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What to Do When Your Recognition Program Loses Momentum: Four Easy Tips to Get it Back on Track

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“My recognition program isn’t working anymore.” Oh the number of times I’ve heard that!

Keeping your recognition efforts going does take time and energy. I won’t lie. However, it is easier to resuscitate and reinvigorate it than getting it started fresh. Good news is you can keep it from going stale (or getting staler). And, if this isn’t enough, I’m invested in your success. I welcome you to jump into my calendar for a quick 15-minute conversation about how to freshen up your recognition program. I have lots more ideas where this came from!

In the meantime, here are four key strategies that are essential:

1.Know your Data

How are you measuring your recognition program? How do you know it’s losing momentum? Is it just a hunch, or are you measuring it? And by the way, if it’s just a count measure of how many kudos cards were posted, that may be an artificial number. Is it impacting important business drivers such as lowering turnover, increasing length of time with the organization, boosting continuous improvement behaviours like new ideas. Sometimes folks don’t know that recognition isn’t working in staffs’ eyes until they do their engagement survey, and by this time you’re behind the eight-ball. Instead, find ways of measuring along the way and do a “Health Check” on a monthly basis of key organizational drivers. (Want more on this? Check out my past VLOGs to discover how this can help retain your best people.)

2.Measure What Matters

How is this organization tied to a strategic business focus? It is built into your people plan? Does it reflect your company values? Does it link to boosting the customer experience?  When you add recognition to a priority project, it maintains the focus, resources and monitoring to maintain success.

Another way of looking at it is, what problem do you personally need to solve? For instance, I had a client decide that they were going to begin to leverage recognition to boost collaboration and healthy team communication (as opposed to the gossip and competitiveness). He started every team meeting and morning huddle with a minute of reflection on who deserves recognition (within the team or outside the team). It may seem on the surface to not be a big commitment, but the team was dealing with a lot of issues and already had packed agendas. The irony was, by spending one minute at the beginning, helped reduce time complaining and increased time solution-finding which propelled action. They were able to reduce the length of meetings and in a meeting evaluation form he implemented, ratings of satisfaction, effectiveness and accountability increased.

3.Make it a Team Effort

Is recognition, “the leader’s job”. That’s simply not sustainable. First of all, who are your champions and how can they freshen things up, increase daily acts of recognition and encourage others to recognize more often? (we often think, “wow, she’s really dedicated” but keep it to ourselves!) Then, find ways to make recognition simple for anyone to do it. Have kudos cards handy. If you’re a virtual team using a dashboard, dedicate a spot for shout-outs. Make it an agenda item and ask everyone to participate versus just you coming prepared with shout-outs. You can even formalize it with established groups coming up with creative new ideas to keep recognition fresh (such as the wellness team, social committee, engagement task force); built it into established organizational or team structures that fit well with your culture.

4.Keep it Simple

Make it easy for anybody to get involved. I see a lot of organizations who are caught up in lots of steps. You have to fill out a form, then send a message to this person, and cc that person…it’s just not sustainable, efficient or effective. Consider how people can recognize organically and naturally. Here’s an example of simple. Anytime you go into a Best Buy store, you will see a Kudos board. There are cards right beside it. They’re nothing fancy (printouts from any regular printer). To fill it out it would take under a minute. Any anyone can fill it out because it’s in a public area – customer, staff member, supervisor. How to give the recognition? Just pin it to the board, and done! If you want to brand it, some of our clients use FROG Kudos cards that they buy in bulk so they always have a bunch at the ready! Simple is sometimes best. But simple doesn’t mean it’s not strategic. Someone or a group had to come up with an idea of the simplest way to encourage recognition.

If you’re still not quite sure where to start or you’re struggling to get results, why don’t we grab 15-minutes for a virtual chat? Let me help you bring back excitement, a clear plan, to help you see exactly what you’re going to measure to ensure a big impact.

Chicken or the Egg: Start with the Customer Experience or the Employee Experience

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As a follow-up to last week’s post, focusing on the customer and guest experience and the direct link to the employee experience is of utmost importance.

Customer service isn’t new to organizations, however, in some cases, we don’t give it the attention it deserves. Or we tackle it as a “project”, expecting to throw some short-term resources at to make a lasting difference. But what happens when new people start? What happens if people don’t believe you’re serious about the improvements. What happens when they feel dissatisfied, under-resourced or undervalued.

Here are a few ways to boost the customer experience, and how they can also be applied to boosting the employee experience.

