March is supposedly Employee Appreciation Month, with emphasis placed on March 7 as Employee Appreciation Day. More of my thoughts on the travesty of limiting employee appreciation to a single day in an upcoming post, but in honor of Employee Appreciation Month, I’ll be blogging throughout March about the employee devastation that’s been happening across companies and industries around the world. I also plan to hit on what you can do about it through consistent communication and recognition to regain competitive advantage and employee engagement, even during this worsening recession.
With the pressures mounting on managers from all directions, it becomes harder to notice the good but so much easier to punish the bad. Conversely, because of increased pressure, employees need to know their efforts are appreciated all the more, especially if you want them to keep delivering at a high level of performance. Stephen Friedman recently wrote on this topic of
catching your staff doing something good in the
Financial Post:
This approach of consistency in demonstration of emotion, praise and criticism contributes significantly to the culture of your company. In his most recent book,
The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines the impact of our cultural experiences and differences on influencing our tolerance for the behavior of others and how much we value and respect authority and hierarchy. What kind of culture are your creating within your organization or team and how is impacting these same areas – all critical to company success?
In the same vein, when recognizing employees for their efforts, you must consider the larger culture in which you are rewarding. Individual praise is welcome in the US, but less so in cultures more focused on the team and community, such as in Japan. To paraphrase Gladwell, an employee’s actions are not based on his or her personality and initiative alone, but also on the “tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down” in the community in which the employee grew up. These cultural legacies matter and powerfully persist “long after their usefulness has passed.”
How aware are you of the needs of your team members? Of your peers? Are you feeding those needs in a culturally appropriate way? Or are you contributing to the lowering of individual performance by ignoring or thwarting their needs or, worse yet, trying to address needs in a thoroughly inappropriate way? Has this happened to you? Tell your story in comments and share your story of recognition gone wrong on our
Facebook Fan page.