Recognition

Our company recently celebrated our Employee Appreciation Day and I had the pleasure of spending my day meeting with most of our employees in the region thanking them for what they do every day.   My experiences last week forced me to reflect that Employee Day is a lot like Mother's Day, we all make a big mistake by only celebrating it for 1/365 of the year.   We need to do something about this, more on that in a moment. 

The satisfaction I get from recognising people for doing great things reminds me of a conversation I had with Peter Hart, CEO Rideau Recognition.   Peter's company is dedicated to helping corporations reward and recognize their employees more effectively as well as conducting ground breaking research into recognition programs.   At the meeting Peter was facilitating he informed us that good recognition programs create a healthier workplace, I thought to myself of course it does that simply means more fun at work.   Afterwards I spoke with him and he repeated this.   I said of course everybody feels better when they are told they are doing a good job.  Peter told me that their research shows that it goes even deeper then feeling good, a number of studies have indicated that a stressful work place increases cortisol levels in the body that leads to decreased functioning of the immune system and increased risk of heart attack.  A company that properly recognizes their employees for their contribution can reduce the stress in the workplace.   Recognition in the work place can actually make both the giver and receiver healthier, reducing the risk of illness along with increasing job satisfaction - incredible.

One of the most effective ways of reducing stress in the workplace is through recognizing employees.  This does not mean simply presenting somebody with a 25 year pin for service in the company.   Real recognition must be:

Authentic

Specific

Timely

Personal

If we miss any one of these in our recognition we have missed an excellent opportunity to recognize somebody for the great work they do.   It is not only management's responsibility to recognize great people, everybody plays a role in creating a great place to work and using Real recognition every day. 

We have several ways of recognizing great work in several different medias such as paper, electronic and of course in person each having different impacts.   Recongnition takes a conscious effort and most importantly recognition begins with the individuals name and it must be Real.  As Roy Sanderson from Rideau Recognition's Management Institute states "it's not just about how you feel it is about how the recipient feels".   For more interesting information on recognition read Peter Hart's Blog

I started out this post by mentioning Employee Appreciation Day, the energy I saw in each of the stores was incredible with the enthusiasm transfering to our clients.    This day and the response has had me asking our leadership team why we do not have that atmosphere every day, or at least once per week?  We cannot find a single answer,  however recognition plays a role in this and needs to play a role sustaining this atmosphere.   I would ask you to help us understand how we can recreate this more often through posting comments on this site or sending me an e-mail.

I saw so many great people proud to be RBC employees I started asking their history with the company and why they work here, I quickly became overwhelmed with the feedback and finally pulled out my phone and started recording.   Here is a two minute summary of what I heard:


http://vimeo.com/25060695 from Michael Adamcryck on Vimeo.