1.Hidden shoppers

You have probably heard of “Mystery Shoppers.” People who pose as customers to get a “real” sense of how they are treated when no one is looking. But how do you think it makes your employees feel when they are being “spied on”? And by someone outside of the organization? Instead, could you have employees self-audit their performance, barriers to customer service, set goals for service, and identify top priorities for the day then evaluate how well they did end of shift? Can you shadow folks and talk with them about their service and learn firsthand barriers to delivering great service as well as compliment them on what’s working well as you go? If you need to do “Hidden Shoppers,” can you ensure immediate feedback loops such as same-day feedback, self-evaluations and peer-to-peer feedback is also included? In other words, use it as an opportunity to deepen awareness, surface barriers to service, and be a uniting versus “us and them” experience.

2.Customer input.

Do your staff know what customers are saying about their service? Do you share positive testimonials regularly, can staff see it in real-time, are their incentives tied to the customer experience (not just quantity-based performance metrics?) And leaders, it’s essential to communicate to staff that they matter. Get out of your office and spend time where the value is created – at the point of contact between staff and customers (internal or external customers). Understand life from the customer perspective and from the employee’s perspective serving that customer. Walk a mile in the employees shoes by serving customers and providing the service directly from time-to-time.

3.Employee input.

When issues arise – for the customer or for your staff – I can’t stress enough how important visible leadership is. Not only will you better understand the problem, you’ll be better able to help fix it in a way that benefits everyone. When I was in a senior leadership role in a very busy community hospital, every Friday, I would shadow staff or physicians (wearing a uniform if they did) to try to understand an issue from multiple perspectives. How did I decide where to spend my time? Whatever issue we were stuck on at senior team’s Tuesday morning meeting, that’s where I’d go. And 9 times out of 10, staff and those we served had the answer (or at least a good step in the right direction). At first people were shocked to see me there but after a while, people would ask, “When are you coming to my area?” Before long, people saw the value and respected the effort.

I was never a better senior leader until I started spending my Fridays with the people who add the value. We need to get out of our office. We need to follow people and walk a mile in their shoes to better understand what needs to be improved and what is working.

These things take time, effort, energy and resources, but let’s face it, you’re deploying it anyway. You might as well direct it to what will make a lasting difference.

Why not share this with similarly like-minded folks who value the customer experience as much as the employee experience. And why not subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss a week of valuable insights about retaining top talent and loyal clients.

Three Resources for Healthier ​Workplace Relationships

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Sadly, some people experience unhealthy working relationships. Perhaps even toxic.

One of the most common ingredients I see in toxic workplaces is a rigid mindset. And not just from the person being disruptive. It becomes like an infectious virus that spreads like a fog and gets into the cracks of the furniture. “She’ll never change.” “This place doesn’t do anything to fix these issues.” “Why bother?”

This rigidity is rarely accurate. And it’s never helpful.

So what to do when you’re feeling frustrated and unsure that things will improve? Here are a few resources I’ve come across in my almost 20-year career in organizational development and as a professional, certified coach. Of these three tools, pick the one that’s right for you and use in the context of dealing with some of the people in your life that aren’t a healthy influence.

  1. Fixed versus Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck’s infamous research around fixed versus growth mindsets, and her bestselling book Mindset can help us to see when our belief system is so rigid it’s unhelpful. It’s particularly powerful in helping us understand just how much a toxic force has seeped into our life – our thoughts, our attitudes, our emotions, our actions. They may have a very rigid black and white, unhealthy view of the world.  And we normally may not see things quite so black and white, but with toxic behaviours, often a rigid mindset begins to set in, at least about this person. It’s hard to come back from that.

Imagine if you had a growth mindset about your opportunity for your relationship and for your workplace, even for your team and how you collaborate. Consider the possibilities of what could be different. That truly is the epitome of a growth mindset.

2. The Choice Map

Another great book is called, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life by Marilee Adams. When in coaching school, we printed off the Choice Map and I cannot tell you how many hundreds of clients I’ve introduced it to since. When we take the learner path, it brings us to to considering what’s possible, what we most want and the best next step. This is in contrast to the judger path where the focus is on what’s wrong with this person, why don’t things work, why can’t I ever win? One gets us stuck in the judger pit which like quicksand and hard to get thoughts, attitudes and actions unstuck. The learner path, however, opens up and expands our thinking, allows empathy and creates action.

This shift in questions can be transformative in our relationships with people and our sense of help and effectiveness in those relationships.

3. Compassion Satisfaction versus Compassion Fatigue

Often, we find we have a hard time dealing with individuals because we are compassion fatigued and burnt out. I work with many people who are providing direct care, such as nurses, dietitians and doctors, as well as people in frontline service such as customer service, call centres, and hospitality. Middle managers too because if you’re a servant leader, you are providing a service to those who report to you.

Many people I work with are continually serving others and they don’t always have a lot left for themselves. If you’re compassion fatigued, it’s going to be hard to be resourceful and resilient when people push back, when people treat you with disrespect, or even misinterpret what people are saying when actually their intention isn’t to hurt us after all. If you’re not sure if you’re compassion fatigued or not, I have a tool and a resource for you on my website – as well as a few exercises. Check it to evaluate to what extent might you have some of the early signs, right through to some of the strong signs of compassion fatigue.

