Make Their Day Blog

Is the economy affecting employees’ sense of being valued? Are the lack of raises, reduction in benefits, and increased workload having their toll? People who don’t feel valued aren’t usually engaged or motivated, so knowing the effect of economic changes on sense of value is important information for companies struggling to stay productive.

Over the course of  six weeks Make Their Day conducted a survey that asked:

“Do you feel more or less valued than a year ago?”

Of the 247 people who responded, the largest percentage (42%) said they feel less valued than they did one year ago. In contrast 31 percent reported no change and 28 percent said they feel more valued. Given the circumstances in most organizations: cutbacks, downsizing, extreme budgeting, it doesn’t seem surprising that people might feel less valued than they did a year ago. What you might find surprising is why they feel less valued.

The most sited cause of significant change in the way they feel was not pay, benefits, or work overload. It was the behavior of the manager or supervisor (49%)!

It always seems to come down to the relationship of the individual to the manager. People can tolerate just about anything but a manager who doesn’t seem to care. Here are a few comments from respondents who stated that they feel significantly less valued now than a year ago:

My manager is less positive.

There is less communication.

Managers are too busy trying to be heroes to their managers.

My manager is angry and disengaged.

These comments seem to indicate that there are more than a few managers who also feel less valued. Organizations often forget the importance of manager engagement in maintaining employee engagement. The following comment is from a respondent who says he/she feels significantly more valued, shows the value of engaged managers:

We have had no cost of living increase for two years in a row, the bonus plan has been stopped, and staff meetings no longer have lunch provided. My “living” costs continue to go up even though my bring-home income has decreased. This, obviously, does not feel good.

A few months ago we (”the staff”) put together three pages of grievances for and about “the management” along with suggestions for improvement. The management responded immediately and positively! We’ve been working with an outside consultant to ensure that everyone treats each other with dignity and respect. What a turn-around! It was risky, because there’s good talent out there that could potentially replace us. The way management handled this has made all of us feel more valued, as you can imagine.

This respondent doesn’t say what the grievances were, but clearly feeling respected was at the core of their concerns. Their managers’ engagement and interest in making improvements in spite of the economy really turned around a difficult situation. I hope employees recognized their managers for  coming through for them!

To see the results of this survey click here.

I just finished reading Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain. When I started this book, I never figured it would end up getting a mention in my blog, but you never know where stories of great workplaces will come from.

Towards the end of the book is the story of an employee at the celebrated restaurant, Le Bernadin. Le Bernadin is considered one of the top fish restaurants in the country, if not the top. How does a restaurant get to be the best? I believe the story that Bourdain tells about an extraordinary fish cleaner provides some clues:

1) The fish cleaner, Justo, makes a decent salary (unheard of in a restaurant).

2) His work is results-based. He leaves when he is done rather than when is hours are up.

3) The chef at Le Bernadin treats everyone the same (Justo compares this to his last place where they “didn’t even say good morning.”

4) Everyone addresses everyone else, regardless of position, as “chef.” They consider it a sign of respect.

5) They work with a common vision, that each piece of fish represents the chef’s reputation. Quality really is the focus. They are striving for perfection.

Results focus and respect. It is a winning combination wherever you find it.

The past few weeks I’ve read three books: Influence The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Caldini, Influencer The Power to Change Anything by the authors of Crucial Conversations, and Sway The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Braeman.

Why these three books? First, I wanted to learn more about what outside influences affect our behavior. What exactly are the extrinsic motivators that cause people to do what they do? Second, I wanted to see how we can apply this information to what managers can do to create a more motivating work environment.

Sway and Influence both come at the topic from the perspective of unwanted external motivators. Influencer looks at intentional use of external  motivators to affect positive change. Today I will explore Sway and Influence. Next post, Influencer.

Sway looks at what motivates us to behave in an irrational manner, doing things that, when we stand back and observe, just don’t seem to make sense. The authors build a strong case for a and is very interesting in helping us to avoid the triggers that produce irrational behavior. You could tie each motivator they discuss back  to the workplace. It would be worthwhile to explore the impact of each. For the purpose of this article, I want to focus on two triggers that really resonated.

