Want to significantly reduce personnel turnover/churn in your company while dramatically increasing engagement and productivity at the same time?
Of course! What if you could do it with little to no financial expense? What business leader doesn’t, right?
The answer to that first question is simple and (nearly) free: regularly and consistently recognize team members in a meaningful way. That almost seems like a no-brainer… people are motivated when you recognize them and make them feel good about themselves.
In fact, 89% of companies in the marketplace right now have some kind of recognition program already in place, with most companies recognizing team members in eight different categories on average. This includes things like length of service, above-and-beyond performance, customer service, productivity, and quality.
I’m sure almost everyone reading this right now probably has some kind of initiative or program in place to recognize people in their organization. So the people on our teams should feel recognized right?!
WRONG!
9 out of every 10 people working in the marketplace today agree that receiving recognition will motivate them to work harder and take on more responsibility, but only about 2 out of those 10 workers say that they the recognition they do receive is meaningful in any way.
Think back to the last time you went above and beyond for your team, department, or company. Did anyone acknowledge your efforts in a way that was actually meaningful to you? If not, feel free to join the three-quarters of the workforce that says they don’t feel valued in the workplace.
Or maybe you were given a gift card, a desk clock, or a watch… (These uninspiring, impersonal tokens are by far the top 3 “go-to items” for recognition programs across the board.) Did that make you feel personally appreciated in a meaningful way? Probably not.
Regardless of how many categories a company’s recognition program has, nearly half of their workforce has not been recognized for anything in the past 6 months. And 16% of them have slipped through the cracks and have never been recognized at all the entire time they’ve been with their company, regardless of their contributions.
But why does it matter?!
If your team members believe they are not being adequately recognized, they are twice as likely to quit and go work somewhere else within the next 12 months.
Want to know a secret?
1 out of every 4 of your “under-recognized” team members has already interviewed somewhere else in the last 90 days. And in the last year, nearly half of the high-performing employees in the workforce have left their companies to go work somewhere else.
But enough doom and gloom about the current state of affairs during “The Great Resignation”. We all know that personnel turnover is a huge issue in every industry.
So, what’s the solution?
Here are two easy things you can do starting today that require no extensive program revamps or resource commitments.
First, start looking for ways to catch people doing the right thing.
Your brain has a bundle of nerves at the brain stem called the Reticular Activating System (RAS), and its function is to prioritize information and stimuli from the world around you to pass on to the brain, and filter out everything else.
That’s why in loud, crowded room full of noise, you’ll hear someone call your name (or something that sounds like it). Or why when you start thinking about buying a Corvette, you’ll start noticing every Corvette that’s driving around on the road that seemingly weren’t there before.
Without getting too deep into the neuroscience and psychology behind it, the RAS looks for the things that your brain has told your subconscious mind are important and emphasizes those things in your environment. That’s why leaders who are focused on problem solving, catching people breaking rules, and fixing issues will find themselves elbows deep in problems, issues, and broken rules all the time.
Instead, if you commit to “catching” at least one person doing something right each day, your brain will tell your RAS to start subconsciously programming your awareness to see things that have been there all along, but were being filtered out.
The second thing is to start recognizing people doing the right thing in a way that is meaningful to them. Take those new things you’re starting to notice (by catching people doing the right thing), and invest a couple of extra minutes of your day expressing appreciation for them in a meaningful way.
How do you know what’s meaningful to the people on your team? Ask them! They will not hesitate to tell you if you’ve developed any kind of trust with them.
Your team members want to feel like what they’re doing matters, and simple gestures of appreciation will go a long way toward making them feel valued.
When leaders invest the time to recognize the small wins along the way or even just pause and say a simple “thank you” for specific contributions, they see an 83% increase in engagement at work. Investing the time to explain why someone’s efforts matter and what they mean to the company results in an almost tripled increase in the incidence of great work from that team member.
Also, the team member’s buy-in and sense of ownership nearly doubles as an additional result of meaningful recognition. Plus, when other team members see or hear about coworkers receiving meaningful appreciation, more than 90% of them will feel happier and more engaged at work themselves.
Acknowledging a team member’s contribution doesn’t have to be a big deal either, especially since about half the people on your team would prefer a low-key, private conversation instead of being formally recognized in front of the whole team.
So the answer to the opening question is simple: start proactively looking for people doing the right things, and express appreciation in ways that are meaningful to them personally.
If you want more information about celebrating wins with your team members in a way they find meaningful, grab a copy of my book, The Antidote – there’s a whole section in there about how to express appreciation for team members in meaningful ways. You can also check out the training resources on our website.