You see when you have a growth mindset, take the learner path, and work to stay compassion satisfied, what you’ll find is not only do you have healthier relationships, you’re also able to address unhealthy behaviours when they happen.

I hope you found these resources helpful. I’m sure you have tapped into them and you’ve experienced them and of course, if there’s something on the list I’ve missed, why don’t you comment below because together we can make sure that we’re in healthier workplaces and leading lives that allow us to shine and allows our greatness to be present every day.

Three questions to determine if you’re in burnout mode

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What do you do when you’re exhausted, tired and stressed, and you worry that burnout is right around the corner?

Many people experience this; people I coach, or who come up to me after a keynote and say, “I really want to be able to implement the things that you talk about, but I just don’t have anything left to give.” I get it. I’ve been there. You’re prioritizing too many things, for example, juggling kids, work, and volunteering. You are juggling so many things you’re making circus performers jealous! (In fact, I recently interviewed my speaker colleague Christine Laperriere who just released a book about burnout). You are doing the best you possibly can, and yet when you look at your life, tired at the end of a busy day, you worry it’s still not enough.

It is enough.

I was speaking with someone last week who was totally and utterly burnt out. And she knew it. She was getting up at 5:00am to get a jump on emails, leaving the house with her child in tow by 6:30am and at work by 7:30am. She worked through her lunches, attended meetings and crisis responding all day, only to come back to her office by 4:00pm to try to wrap things up and still leaving later than planned. She’d shoulder all the responsibilities of raising her child, then back to handling email with her laptop in bed. Too tired to even have a glass of wine (so it was serious). She woke up feeling defeated and went to bed feeling worse.

Can you relate?

So how do you get back to a place where you can be recharged enough to believe it again?

Well, to start off, I have a few free resources that will help:

  1. 10 Tips to Prioritize What’s Important in Work and Life
  2. Compassion Satisfaction to Compassion Fatigue Chart

You can find them here for download on my website. With these tools, you will have greater clarity. But what next? What more can you do?

Here’s five essential questions you can ask yourself to help you re-calibrate. These solution-focused questions enable you to get back to a resourceful place, feel hope, and take small steps forward.

  1. What do I most want?

What is the most important priority? Is it time for fitness? Getting more leisure in? Going back to school to switch careers? Getting enough sleep every night? Having more family time? Getting off the screen? Write down everything you want, asking yourself “what else, what else” until you are out of ideas. Then circle the three MOST important things you want.

  1. What is possible?

Under the three most important things you want, ask yourself what is possible? What could you do? Get up a half hour earlier? Go to bed sooner? Take a class or two? Read a book a week? Meditate every morning when you wake up? Make Friday nights family night? Walk at lunchtime? Keep asking “what else, what else” to consider every possibility, no matter how wacky!

  1. What is my next step?

Of all the possibilities, what is one step closer toward it? What are all the possible next steps? Which are easy to implement? What are going to have the most impact? What do you enjoy? What could you get help and support for? Of all the options, which is the ONE next step you chose? Remember, if you’re overwhelmed, more than one next step may be too much. Just pick one, and celebrate it before moving on.

Let’s look at how this works in action.

Let’s say you want to exercise more. But you have no more time in the day and you feel overwhelmed just trying to figure out how to make it work. Could you set your alarm 15 minutes earlier and just walk around the block? Could you get a headset and walk around your office while you’re on the phone? Could you walk to the mailbox rather than drive? Could you go to the gym at work before you go home? Could you go to yoga on weekends rather than try to fit it in during the week?

In other words, what will give you some momentum?

It’s essential to start with what you most want, and then when you know what you most want, get creative about what’s possible. If you hate the gym, don’t make it part of your plan! If the weekdays are already too packed, look at weekends! There is always a way that doesn’t have to make you feel guilty, pressured or more stressed.

What we may do instead is say, ” I want to lose 50 pounds” but that goal is so long-term it’s unmotivating. It may not even feel possible. Instead, consider the root of what you want and build possibilities from there.

If there’s one thing you take from this today, please know, if you’re tired and exhausted, perhaps frustrated, it’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. It’s because you’re amazing and you’re trying to do so many things because you’re capable, in demand, and needed.

You don’t have to deplete yourself to still be amazing. In fact, the least selfish thing you can do is to make some of those choices, put some intention towards prioritizing what’s most important, so you can be the best version of yourself, for your family, your community, and in your career.

For more on burnout, check out that interview with Christine Laperriere on Work-Life Wisdom! And enjoy any of the resources we mentioned here and many others at https://greatnessmagnified.com/cool-stuff/

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