Extrinsic motivator #1:  Labels. One of the most powerful concepts for managers to understand is how labels affect our perception.

Do we see an individuals current performance or do we see what we expect to see?

One example the authors provide is from sports. It seems draft pick number, the order in which players are selected to join a professional team, affects players playing time even years later. The primary factor in determining how much playing time an individual receives was not how well they play now, but how valuable they were rated before joining the league.

Think about how this plays out in the workplace. Once  a manager labels an employee a poor performer that manager is much less likely to see good performance. He looks for the behavior and results that confirm his perception and ignores conflicting evidence. Couple this phenomena together with employees who tend to live up or down to expectations and you have a recipe that makes improvement pretty tough.

Extrinsic motivator #2:  Compensation. Remember, this book is about irrational behavior, so the focus is on when compensation reduces performance. Weird huh?

The authors point out that when people are already motivated intrinsically, maybe they are doing something for the good of the community, compensation can actually decrease motivation. The authors provide examples from a number of experiments that show incentives can motivate someone not to act or to perform poorly. It seems that extrinsic motivators can squelch intrinsic motivators. To put it another way our mercenary tendencies can override the altruistic ones.

I don’t bring this up because I think we need to stop paying people, but because we need to look at what motivators are in play in any given situation and take care not to override the intrinsic with the extrinsic. This idea of conflicting motivators has very interesting implications for incentive programs and might explain why some incentive programs backfire.

The second book, Influence covers some of the same ground as Sway, dives deeper into the research, and takes a significantly more negative approach to the topic. In reading this book it sometimes  was hard to get past the feeling that the book should have been called Manipulation. I had to keep reminding myself that influence is, in and of itself, neutral and can be used for either good or evil.

Here is the extrinsic motivator from Influence that I found particularly relevant to my work in  employee recognition.

Extrinsic motivator #3:  Gifts. The desire to reciprocate is a strong intrinsic motivator triggered by the act of giving a gift (an extrinsic motivator). Caldini points out that reciprocation is used  to compel us to buy or donate. Companies give free samples and, at some level, we feel an obligation to make a purchase. Charities give an unwanted gift and the statistics show we feel obligated to donate.

The need to reciprocate when we are given a gift is  a powerful motivator. The need to reciprocate may partially explain why recognition improves performance. Recognition, whether in the form of praise or award, is a gift. When we receive the gift we want to give something back. I know there is far more to why recognition improves performance than simply wanting to give back, but it is part of why praise motivates us to work even harder.

Labels, compensation, and reciprocation, three motivators that the authors explore for the negative repercussions. Managers need to understand how these triggers work to avoid unintended consequences and reinforce good performance.

Next post, we’ll look at Influencer and explore a different perspective on extrinsic motivators.

An article in the Wall Street Journal online offers three ways to motivate recession-weary staff: ask for input, offer cross-training, and assist with family matters. These are all good ways to communicate staff value, but when you are talking about motivating the weary, there is an important ingredient missing, and that is FUN.

People need to laugh, or at least smile, at work. It reduces stress and increases cooperation. It is good for business.

How can you lighten up?

1) Give out a silly award. Get something cheap: an eight-ball, a wrench, a jar of peanut butter. Endow it with meaning: looking ahead, mistake of the week, smooth handling of a sticky situation. Keep it light-hearted. If you go with something like the mistake of the week, give yourself the first award.

2) Have a crazy contest: office miniature golf tournament, who can build the biggest house of cards in 5 minutes, or the ugliest pet contest.

3) Have a competition that relates to work and make the prizes fun: customer service contest between departments or branches with toy giraffes for the winners (sticking your neck out for great service), or a competition with previous results (production rate, error rate, safety record, increase in sales) and celebrate any win with a pizza party.

4) Add a touch of fun to your meetings: put a bit of humor in your PowerPoint, take a moment to play “something no one here knows about me is,” put toys on the table for people to fiddle with throughout the meeting.

