I’m not making this up…

Once, at a former workplace, our espresso maker got more peer nominations for Employee of the Month than anyone else. A high performer, true…but really?

That was the state of our morale. Our spirits had been broken by circumstances too mind-boggling to adequately describe here; but, we were truly disenchanted and pretty much walked around like an office full of zombies. Zombies who really valued a strong cup of coffee in the afternoon. 

When we set out to create our own internal peer recognition program, we had a pretty good feeling it was going to be popular. We’re Baudville, after all; if anyone knows how to recognize, we do. But I don’t think anyone expected that it would be this popular:

Today is Veteran’s Day. It’s a day when people and organizations across the country take time out of their busy schedules to recognize the service of the men and women who served in our armed forces. 

We understand and appreciate the importance of veterans in protecting our country and our freedom, so we honor them by saying thank you and acknowledging their contributions. Veterans and active duty members alike are motivated and inspired by the words of thanks from others. The recognition they receive contributes to the satisfaction they receive from doing their jobs. 

When I was at the HR Southwest Conference, I told many of the HR Professionals who stopped by the Baudville booth how easy it would be to train managers to use day-to-day recognition tools. Last week, I mentioned some of the day-to-day recognition that managers can easily implement in their regular schedule. In this entry, I’ll share some tips for training your managers to use those tools to motivate, engage and retain your people. 

1. Identify desired behaviors. A major obstacle keeping managers from recognizing employees is knowing what behaviors should be recognized. With a team of managers, review corporate values and give specific examples of what each behavior looks like in real life. 

Last week we conducted a poll on our blog asking visitors if they use social media to give recognition. Here were the responses: