a pretty humble bunch and are not used to taking compliments.

If giving recognition is not dependent on the other person’s reaction, then you are less likely to let it deter you from giving it. Persist and show the other person that you are sincere and that he/she truly deserves it.

Here are some additional strategies and tools to help fuel positive recognition:

Find Out How People Want To Be Recognized

Survey people on their preferred ways to be recognized. For those of you who have used the recognition and motivation assessment tool, you’ve probably already discovered that people are as diverse with their preferences of recognition methods as they are with their personalities. It’s amazing how many people come back to me and they say, “I have no idea what a unique subset of recognition preferences I have in my team.”

Practice The Three Recognition Methods Almost Everyone Prefers

There are three effective ways in which people want to be recognized:

Verbally say thank you
Tell the person specifically what he/she is being recognized for
Write a thank-you note

Written forms of acknowledgment can be a more comfortable method for those people who have difficulty giving recognition face to face (we talk more about this in my book in Chapter 5 if you’re curious).

Value Your Colleagues’ Strengths

You can use the VIA Signature Character Strengths Survey (it’s a free evidence-based tool out of Penn State University’s Positive Psychology department). This tool can be used in a team setting or one-on-one. By knowing everyone’s strengths, you are better able to notice them when they show up. And when you notice them, you can recognize them. Bonus here is that people often value their strengths (that’s why they keep growing), so when you recognize what people value, the recognition is more likely to be received well.

Unconditional Recognition

Now unconditional recognition is sometimes debated (shouldn’t people do their job and we only recognize going above and beyond?) However, in today’s quickly evolving world, not only is the employee experience a pioneering way to think, but recognizing someone for doing their job is a strategy to keep them engaged (and doing more of what is working)! Often times we only give praise and acknowledgment based on metrics, indicators of performance, and place the bar exceedingly high yet often on quickly evolving priorities. Instead, let’s recognize anything that’s working, however small when we notice it, as well as the huge milestones and exceptional performance.

Create A Positive Recognition Environment

Positivity on the whole naturally fosters positivity in return. When you invite positivity into your team environment, you are helping to build a more collaborative team, stronger organization and increased continuous improvement attempts. It’s a mindset where you are recognizing people for the greater good. It goes beyond just you and the other person – it benefits those who witness it, customers they’ll deal with later and their families they go home to. Not to mention the endorphins, those ‘feel good’ chemicals your body produces, which flow through your brain, triggered as a result of positive thinking and behavior.

“I hope that I’ve helped you in some way to understand how important recognition is and how to deliver it”. It’s an important part of our lives and all too often we forget to acknowledge it. I would love to hear your feedback on any of these strategies or what the outcome was when you used them? What other strategies would you suggest? And please share below another tip you would add to the list!

Why We Don’t Recognize in Organizations (And How to Change That)

October 5, 2019 By Bai-Leigh 2 Comments

I’ve said it before. I’m going to say it again. Our biggest missed opportunity to retain our best people and keep them engaged is through recognition.

You know, I recently spoke at a DisruptHR conference. The number of people who came up to me afterward saying, yes, it’s so simple yet it’s so true: if we only recognized then people would be more productive, loyal and focused. People from academia who knew the research; middle managers who saw the impact of inheriting disgruntled disengaged staff; people running research and development companies studying the long-term effects of disengagement on product development, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Not one said, “you know, actually the evidence is we’re better off when we ignore, blame and berate our employees.”

Yet that’s what is happening every day.

So why aren’t we leveraging recognition? Well, here’s what I (and in my conversations with these fellow researchers, leaders and other professionals) have found:

We Undervalue Recognition

How ironic. We undervalue valuing people. I spoke with the engagement company Plasticity Inc, and they have found time and time again people don’t understand just how big an impact this one driver – recognition – has on the employee experience and satisfaction at work. When they look across from a client with low recognition scores, it’s not as concerning to them as other drivers. I’ve seen this too. Bigger, flashier, seemingly more “results-driven” engagement drivers become the focus and we quickly forget about the single easiest driver to influence right away.

We Think Recognition Is Fluff

Even for people who know recognition is important, they may think it’s a “nice to have”. It’s fluffy or it’s “touchy-feely” (and isn’t touchy-feely stuff going to get people in trouble today?) Well, the data would indicate otherwise. Recognition is the fastest and easiest way to build trust in the organization, satisfaction with leaders, intention to stay, continuous improvement, and overall engagement (which is why we dedicated an entire chapter to talking about the evidence in our book.) Do you know a driver that impacts so many important factors that you can start working on tomorrow (and in fact, everyone can?)

We Don’t Know How People Want to Be Recognized

Every audience, I ask the question, “how do you like to be recognized?” With few exceptions, the same three things come up. The same three ways that our research partnership with Metrics@Work revealed.

