I recently had a shopping experience in downtown Aspen, Colorado, that I thought was remarkable. I had just finished helping a friend move furniture and was dressed and dirtied as such. I had a finite amount of time to shop for my niece’s birthday present and stopped into a high-end children’s store. 

I expected to feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman based on previous Aspen shopping experiences when I thought I actually looked presentable. The clerk approached me immediately, asked what I was looking for and promptly pulled out every item that checked the boxes. Sparkly. Blue. Princess-like. I bought three things. Later, I called the store to ask for a manager so I could share my experience. I didn’t get a manager, but a woman took my message and said she would pass it to the manager. 

A week later, I stopped in to ask the manager if she had received the message. She said she had and that she was happy to know her employee “did what was expected of her.” I asked the manager if she told her employee that a customer had called to compliment her. The manager said, “No. It should be expected that we would accept any customer’s money no matter what their appearance. I’m not going to reward the basic expectation.”

I stopped into the same store a week later with a hand-written thank you note and box of specialty cookies for the clerk who had helped me. I told her that I just wanted her to know that her kindness and help were noticed and appreciated and that I likely wouldn’t have spent nearly so much in the store had she not made me feel like her best customer. She was floored. I told her that I called her boss and let her know also and that I hoped she’d be recognized. She told me that in five years at the store, her boss has never praised her work.  

That doesn’t even seem possible. In five years of work, an employee doesn’t remember a single occasion during which she was praised. Though I’ll tell you right now, if someone asked me how many times in the past decade a boss praised me for exceptional commitment to my work, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a single time.

Stop rewarding burning the candle at both ends (save for the huge negotiation, or final arguments in a big trial, or seeing a big software installation across the finish line) and start rewarding and recognizing your teams for the great work that they do and the ways that their behavior positively impacts your culture, your company and your customers. 

According to Gallup, “only one in three workers in the U.S. strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work in the past seven days. Further, employees who do not feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year.” It is critically important that those who are performing well in an organization know that they are being seen and appreciated.

Recognition should be personal and specific. The more you know about what motivates and inspires your employees, the better you will be at rewarding them. Several years ago, I worked with a leader who doled out massage gift cards to a local spa to his employees when he wanted to recognize them. He personally couldn’t imagine a better way to say “thank you” than treating people to an hour of relaxation. Soon after he left the company, I was charged with conducting an exit interview for one of his employees who also was leaving.. We had a wonderful conversation full of insights. At the end of the meeting, she handed me a small stack of massage gift cards. She said she was unable to use them because of a health condition that made her skin very sensitive to touch. Take the time to know what motivates and inspires your employees. Heck, take the time to know them as people first.

Over the years, I have adapted a tool that I found from the Center for Sales Strategy called the “Individual Management Questionnaire.” It was designed to understand the motivations of salespeople. I adopted it to become a general tool for my whole team that I included as part of onboarding for any new employee, and I reviewed and updated it for current employees every couple of years (though annually would have been ideal). It helped me to gauge everything from what topping they like on a pizza and what their favorite snack is to whether they prefer to be recognized in public or privately. It also asked them to rank different rewards in order of preference such as money, time off, flexible work schedule, etc. 

I have spent many years following the path of Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute. I believe deeply in their principles and their pathway to improving the lives of the people we employ. I also believe in their practice of recognizing employees authentically by not just saying, “Great job, Bob. You’re a real team player,” but taking the time to recognize feeling, behavior and impact. “Bob, I am so grateful for the way that you stepped up in our sales meeting to voice your support of our new software system. You gave credibility to the project from a user perspective, and you were a voice of reason among the team who was getting visibly upset. I think the implementation will be more successful because of your leadership.”

Bryce Jacobson, Chief Revenue Officer at Seaton Publishing and one of my favorite former colleagues at Swift Communications, is famous for his handwritten cards to the partners/spouses of his employees. When an employee of his is spending extra hours or effort at work, he knows that this can mean there are sacrifices at home. While he always rewards and recognizes employees, he will often send a note home to recognize how their family member is impacting the organization while thanking the significant other for their role in supporting his employee. What a wonderful way to go above and beyond. Take the time to care.

Reward and recognition programs can be formal with policies, guidelines and an annual budget. These programs can have an amazing impact and contribute to recruitment, retention and overall job satisfaction. But rewarding and recognizing employees needs to be neither formal nor have an annual budget to be successful. Intentional, personal and authentic recognition is what employees will long remember. 

There are five things that every employer, big or small, can do to take a big step toward meaningful recognition:

    1. Take the time to learn something about each employee that will help you to recognize them personally and more appropriately. Find out whether they love to be called up in front of a room of people to receive thanks or if they’d prefer a handwritten note or an email. Know whether they prefer a bag of popcorn or a box of Junior Mints. 
    2. Look for opportunities to recognize people. Recognition shouldn’t be forced, but it also shouldn’t be reserved only for monumental achievements. Find the people who are constant examples of your company’s values, who always show up with their A-game and give 100%, and who excel as measured by their performance objectives. An employee who demonstrates over-the-top customer service or goes out of their way to help a colleague should be as praiseworthy as someone who achieves a big sales target. How you recognize the achievements might be different, but that you recognize them is the important part.
    3. Keep a small stash of rewards handy so that being “out of supplies” isn’t the reason you forget to acknowledge someone. The stash can include a variety of small gift cards, nice thank you cards, candy treats, etc. Make it easy on yourself to recognize someone in the moment.
    4. Handwritten notes mean more. Why don’t we all write long letters to family members and friends and mail them when we want to say something important? Because it takes time and effort that we aren’t usually willing to invest. When someone receives a handwritten card, it automatically tells them they matter, because they know it took time – a precious commodity – to write the card.
  • Give timely recognition. Don’t be too busy to tell people they’re great when they are great. Praise in the moment is what keeps people motivated to keep up the good fight. 

 

Samantha Johnston is the founder and lead strategist at Strategy Hound, LLC. She fondly recalls telling a peer several years ago that she knew she was doing a good job because she kept getting more work assigned to her. A cursory look through her desk drawer revealed exactly zero handwritten notes from her boss.