Comments on: Employee Engagement: An Essential Ingredient for Business Success http://blog.allegiance.com/2009/01/employee-engagement-an-essential-ingredient-for-business-success/ Increasing Customer and Employee Loyalty, Satisfaction and Engagement Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:41:08 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Derek Irvine, Globoforce http://blog.allegiance.com/2009/01/employee-engagement-an-essential-ingredient-for-business-success/comment-page-1/#comment-758 Derek Irvine, Globoforce Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:09 +0000 http://blog.allegiance.com/?p=77#comment-758 Excellent post. I particularly agree with your call to action: "it's important that companies lead with their strengths, emphasize the positives, and remove the barriers that lead employees to be disengaged." Each of these elements is critical, and each should be addressed at the foundational level of the company -- its very culture. I believe a culture of appreciation, reinforced through a strategic employee recognition program, addresses each of these elements: 1) Lead with strengths -- company leaders invest a great deal of time in developing the company's values and objectives, those things the executives believe to be its strengths, but how many employees actually know what those values are, much less how they apply in their day-to-day work? Strategic recognition praises employees for actions and behaviors reflective of the values or objectives, reinforcing and encouraging repetition of precisely those behaviors needed to allow the company to "lead with strengths." 2) Emphasize the positives -- obviously, when recognizing employees for their work, you are emphasizing the positives. Formalizing and recording this praise in a recognition program lets you track these "positives" over time, by region, or by employee to begin to notice trends and areas for possible needed intervention to increase the positives. 3) Remove the barriers -- strategic recognition also encourages opening up the opportunity to recognize good performance to all employees in a peer-to-peer format. By encouraging everyone to notice and appreciate the above-and-beyond efforts of their colleagues, leaders begin to foster cooperation and a true culture of appreciation instead of one of competition. I blog extensively on this topic of culture of appreciation and strategic recognition here: http://globoforce.blogspot.com. Excellent post. I particularly agree with your call to action: “it’s important that companies lead with their strengths, emphasize the positives, and remove the barriers that lead employees to be disengaged.” Each of these elements is critical, and each should be addressed at the foundational level of the company — its very culture.

I believe a culture of appreciation, reinforced through a strategic employee recognition program, addresses each of these elements:

1) Lead with strengths — company leaders invest a great deal of time in developing the company’s values and objectives, those things the executives believe to be its strengths, but how many employees actually know what those values are, much less how they apply in their day-to-day work? Strategic recognition praises employees for actions and behaviors reflective of the values or objectives, reinforcing and encouraging repetition of precisely those behaviors needed to allow the company to “lead with strengths.”

2) Emphasize the positives — obviously, when recognizing employees for their work, you are emphasizing the positives. Formalizing and recording this praise in a recognition program lets you track these “positives” over time, by region, or by employee to begin to notice trends and areas for possible needed intervention to increase the positives.

3) Remove the barriers — strategic recognition also encourages opening up the opportunity to recognize good performance to all employees in a peer-to-peer format. By encouraging everyone to notice and appreciate the above-and-beyond efforts of their colleagues, leaders begin to foster cooperation and a true culture of appreciation instead of one of competition.

I blog extensively on this topic of culture of appreciation and strategic recognition here: http://globoforce.blogspot.com.

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