Tell me “thank you” (95%)
Tell me specifically what I’m doing well (92%)
Write me a thank you (88%)

If I told you that you had an 88% proven method to make your people feel heard, valued and motivated, wouldn’t you do it? And how much work does it take? How much does it cost? How much effort is involved? Recognition through one of these forms is the best return on the effort you’ll make in your workday.

It’s Not in Our People Strategy

Even if you don’t have recognition specifically in your people strategy (and if not, I’d suggest you take another look at this given point #2 above), consider what is. Is reducing sick days? Is retention? Is engagement and improving the employee experience? Is becoming an employer of choice? Is innovation? It’s all enabled by recognition. In fact, without recognition, you’ll have an uphill battle with these and another dozen of the most common drivers in corporate people strategies.

We have so many new technologies, processes and systems we’re trying to understand, evolve and adopt every day. Isn’t it nice to know there’s one thing you’ve known how to do since you were a kid that is still one of the most effective competencies you’ll use in your career?

What are some of the other reasons recognition is overlooked and undervalued in organizations? Comment below and I’ll dedicate a future VLOG or blog post to it.

How do you Create an Incredible Guest Experience? It Starts with Your Employees’ Experience

May 19, 2019 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

We know how important it is to create incredible guest or customer experience. But have you been looking at it first through the lens of your employees’ experience?

All too often, we put together training programs or launch initiatives or assign e-Learning modules to employees about what we expect from them, but never stopped to ask if in fact they are satisfied. If they are having a positive employee experience. If it is justified asking them to deliver a certain experience because it is in alignment with their values.

Sadly, all too often, we ask for a higher standard for our employees than we are delivering to them.

Please hear this: There is a connection between employee and guest or customer experience. You do not have one without the other. To try is an exercise in futility.

Recently, I hosted a live event at a five-star, beautiful resort. I wanted my family to benefit from my business so I decided to host it somewhere where they could come with me and most importantly, I wanted to serve my coaching clients by giving them an incredible place to learn and reflect that would bring ease, joy and abundance into their businesses.

Good in theory. Only one problem. The people at the resort were miserable.

From the minute anyone attempted to make a reservation, they were faced with broken links, coupons not activated, long waits on hold and short-tempered agents. Was it their fault? Nope. They didn’t break the systems or show up to do a bad job.

When everyone arrived, the wait in line at the front desk was long. The reservations were wrong. People had to be moved to different rooms. Requests to bring luggage up to rooms or sign up for shuttles weren’t booked. Was it their fault? Nope. We learned most were new, they were short staffed, and the hotel was booked above capacity.

It was not unusual to see a staff member there at 8:00 in the morning, and they’d still be there at 8:00 at night. We were there for one week, and some staff and managers we saw there every single day. Not only is that not possible or reasonable but it makes me wonder, what kind of retention problem exists that you need people working there that many days?

I won’t go on, but one thing became very clear. The individuals who were the face of the customer experience were overworked, unsupported, and undervalued. How can you profess to be a five-star hotel when you don’t deliver a five-star experience to guests? And how can you be a five-star hotel when you deliver a one-star employee experience to your front-line staff and middle managers?

I may have been frustrated, but at least I got to go home. Their only options were to put up with it or leave. Are you reflecting right now on if your employees experience the same two inferior choices? It doesn’t have to be that way.

How do you create an incredible guest or customer experience that represents your brand well aligns to the employee experience? Here are four secrets:

1.What You Expect for Customers You Must Deliver to Employees

Take a look at your customer service and guest experience training. Now take out the word “customer” and replace it with “employee”. Do you live that? If the answer is no, start there. Don’t ask something of someone that you can’t deliver yourself.

Last fall I had the pleasure of speaking for the senior management team for a hospitality organization on the list of Great Places to Work. In preparation for the talk, I took their Guest Experience e-Learning training and presented my recognition talk in alignment with those seven pillars of their guest experience. They connected the dots instantly, what aligned well between the guest and employee experience, and what they needed to work on for employees. And that’s why they’re a Great Place to Work. Because they’re committed to moving the needle on the experience for all.

2. Analyze Your Data

Consider your employee feedback and customer feedback side-by-side. All too often we look at each set of data in isolation, and at different points in time. Some of the call centre owners I spoke for in March sent out an employee experience survey every day because that’s what they do for customers. Keep the pulse on both, and you will begin to see connections; when one goes up, the other is up there too. Effect one, the other follows. It’s like a two for one deal!

3. Identify Your Priorities (A Wish Doesn’t Create Change)

If you have a target and an operational priority for your customer or guest experience, also have one for the employee experience. What project or initiative will help with both? What barriers will roadblock both? What is the most important thing you need to address immediately? What is going to require longer-term effort? For example, as a recognition expert, my advice is to start with recognizing your staff in small ways, and monitor customer satisfaction scores; I suspect you will see, the more recognition you give out to employees, the more your guests will say their experience was exceptional and ratings will be higher. How do I know? Because my clients do this and cannot believe how small gestures make such a huge impact so quickly.

