Creating a recognition culture today starts with understanding your employees, their needs and motivations so you can best recognize and reward them when they do good work.

Equally as important, however, for creating a motivating work environment is taking time to understand your managers, their concerns and perspective in providing recognition to their employees and meeting the organization’s expectations for managing people.

Too many times we expect managers to automatically understand and accept the importance of their people, even as they may be struggling to get their own work done.

Instead of assuming that your managers will want to do the right thing when it comes to managing and motivating their employees, take some time to understand their perspective, beliefs and concerns about this responsibility.

For example, many managers that have not provided a lot of recognition initially feel silly telling people they’ve done a good job.  “Shouldn’t that be obvious to my people?” some managers state.  Add to the fact that the managers themselves may not receive much if any recognition and it is easy for them to become resentful at having to make others feel good about doing the job they are paid to do.

By discussing their concerns, you have a chance to deal with counterproductive “old line” beliefs they may be having and to fortify the rationale and benefit to them, their employees and the organization in seeking to create a more motivating work environment.

In addition, managers have different personalities and preferences themselves, so getting them to provide recognition will be in part a function of finding the overlap of what they are willing to do.  A technical manager who may be more introverted, for example, is never going to feel comfortable in being bubbly about praise or giving an employee a congratulatory hug, .jotting them a note might be much easier.

Just like people like to be recognized in different ways, people like to provide recognition in different methods also. The most important factor to remember is to ensure recognition is genuine and sincere to the person receiving it.

I Love Rewards announced today its partnership with Benevity, which enables its clients to add charitable giving to their sales, employee and dealer incentive program.

Click the link to read the full article, “Benevity and I Love Rewards Partner to Bring Charitable Giving Employee Incentives to North American Companies.“

Managers are often too busy focusing on what’s urgent–such as dealing with daily crises in their jobs–and as a result don’t have any time left to focus on what’s important–namely, the people they manage.  This is unfortunate in that extensive research on employee motivation indicates that the most motivating incentives reported by employees are often ones that are personally provided by one’s manager–the most important of which is a personal thank you for a job well done.  Yet in one study some 58 percent of employees report that their managers seldom, if ever, thank them for doing a good job when they do so.

The situation is made worse by the false perception on the part of many managers that they are in fact providing employees with plenty of praise and recognition.  According to Aubrey Daniels, a leading authority on the topic of performance management, “those managers who feel they do it (positive reinforcement) the most, in my experience, actually do it the least.”  That is, managers may have learned along the way that they need to provide positive feedback to their employees and may even believe they are doing this, but on a day-to-day basis their employees typically feel their managers don’t do it at all.  Worse yet, often the positive reinforcement they are doing is incorrect, for example, providing individual feedback that is nonspecific or insincere, praising some employees while overlooking others that have equally contributed to a given success, or having their facts wrong about specific performance they want to acknowledge.

How can managers start praising their employees more?  Like any behavioral change you have to find a way to make it habit–a natural part of your daily routine.  For example, I’ve been successful at getting analytical, task-oriented managers to start praising employees more by getting them to think of their people as “things to do.”  I have such managers list the names of each person that reports to them on their weekly “to do” list and cross each person off the list once they have given him or her a praising based on that person’s performance.  For some managers, such a specific technique helps take the activity from being a general, intangible activity to a specific, finite action item–thus easier for them to complete.

For managers that for some reason can not bring themselves to personally praise employees, try to find out what recognition activities they are willing to do.  For example, sometimes such managers are less intimidated by writing a personal note to a high-performing employee, thanking him or her for doing an outstanding job–which is also a top motivator as reported by employees.  Or you may get a manager to sanction a department celebration, even if they personally aren’t willing to play a role in the celebration.

The power of positive reinforcement can only occur as managers find time to put the principle into practice on a daily basis with each of their employees.  Managers need to understand that “Good thoughts not delivered mean squat!”

—Bob Nelson, Ph.D.

Click the link to see the Top 50, “I Love Rewards’ 50 Most Engaged Workplaces.”

As my management professor, Peter Drucker, used to say: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”  Recognition is no exception.  Justifying the time, effort, and expense of any recognition program means demonstrating its impact, which requires that you be able to determine a baseline and any change—hopefully improvement—in that baseline.  Following are four levels of impact you can measure (with thanks to Donald Kirkpatrick’s, Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler) —another “soft” behavioral discipline:

Level 1: Reaction. The first level of measurement, often called a Happiness Rating is often obtained at the end of an activity simply by asking employees, “How did it feel to you?”  using a scale of 1 (didn’t like it) to 5 (thought it was excellent).  With recognition, this measure often surfaces in employee attitude surveys.  When morale is low, employees typically rank one or more of the following items very low:

• My manager recognizes me when I do good work.
• My manager makes time for me when I need to talk.
• My manager has discussed my future career aspirations with me.
• I feel appreciated for the work I do.
• I feel I’m a valuable member of the team/department.

Surveying attitudes can be a useful way to determine whether employee perceptions of the company are improving and a way to quantify the level of individual, group, and organizational morale.

Level 2: Learning. The second level of evaluation deals with what participants actually learned regarding the activity.  Kirkpatrick defines learning as the “extent to which participants change attitudes, improve knowledge and/or increase skill as a result of attending the program.”  It is typically easier to determine what new knowledge or skills participants acquired than the ways in which the training changed their opinions, values and beliefs.  Tests are the most frequent method of evaluating learning.

As it applies to recognition, we can measure if certain skill or awareness levels have changed based on recognition training or the roll out of one or more recognition programs.  Managers can be asked (before and after recognition training) how important it is to recognize employees, how often they should do so, in what types of situations, and in what ways.  In a seminar they can be taught guidelines for effective praising and be allowed to practice the skill with feedback from others.  Other measurable recognition skills include knowing how to praise publicly, how to write a persuasive nomination for an employee award, and what forms of recognition work well for different types of performance.

Managers need more than an academic understanding of the importance of recognition.  They must have specific skills associated with effective recognition techniques and be comfortable using those skills.  Tracking progress as managers acquire these skills can thus be a significant measurement for any organization.

Level 3: Behavior. The third level of measurement involves the impact of the activity back on the job.  Trainees can learn and demonstrate new skills and then never use those skills once they return to work.  This form of evaluation can be time-consuming and costly, involving direct observation, follow up interviews and surveys of participants as well as those with whom they work.  It is somewhat easier if the measurement is established as part of the program (e.g., tracking report), not a separate activity to be done independently of the program.

For recognition, we can measure the frequency a manager recognizes his or her employees, by the utilization of available recognition tools and programs, for example, the number of employees who receive an online written praising from managers, peers, or customers; the number of employees nominated for awards; the number of managers who make nominations; the number of formal awards given, etc.  This data can be useful in examining variations over time by manager or department; by level in the organization or by facility; by comparisons of corporate offices versus field operations; by comparisons among different regions, etc.

Level 4: Results. The fourth level of measurement focuses on the impact the activity has back on the job.  In training, this could mean faster and better operations; fewer errors; or increased judgment on the job.  For recognition, this could mean more of the behavior or performance the recognition was reinforcing, such as increased revenues, core values, money-saving ideas, improved customer service, increased cross-departmental support, improved safety records, enhanced on-time delivery, streamlined processes, and so on.  To the extent that each of these behaviors can be quantified in financial terms, it has even more viability as a significant indicator of organizational success.

Of course, it is usually the fourth level—results—that organizations most want to demonstrate to management.  The more that recognition activities and programs can be geared toward driving significant organizational performance and strategic objectives from the start in the program design, the easier it is to make this connection after the program is up and running.

—Bob Nelson

1. You get what you reward.

Be sure you have clearly defined what you want to get (your goals and expectations), then use rewards and recognition to move toward those goals.

2. What motivates people, motivates people.

What is motivating to individuals varies from person to person.  To be on target, ask employees what they want and give them a chance to get those things when they achieve.

3. The most motivating rewards take little or no money.

Try a sincere thank you, providing timely information and communication, involving employees in decision making (especially if those decisions will affect the employees), asking for their opinion and ideas and giving them a chance to pursue those ideas, .

4. Everyone wants to be appreciated.

99.4 percent of workers today expect to be recognized when they do good work. Competent people, quiet people, virtual employees, white collar or blue collar, even managers want to know that what they are doing is important and meaningful.

5. All behavior is controlled by its consequences.

Positive consequences will most quickly lead to desired behavior and enhanced performance over negative consequences or no consequences. What you notice, inspect, incentivize, recognize or reward will be repeated by the employee.

6. Management is what you do with people, not to them.

Tell employees what you want to do and why.  Make the desired results clear, but allow them to have a say in how those results are obtained. By involving employees, you’ll more easily gain their commitment, support and buy in.

7. Common sense is often not common practice.

It’s not what you believe or say—it’s what you do that matters in getting results from others.  Practice recognizing people and their achievements on a daily basis.

Remember, as American poet Maya Angelou once said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

—Bob Nelson, Ph.D.