Friday Is Employee Recognition Day

Friday, March 5, 2010 is Employee Recognition Day. Now you might think that a day like this is kind of cute and meant to be lighthearted but it's not a really serious thing. That may be true, but then so is Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Try not to take those two days seriously and see what happens. You would never dishonor your mother on Mother's Day nor your spouse on Valentine's Day if you want to have peace and harmony at home.

Think of Employee Recognition Day the same way. If the employee knows that it's Employee Recognition Day and no attempt is made by management to recognize them, you might as well have forgotten your spouse on Valentine's Day. You will have created a bigger chasm between employees and management.

Yes, there is the argument that you don't need a special day to recognize your employees and you would be right. But you don't need a special day to recognize your sweetheart or your spouse but it seems to be the only days of  the year that many do honor them. So we have this day to force the laggards to get with the program and show their gratitude. It is a day designated to REMIND managers that they have a staff who do their work without a lot of recognition: managers get so wrapped up in attending endless (and pointless) meetings that there is little time left to say "thanks" to their people.

So this Friday, show your Attitude of Gratitude by springing for pizza for the staff, buying a $25 Starbucks card for each member of your team or giving a heartfelt, handwritten card personally prepared for each member of your team. Do NOT hand out awards that day. Friday is Employee Recognition Day. That means all employees are recognized - not just your superstars.

If you want to build a culture of engagement in your organization, you will recognize your people on Friday. Then, make a decision to make the first Friday of every month, Employee Recognition Day. One simple change in your corporate attitude will spread the word that yours is a great place to work. More people will be lining up to work there - good people - not just the ones who are available.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture


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Engage In Something Meaningful

Managers who spend endless amounts of time sitting in their offices waiting for the next crisis to handle normally find themselves handling a lot of crises.

Managers whose Attitude is that staff need to be watched usually find things to need to watch their staff about. In other words, they will always find things wrong that need addressing right away.

Managers who have developed an Attitude of praising their people usually find that they have much to praise their people about. People work well for managers who appreciate contribution.

There is always much discussion about how to get employees to engage better in their work. Focusing solely on engagement is a mistake. Engagement is what you want the end result to be. It should not be the focus of the strategy but rather the result of implementing the strategy.

The truth is, employees engage better when the work means something. When a manager praises them for their effort, then the work means something. When customers return and are loyal because of the employees efforts, then the work means something. When the company or employee are recognized in the community for their tireless efforts to make their community a better place, then the work means something. When lives are changed, families are helped and problems are solved, then the work means something. When the work is defined as people giving service to people, then the work means something.

You will never get employees to engage themselves in work that doesn't mean anything. Managers need to make their workplaces meaningful if they want to engage their employees. It is not meaningful to find fault with your people or to sit and wait for another disaster to handle. That is how you make the work look futile - not meaningful.

Create a culture of meaningful work and you create a workforce of engaged individuals.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture


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Are You Beaten?

Just prior to Christmas, I was engaged in a conversation with an elegant lady - the owner of a sheep farm.

"You had better be prepared to laugh at yourself," she said.

"If not," I added, "then you'll be the only one not laughing."

We both broke out in laughter. 

Change your Attitude. Quit taking yourself so seriously. The times may have been much gloomier but there's daylight on the horizon. Lighten up and get back to work.

Sure, running an organization is serious work but it doesn't mean you have to be a humorless dolt while you're doing it. Enjoy your work - but don't make it the bane of your existence.

And make sure that your people get that message too. Enjoy the work. Be thankful for your job. Have an Attitude of Gratitude for what life sends your way. And, at the end of the day, smile for goodness sake. It makes you look less beaten down by your work.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Managing By Hug or by Handshake

Do you shake hands with your mom or do you hug her? What about your siblings? How about your spouse? Your kids? How about your close friends? What about your employees?

I suppose we were on a roll with hugs until the employees question huh?

So what is the differentiating factor between offering a hug and a handshake? Perhaps it is this simple: a hug is reserved for people we care about and have feelings for. Everything else would be a handshake.

Managers, do you not care about your employees? I mean, is your corporate culture one of faceless people doing a job or is your culture one of only hiring people who matter to do work that matters? That's the difference between a handshake and a hug.

If you treat your employees as "handshake" people, you will attract people who view their work as "just a job." But if you really value your people, are grateful for their performance and diligence and care about them as people, you will attract people who value their work, are grateful that you chose them and will reward you with performance and diligence. They will take ownership of their work.

People who feel valued and cared for outperform all others by 20%.

A Culture of Greatness is created by managers who know the difference between a hug and a handshake. You don't actually have to hug them - just make them feel like you care enough about them.

If your managers can't do that, then get new managers. The world is changing and your attitude is out of touch with reality. You had better get with the program or you'll end up attracting the employees that no one else wants - you know, the "handshake" people.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Managers Responsible For Poor Employee Engagement

Have you made a decision to improve your corporate culture in 2010? Look, you can't keep putting it off. 2010 is going to be the year of mass exodus of employees to new jobs. You are going to lose some good people unless you stop digging in your heels and get with the program.

Right Management's survey results last month says it all: 60% of employees say they will move to a new job in 2010 and another 21% are actively networking right now to see what's out there. That's 81% of the workforce on the hunt for new work because during this recession, you let your people develop fears and feelings of uncertainty. You abandoned them when they needed you most. You took away their training, their perks and the things they looked forward to just to hang on to a few lousy dollars. They feel abandoned now and they have as much loyalty for you as they felt you had for them.

Employees don't leave an employer - they leave their managers and their culture - specifically managers who make your corporate culture hard to swallow.