When your routine is beginning to wear on your team, break with routine. Do something out of the ordinary. If your are afraid that people won’t like it, remember, even groans build energy.  Put some squishy stress balls on the table. Tell people that if they don’t like your humor, they can throw the ball at you. You will be surprised by the number of smiles you can generate in just a few minutes.

Now it is your turn. Tell us how you lighten up at work!

Copyright 2010 Cindy Ventrice

Focusing on your employees’ strengths engages them, while focusing on their weaknesses disengages them. Are you surprised? Probably not, but now it is confirmed by Gallup, which says managers who focus on:

• Strengths - have 61 percent engagement among employees and 1 percent disengagement.

• Weaknesses - have 45 percent engagement and 22 percent  disengagement.

Even more amazing, managers who ignore their employees have only 2 percent engagement and 40 percent disengagement!  I know managers are busy, but imagine how much more time they would have if an additional 39 percent of employees were engaged.

For more on focusing on strengths see this post and for more on criticism this post.

My question to you is, if focusing on the positive produces the best results, why don’t more managers do this?

In my interview yesterday with Wayne Hurlbert of BlogTalkRadio we talked about the Make Their Day philosophy of recognition. The hour was packed with information about the benefits of recognition for both managers and organizations, research into employee preferences, how to make recognition fair and individual, and what we need to do to maintain morale in the current economy.

The recording of this interview is available online:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/WayneHurlbert/2009/07/29/Cindy-Ventrice-Make-Their-Day

You can read Wayne’s review of the second edition of Make Their Day here:

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/make-their-day-second-edition-by-cindy.html

“You’re late.”
“I can’t believe you said that.”
“You didn’t listen to me.”

We all know people who always notice the mistakes and flaws of others and never comment on the positive. We would label them as critical.

Ask these critcial people about their comments, and they’ll tell you that they want to see improvement and need to point out what requires fixing. They would say they are discerning.

They may in fact be very observant and have astute critical feedback. The problem is, that once we have pegged them as critical, we ignore or resent their observations. And, as for likeability, well people certainly don’t flock to them. Put these critical/discerning people into the workplace, and they find they don’t get much cooperation. Make them managers, and they discover that they have to micromanage because employees aren’t motivated to take the lead.

Part of my job is convincing these managers and supervisors that they’ll get greater improvement with praise than criticism. For some this just seems counterintuitive. After all, if you want to fix something you need to point it out. Or do you?

I say “No, you don’t.” Instead, try praising what is working. Very often the person you have praised will take the initiative to figure out how to do things better on their own. Praise boosts confidence. A confident person is more able and willing to discern what needs improvement in themselves.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it works.

What has been your experience? Have you tried giving more or less criticism? What was the result? Have you had a manager who changed approaches? What was the result? Let us hear from you.

I  want to point your attention to a some upcoming engagements. Please keep in mind that if I am already coming to your area, a presentation to your organization can be a very budget-friendly investment.

You can register for any of the programs with links. The links will provide more information on costs, if any.

I’ve been working on a program I’ll be giving in Santa Clara on March 19th. The topic is employee recognition in a down economy. I am finding that many organizations don’t realize that recogniton doesn’t have to suffer because budgets have been slashed. In fact recognition becomes even more critical as morale is battered from so many directions.

There are two main points I plan to clarify for participants.

1) Recognition Doesn’t Have to Cost a Dime

With all the press about extravagant events, I am finding that it is even more important to talk about the difference between rewards and recognition. Employee appreciation events are rewards. Bonuses and incentives are rewards. Even company logo t-shirts are rewards (although they are not always appreciated rewards).

Recognition is an act, not a thing. Recognition doesn’t cost anything. Sometimes recognition is accompanied by a reward, but most of the time it is a thank you, praise, a new challenge, being trusted to do the right thing, or simply working with someone who knows you and what you bring to the team.

2) The Returns Are Enormous

The payback for offering meaningful recognition, for creating programs that make people feel visible and valued, is a workforce that is resilient, motivated, and highly productive. There are statistics and ancedotes a plenty to prove the value of good recognition.

Small budget, big payback. What more could you want?