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.

A few months ago, I wondered,”Is the economy affecting employees’ sense of being valued?”
For the past two years employees have coped with a lack of raises, reduction in benefits, and increased workload. I wondered, was this having an effect?

People who don’t feel valued aren’t usually engaged or motivated, so knowing the affect of economic changes on sense of value is important information for companies struggling to stay productive.

So I conducted a survey that asked:

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

The largest percentage (42%) of respondents 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.

To see the results of this survey click here.

I have written before about how the positive work an organization does in the community reflects positively on employees and provides inherent recognition. Employees who work for companies that do good have pride in where they work. An example is the Haiti relief effort going on in many organizations.

Organizations and employees around the world are stepping up to help in the relief efforts in Haiti, and I asked readers to tell me what is happening in their organizations. These are the stories they shared with me:

The Pacific National Exhibition in British Colombia holds a monthly “Jeans Day” where employees donate a minimum of $5 to wear jeans on the last Friday of the month. A quick thinking program organizer changed the scheduled recipient for January to the Canadian Red Cross’ Haiti relief efforts. The final result: over $300 donated.

The National Marrow Donor Program , based in Minneapolis, lent two satellite phones and paid $4000 in calling minutes to Healing Haiti, an organization that was setting up two orphanages outside Port au Prince.

Kids4Change is sponsoring a letter drive, asking children to write letters and poems, draw pictures, etc to be sent to children in Haiti. If you want to participate send cards and letters to Kids4Change, 609 Piedmont Avenue, Rocky Mount, NC 27803. They will be collecting cards throughout the month of February 2010.

Manhattan Toy sent 1000 puppets to be included in care kits that the Children’s Hospital of Minnesota is sending.

San Diego based Superior Mobile Medics’ 98 employees held a variety of fundraisers (spaghetti lunch, pancake breakfast, ice cream social, book exchange, and more) and raised over $1200 and SMM is matching the funds they raised.

Canadian temporary agency, Hunt Personnel sent out a donation request email to their 85 employees, offering to match any funds raised. They donated $2500.

What is your organization doing? Let me know!

By the way, for the month of February I will donate 100% of the proceeds from group licensing of the webinar Small Budget, Big Payback.

All the best,

Cindy Ventrice

An article in HR Magazine (January) looks at taking a recognition program online.  Discovery Communications (Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet) had a recognition program that was introduced in 2006.  For this program managers nominated staff and then were responsible for gathering up to five levels of approval. Each nomination then went to a recognition program administrator who reviewed the nominations to ensure that award sizes were consistent with achievement. Expected turnaround: 30 days.

A program  guaranteed to frustrate managers

Put yourself in the  shoes of a manager who wants to recognize an employee and give them an award under this program.  You complete a nomination. Now you need to walk the nomination form around for six approvals. What goes through your mind? Here are a few of my thoughts:

• I don’t have time for this!
• Is this person exceptional enough to justify the hassle?
• Does HR think I’m incompetent?

Not surprisingly, according to HR Director Leah Coyne,  under this program “Very few awards were granted each year.”

Goals for the new system

Globoforce worked with Discovery to create a new system that

• encouraged rather than discouraged use,
• provided faster turnaround, and
• resulted in more awards to more employees.

These strike me as important goals for improvement.

What they implemented and the results

The new system handles the nominations online, but still requires that 3-4 people review/approve a nomination for award. With less approvals and online administration, they are handled faster than before. The result is a significant increase in the number of employees awarded, from 2 to 20 percent of the workforce. The article doesn’t mention the new turnaround time.

I still wonder about the number of levels of review required. The article never mentions the dollar value of the awards, so I don’t know if this amount  of control seems reasonable. I certainly hope they aren’t putting managers through this in order to give out $25 gift cards.

The results do seem to speak for themselves, in addition to increased usage: “a 2009 survey of award recipients and managers reported having more connection to the company, being more engaged in their work, and feeling more satisfied and appreciated as a result of receiving awards.”

Copyright 2010 Cindy Ventrice

We are wrapping up a really tough year. We have experienced layoffs and budget cuts and are all struggling to do more with less.

Many people were laid off this year. Some are back to work, at least with temporary assignments. Others are still struggling to find work. It can be really demoralizing. If you know someone who has lost their job this first resolution is for you:

1) Stay connected. For those who have been out of work for awhile, it is easy to fall into a funk and withdraw. Help them out. Send an occasional email, take them to lunch, make a LinkedIn introduction, anything that let’s them know you are thinking about them.