And by the way, rather than try to fix all of those data points in your surveys, keep it simple with just a few allowing you to make sure they’re aligned.

4. Measure What Matters

With those priorities, you will need to measure success on both the customer and the employee side. Likely the measures are out of alignment, but you can make small tweaks to bring them into alignment for frequency and initiative. There is no point in measuring something that you aren’t sure what impact it will have, or so many things that you have no time left to make small tests of change. Measure a few things well – strategically and often – and once those numbers stabilize, move onto the next priority.

The bottom line is this: your front-facing customer is going to remember how they feel with your employees, and you may never get a chance to serve them again or the cost of losing them might be so high it’s worth the work I’ve outlined here. It’s hard enough to retain top talent without depriving them of an environment where they can thrive.

If you’ve been focusing on the guest experience, why don’t you share this information with other people on your team? What other ideas do you have? Share them in the comments below!

This Employee Has to Go…Or do They? The Underlying Impact of an Unhealthy Employee Experience Culture

September 26, 2018 By Sarah McVanel Leave a Comment

When I worked full-time in organizational development, I supported over 100 teams get back on track in times of overwhelming change, interpersonal tension, and incivility. In every one of those teams, there was someone (or a number of people) who were pointed out as “the problem”: “If only they left everything would be fine!” Sometimes they did…but things didn’t change magically overnight. Often times they weren’t going anywhere, and yet we had success turning things around.

Not only is it rare that an individual, as disruptive as their behaviour may be, cause all the problems. That they alone are the root of the issue. Are things in life usually that simple? (And if it was, I think we’d only have a few books on our shelves versus the 100+!)

Sure, employees engaging in disruptive behaviour require feedback and expectation clarification. Sometimes they were surprised (never having received direct feedback), other times they were defensive, other times saddened. Regardless, change on their part, 9.9 times out of 10, didn’t lead to an overnight turnaround.

So what else is going on? What we found was that in every team we needed to do an intervention with, there was an underlying problem with the employee experience.

By pointing fingers, we don’t address what is going to most help. And frankly, what likely contributed to the unhealthy behaviour in the first place.

We are starting to move away from talking about the (often) top-down theories of employee engagement to understanding the employee experience, which is a more holistic, employee-centred way of understanding the way an individual experiences the organization from before they onboard to when they exit (here is a great article to dig in further.) Just like we’re moving away from talking about customer service to the customer experience, we’re realizing the same is true for staff and leaders.

Companies that shift away from looking at micro problems, finger pointing, and top-down culture creation, to that of understanding how talent truly is their competitive advantage, in turn, co-create the ideal employee experience that retains the best people, fuels healthy collaborative cultures, sparks innovation and continuous improvement and better self-manages standards of behaviour.

What are some of the signs of how well your company or team is doing in the employee experience department? Here are four visible signs:

1.Quit or commit

Take stock of your revolving door. Discover how many people are getting a “refund” on their employee experience by quitting. Check out the positive flip side, how many are committing? How many give discretionary effort, time and ideas voluntarily for the betterment of their team, customers, projects and the long-term future of the organization?

2.Play games or play by the rules

People who do not play by the rules are telling you, “You know what, I don’t buy into it around here.” Or, “I have given more than I have gotten back so now I’m taking something back for me.” There are also people who say, “I want to improve things around here.” When they feel and experience that their ideas matter, their voice is heard and they are valued, they naturally want to make things better.

3.Complaints versus Compliments

A complaint is merely a poorly worded request. So, if folks are complaining, what are they asking you for? What is your culture lacking? Sure, some folks lean on the negativity side regardless, but if the employee experience was truly positive, there would be little to complain about and certainly, they wouldn’t have a captive audience or co-conspirators! Other teams, you’ll notice compliments and recognition are aplenty; individuals notice healthy, positive, helpful behaviours and aren’t hesitant to acknowledge it when they see it.

4.Early retirement or Lifer

Sure, we talk a lot about how many times we switch jobs in our lifetime (anywhere between 7 and 15 depending on the study), and how unlikely it is we’re going to retire from the first organization we join. However, it’s not the end of career retirement we’re worried about here’s. It’s folks being, “on the job retired”; you know, those individuals come in and do only the bare minimum. In contrast to employee experience individuals who feel so much love for the company, they go above and beyond without being asked or expected to. When people feel valued, visible and their efforts appreciated, of course, they’re more likely to give their job more “life”. The kind of Lifer you want around doesn’t just put in the time but gives the best of him or herself.

BTW, want a cool infographic? Grab it free on my website here. What are the other signs the employee experience needs work? Post below!

We know how important it is to create incredible guest or customer experience. But have you been looking at it first through the lens of your employees’ experience?

How do you create an incredible guest or customer experience that represents your brand well aligns to the employee experience? Here are four secrets:

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