Strategic Employee Recognition: by Derek Irvine

Recognise This! – Celebrating the deeper and broader value of what your employees contribute to every day makes work meaningful.

As most readers of my blog know, I’m Irish. Though I tend to divide my time between our Dublin and Boston offices, I can’t claim to be a true fan of any American sporting leagues.

Most know the American Football Super Bowl is the most watched show on television with 110 million viewers. With an audience of that size, it’s not surprising how expensive advertising spots have become. According to Forbes:

“This year, commercials cost $3.5 million for 30-seconds on average to air. Add to the cost another $2-or-3 million for production and the celebrities’ fees, and it’s more like $5 or $6 million for a 30-seconds ad in the Super Bowl. …

Recognise This! -In recognition and reward programmes for Call Centre employees, be sure you are reinforcing desired behaviours and outcomes, not just results.

Occasionally, I receive questions through the “Email Derek” button in the upper-right corner of this blog that have a broader interest to the readers of the blog. One such question came in from Sudan  over the weekend asking:

I work as an HR manager for a call centre and HR consulting business. What are your thoughts on:
1. Employee rewards for call centre employees?
2. How to minimise unnecessary organisation meeting?

Call centres can be tricky as the typical method of motivating employees is through incentives. In answer to Sudan’s first question, I’ll refer to a couple of past posts on the topic.

Recognise This! – Employee engagement most certainly is not something else you must do. It must be primary focus to gain greatest competitive advantage and success in the marketplace.

I’m quite impressed by the level of commitment in Britain to employee engagement, first demonstrated in the very comprehensive MacLeod Employee Engagement Report of 2009, written by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke. Then last Spring, an Employee Engagement Task Force was created to bring together HR practitioners with others concerned about how to best engage employees and encourage them to give of their best every day.

Last week Nita Clarke conducted a video interview with People Management magazine. (I cannot embed the video for you, but it is available here.)

Recognise This! -  The corporate culture appropriate for your organisation is unique to you.

I write regularly about company culture, the importance of getting your culture right for your organisation, and how strategic recognition is a powerful method for achieving that culture. But let’s be clear on two critical points:

1)   Your culture is unique to your organsiation.

Recognise This! – You have many options instead of forced ranking for effective performance management.

Yesterday, I shared my opinion on forced ranking as a performance management tool (it should die) along with a true story of the real damage force ranking does when applied.

Today, I’m pointing you to the wisdom of some of my favourite bloggers on forced ranking in particular and performance management more generally. In no particular order (all are brilliant):

From John Hollon on TLNT: “Forced Ranking: Good Management, or Just a Flawed and Arbitrary System?”