Month: February 2013

How to Create a Memorable Employee Recognition Program

Good business practice involves appreciating and recognizing your employees. Although appreciation should be a natural activity for anyone, the truth is we all have different ways of giving and receiving gifts and appreciation. Some like verbal appreciation, while others like having an extra vacation day. Either way, employes want personal recognition, instead of a standard gift for all. So if you’re not careful, a thoughtless gift may actually backfire on you.

OC Tanner recently commissioned a study conducted by The Cicero Group entitled Optimizing Employee Recognition Programs. This study aimed to discover if awards are a viable form of employee recognition, and if so, whether cash works better than award items.

If your organization is looking to implement an effective employee reward system, I highly recommend reading this entire study as the six pages highlight some interesting findings. The statistics can come in handy when rationalizing employee reward programs to upper management.

The key takeaways for employee recognition programs are:

Award items are better than cash bonuses at contributing to the recognition experience.
Award items should be geared toward desire versus need. If cash is given, it will likely be spent on “need” items, such as bills. Therefore employees will likely forget about the recognition much faster than a more personalized award.
Though you may be rewarding employees with a tangible reward, verbal expressions of appreciation further augment and reinforce recognition and can “increase the degree of effectiveness by roughly 50 percent”.
Create a “tailored selection” of reward items that are unique and personal. This tells the employee that you took the time to offer something of value.

About the author:

Anne Loehr is the President of Anne Loehr and Associates, co-founder of Safaris for the Soul, and an Executive Leadership Coach for Mariposa Leadership, Inc. For more good reads, visit Anne Loehr’s personal blog at: www.anneloehr.com/blog/.

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February 21st, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like, Coaching Skills, HR / Talent Management, Strategy|Tags: Anne Loehr, employee recognition, HR Leade, leadership, Mariposa Leadership|

February 19, 2013 / Ask Mariposa / Coaching Skills / HR / Talent Management

Ask Mariposa: Team Listening Skills

Drew asked:

The CFO of our company is technically fantastic at her job, yet I am hearing from her team that morale is down because she is not that open minded and doesn’t listen well. What are some things she can do?

Barbara Baill, Senior Leadership Consultant responded:

Drew,

It’s great that your CFO has the technical component of the job down. Next, she needs to understand that the leadership components of her role are equally important. This is a common challenge for many who come to a leadership role through their technical expertise. Daniel Goleman, famous for his research in emotional intelligence, has identified that emotional intelligence is critical to effective leadership (refer to HBR, “What Makes A Leader”, Daniel Goleman, November-December 1998). He has identified five components for emotional intelligence for effective leaders: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. It sounds like your CFO could benefit from developing the capacity to show more empathy and build more rapport (social skills) with her people through active listening.

Your coaching of her will be key to her continued growth as a leader. Specifically, first give her straight and compassionate feedback. Appreciate the value of her technical expertise to the business. Second, explain her next opportunity for growth is as a leader of her team. As part of this, she will need to spend more team listening to her team in a way that they feel heard and appreciated. “Expert” executives often feel that their job is to have all the answers. You will need to coach her that her job as a leader is broader than that. It begins by having an engaged and empowered team. The first step in that process is listening to the team, building rapport, and only then, will she be able to motivate them towards a common goal. Through your coaching, you will be increasing her self-awareness as you help her to develop the leadership part of her role.

This is a great opportunity for the two of you to work together to enhance her contributions to the overall business and become an more effective leader.

For more resources on developing leadership skills, refer to previous Ask Mariposa blogs.

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February 19th, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa, Coaching Skills, HR / Talent Management|Tags: ask mariposa, Barbara Baill, coaching, communication, Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence, empathy, HBR, HR Leade, listening skills, rapport|

/ Wise Talk Teleconference

Pathways to Growth

WISE TALK February 2013: Sue Bethanis talks with INSEAD professor, Laurence Capron on how to guide your organization for optimal growth.

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February 19th, 2013|Categories: Wise Talk Teleconference|

February 15, 2013 / Book Reviews

Book Review: Build, Borrow, or Buy

Build, Borrow, or Buy:
Solving the Growth Dilemma
By: Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell

Head: (4 of 5)
Heart: (3.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4.5 of 5)

Build, Borrow, or Buy draws from two decades of research into how some companies succeed in developing powerful new business capability, while many others fail. Authors Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell provide us with powerful and essential tools to help leaders decide whether to innovate within (build), work with joint ventures (borrow), or expand (buy) when they need to acquire new resources for growth.

The book provides examples from large corporations, such as HP, Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, and Cisco, as well as smaller companies (from all over the world), which have created sustainable growth strategies reflected in the pathway framework:

Build – When should you develop internally?
Borrow – The untapped potential of strategic partners and joint ventures
Buy – Mergers and acquisitions strategy

The authors argue that there is no one sure fire way of growing, and that firms at different times, and for different reasons, should pursue whatever is most suitable, using their framework to help make the right decisions. Nevertheless, many firms rely on only one model for growing, and suffer accordingly.

Build, Borrow or Buy provides valuable insights for all decision makers. They all have a vital leadership role to ensure that the resource pathways framework will deliver powerful benefits to the success of the business.

Click here to learn more or join our February Wise Talk with author Laurence Capron and submit your questions.

We welcome your thoughts in the comments section below.

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February 15th, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: laurence capron, Mariposa Leadership, Strategy, wise talk|

February 12, 2013 / Ask Mariposa / HR / Talent Management

Ask Mariposa: Creating an Employee Recognition Program

Kristine asked:

I’ve been tasked with creating an employee recognition program, whatever that is. Help!

Tawny Lees, COO responded:

Hi Kristine,

How fun! What’s better than helping people recognize and appreciate each other more regularly? Right, now for the hard part – finding a way to create a program so that people will actually participate and value it. First off, you need a plan. At a high level it will probably look something like:

Assess/Scope
Design
Launch
Maintain

During “assess/scope” you will need to get some questions answered to map out the rest of the plan effectively. What’s the impetus for this program? What’s the objective? What’s the budget? Who are the key stakeholders and decision makers? Any time expectations? During “design” you will certainly want to spend time with many employees across the organization to get in their shoes, research, generate ideas, try a prototype and get feedback until you come up with a final program design and approval. See the many resources here on our blog and site about Design Thinking. Within “launch” you’ll want to identify champions in addition to a communication strategy. And then once everything is in place, clear ownership around on-going program maintenance and tweaking is critical. Without on-going ownership, the program will fizzle and could have negative ramifications instead of the positive outcomes you desire. Good luck and have fun with it!

Share your thoughts on this response in the comments section below.

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February 12th, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa, HR / Talent Management|Tags: ask mariposa, design thinking, HR Leade|