Now before you hire the Employee Engagement consultants as a knee-jerk attempt to fix the problem, let me clue you in on what the real problem is and why employees don't engage. It's not because there aren't enough perks. It's not because the work isn't rewarding. It's not because the cubicle is too small. It's, most times, because the supervisor is a jerk who under-appreciates them, who treats them like a number, who plays favorites and who has little or no compassion or soft-skills as a decent human being.

Can you honestly say that each and every manager in your group could muster up the courage to have a heart-to-heart with an employee about a sick child at home or to be truly thankful and grateful for the work of their employees? Do your managers, in addition to being taught how to manage, have the ability to communicate feelings or just to bark orders?

You may have been able to get away with that when you had a full complement of Baby Boomers working for you but the numbers are turning and by late next year, Gen Y's will outnumber Boomers in the workplace. Your workers want only a few things and they will actively engage themselves:

• a decent work environment - not a funky new office but a place where they feel like they matter, are told so and are asked their opinions and ideas on company initiatives.
• a rewarding career - not just a job but something that they can become more than just proficient in and be encouraged to become considered one of the best in their field.
• a manager who is as much a coach and mentor as they are a boss - someone who can find the drive, the spark and the magic in every single employee and find ways to inspire those employees to reach for the next level daily.
• a senior management that doesn't just pay lip-service to the softer side of doing business - but a senior management team that actually encourages it and if a manager is incapable of coaching and inspiring, they fire his ass to save their good people.

If you've got a manager or two who refuse to accept that business is run by people, for people and to serve people then I encourage you to pay the legal bills to remove that manager instead of having to pay the recruiting, re-training and recurring bills of getting a constant parade of new employees up to speed.

If you want your employees to engage, you had better engage your managers. If you've got high attrition numbers in one or two departments, it's because of your managers. Stop buying the department manager's excuses and remove them. Your managers are costing your company good people and a lot of money.
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How to Break the Cycle of Complaining

Complainers are like smokers: most want to banish them to the back-forty and out of the public eye. Smokers know better than anyone what it feels like to be ostracized from polite society. They've been moved away from the public places and entryways and forced to even cross the road to fire up at the airport. And because of the inconvenience of being a smoker and the social implications that come with it, smokers' numbers have dwindled. Smokers also know the health hazards associated with it.

But this is about complainers, not smokers, serial complainers to be precise - not the people who occasionally find a problem that needs a solution.

Whiners and complainers have not been sent packing in the same way as smokers because people fail to see the connection between complaining and their own results in life. There are hazards to complaining just like there are hazards to smoking:

• Complainers are picked last for teams and activities.
• Complainers don't get invited to parties for fear of bringing the event down.
• Complainers are reported to management more than any other personality type.
• Complainers rarely have 'good" friends - mostly just sympathetic ears too afraid to say something.
• Complainers do not get promoted at work. Period.

How many of your bosses got their jobs by complaining their way to the top? Think about it.

Until complaining becomes as socially unacceptable as smoking, it will continue. People need to stand up and say, "If you're about to whine, moan or complain, I'm not interested in hearing it." But most won't do that because people want so desperately to be liked and to not offend. Yet, whining is offensive. People are so afraid to stop a complainer for seeming heartless. They don't want to offend but will endure offensive behavior. I don't get it.

Here's how you break the cycle of complaining: you say something. Until people stand up and say, "if you want to complain, take it outside," not much is going to change. I learned long ago that in order to change a human behavior requires a significant emotional event. Scolding a complainer in a public place (embarrassing them) would qualify as a significant emotional event. Being embarrassed is a huge fear for 90% of the population but no thought is given to how much they embarrass themselves when they complain incessantly. A single public humiliation would begin to change the behavior. If you want to stop a repeat of the same-old same-old, speak up and act immediately before you allow the complainer's complaining to become a habit (like smoking).

In the same way kids follow their parents' model (smoking), so too will they follow in how they look at and complain about the world. Someone has to break the cycle. Say something.
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A Thanksgiving Attitude of Gratitude

This is the Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. I'm not sure why Canadians celebrate 6 weeks earlier than the US (actually, the first celebration of Thanksgiving was actually celebrated in Canada in 1578...43 years before the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth). Perhaps the pilgrims hung out here for our Thanksgiving and then spent some time devising a plan for what theirs would look like when they landed (could have happened.) Maybe they took a little sabbatical in Canada after the arduous journey across the Atlantic - you know, kind of a long, long-weekend to get rested up before they made history just south of Boston. Anyway, this is the weekend that Canadians give thanks.

You don't need to actually have a special day to give thanks. You are allowed to be thankful all of the time. Thanksgiving day is simply to remind you of what you should be doing the other 364 days of the year - being thankful for what you've got.

This year, during the toasts at the dinner table, more people will probably be giving thanks for having a job. There will also be a higher number of people who are giving thanks for their families, their health and their roof over their heads despite being jobless. I guess as Canadians, we could be thankful for the how quickly the economy has turned around. We are one of the first G8 countries to emerge from recession. We still have a ways to go but we are on our way. Things will be better soon.

An Attitude of Gratitude is needed to weather the tough economic storms. Finding your internal gratitude for all of the things that life throws at you not only makes you stronger, but actually increases your chances of success.

• Gratitude helps you attract more opportunity and better relationships.
• Gratitude generates far more success than does a sense of entitlement.
• Gratitude allows people to sleep better at night with less worry.
• Gratitude makes people happier, less stressed and overall better workers.
• And finally, people who possess an Attitude of Gratitude are chosen as leaders, are promoted more and are chosen for job positions more often than those who choose not to show their gratitude.

If ever there was a case to be made to give thanks for whatever it is life has handed you so far, that last point is the one that matters. Give thanks for all of it.
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