In the Jungle

by Christy Kessler

There’s a compelling link between appreciation or recognition and employee engagement.  Yes, that’s right – it’s the simple things that matter most to employees!

You might ask yourself, why turn such attention to recognition during tough economic times? Well, it’s appreciating employees and training managers to regularly appreciate employees that serve as keys to precipitating more welcome change for the future – growth for the organization.

Create opportunities for managers to lead through recognition and make managers more relevant to employees.  Spend time developing your front line managers – help them be more effective in engaging and managing the performance of their teams.  Help managers understand that their behaviors impact employee engagement and, ultimately, the bottom line of the organization.

And, creating a consistent approach to recognition across the organization makes a difference.  In a review of more than a dozen global high performing organizations*, supervisors from high performing organizations who recognize their employees when they do a good job outperform typical organizations by 8%.  And, employees are 5% more satisfied with the recognition they receive for doing a good job in high performing organizations as compared to regular organizations.

Successful companies are focused on recognition for employee retention and engagement because when you have engaged employees you can’t help but have a successful organization. 

Recognition moves employees forward.  It’s one process we can use to help build the engagement of our employees.

Isn’t it time you invested more in appreciating your employees?

*Source:  Lightspeed Research – The Foresight Group – Global Normative Database