Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and it’s a great example of what I call a “recognition holiday.” That is – since 1908, if you’re a mom, then you deserve to be recognized and thanked on Mother’s Day. Period. End of story. No other qualification or accomplishment is required.
For some, Mother’s Day is a rare annual moment of recognition. For other moms, the holiday is a slightly more formalized version of the recognition and thanks they receive on a week-to-week basis throughout the entire year. In either case, the day itself exemplifies rear-view recognition because the moment of appreciation is so far removed from the actions or events being recognized.
Does your organization’s culture promote rear-view recognition – thanking staff periodically for example at performance reviews, holiday parties, and summer picnics? Or do you provide more proactive continual reinforcement and recognition for your team? The difference is easy to detect in organizations and shows up most noticeably through employee engagement, morale, and discretionary effort.
If – like me – you believe that improvements to employee engagement, morale, and discretionary effort have a direct impact on accountability, revenue, profit, and customer loyalty, then every day you wait to implement a system of proactive continual reinforcement and recognition is another day of lost opportunity.
When employees feel good about their efforts and are applying them in a unified direction to achieve the goals of your business, great results tend to happen. A continual reinforcement and recognition system overwhelmingly stacks the deck in favor of these outcomes. Period. End of story.
The best news of all is that these systems are relatively simple to implement and cost virtually nothing – barely even any of your time (yes, really!).