For those who are employed, employment generally means a greater workload, less resources, less compensation and/or benefits. In some workplaces the atmosphere has become oppressive while in others, people have come together with a strong ‘can do’ spirit.  The atmosphere all depends on the attitudes and actions of absolutely every person who works there.

We all want to work in a great place. If you don’t, be the catalyst for positive change. Here are two simple workplace resolutions that will help turn your organization around:

1) Say thank you. These two simple words tell your colleagues that you appreciate them. You will soon see how appreciative they are as well.

2) Acknowledge your coworkers. Few of us work in a vacuum. Acknowledge the support and encouragement that others provide. Praise their contributions. Share the credit.

Two workplace resolutions (that work equally as well at home): praise and appreciation. Neither takes much time. You can keep it as simple as you like. Offer both and you will see smiles. People will be more cooperative and positive. Your workplace will be more enjoyable (and probably more productive as well!)

These are resolutions you can keep and you will make someone’s day over and over again. What would you add to the list?

Copyright 2009 Cindy Ventrice

In my little corner of Northern California, it’s common wisdom that “big box” stores represent soul-destroying corporate greed. Few people in our little community would readily admit to shopping in a Costco or a Walmart. They believe that only small locally-owned stores can possibly be good.

I have a different view about where to shop. I will shop anywhere that treats employees well. When employees are treated well they tend treat customers and even vendors well. The theory doesn’t always hold up, but it is pretty reliable.

In 2007 Circuit City chose to lay off their experienced workers for cheaper models. When I read the news I stopped shopping in Circuit City. I never stepped foot in one again. I drove 30 miles or bought online until Best Buy came to town. Best Buy has a reputation of treating employees much better than their now defunct counterpart, so that is where I now shop.

Walmart tends to need to be forced into being a good employer. I have never shopped in one.

Costco is a different story.  I do shop at Costco.The employees of our local Costco tend to stick around for years, some since the store opened in 1994.  From the beginning, I read that they had good benefits and decent pay. I could see that employees were helpful and courteous. The store had quality products, often from local sources. It was clean and well-stocked. I don’t care that they are a big chain. From my perspective, they are a good, local business.

Today I read an article in Fast Company (November 2009 - I’m a little behind) that just confirms my view. Employees at Costco receive an average of $17 per hour ($13 is the national average). Costco pays 90% of insurance costs for both full and part time employees (According to SHRM the average for retail is around 54%).

Costco still seems like a good place to work and I will still continue to shop there.

What do you think?

I returned late last week from a long trip. The last leg of my journey was from Chicago to San Francisco. As I was boarding the plane, I noticed that Jerry Rice was sitting in first class talking on his cell phone. Now, I am not a football fan, but back when Jerry Rice and Joe Montana played in San Francisco I rarely missed a game. Seeing the two of them in action was like watching an intricate dance. It seemed more like art than sport.

In case you haven’t gathered, I am a Jerry Rice fan. So what did I do when I saw him seated on the aisle where I would need pass?

I ignored him.

I took my seat (much further back) and called my husband. When I got off the phone, a woman seated near me said, “Isn’t it great how no one acts as if they recognize him?”

Her question made me think - When is not recognizing someone as a good thing?

Clearly we all knew that gushing all over Mr. Rice would not be welcome. The man probably gets way more attention than he wants.

But how much recognition is too much? This is a question I get quite a lot. I used to tell supervisors that chances are pretty good that they haven’t exceeded anyone’s limit. Now I can say that if Jerry Rice isn’t on your team, you probably haven’t overdone it.

Seriously, there is a big difference between the recognition given by fans and that given by managers and coworkers. Fans recognize celebrities because they want to feel special themselves, to be able to say “I met Jerry Rice.” At work, it isn’t about us. We recognize to make the recipients feel valued. Can we really overdo that?

Watson Wyatt recently released a study regarding internal communication that held a big surprise for me. One of the areas of study was Goals of Communication Regarding the Economic Downturn. Easing stress, improving engagement, and managing change were the most frequent considerations. Retention, trust, and productivity rated lower as company communication goals, but by far the lowest rated goal was communicating the effect of the economy on benefits!

The study found that only 10 percent of employers worldwide were attempting to educate workers about the effect of the downturn on benefits. This figure breaks down as 9 percent U.S., 8 percent Europe, 4 percent Canada,  0 percent Australia, and 23 percent Middle East!

I am completed baffled. How do employers expect to reduce stress, while improving retention and trust if employees don’t understand the rationale behind changes to their benefits? What is the thinking behind this lack of communication?

Connect the dots and you can manage expectations and maintain trust and morale. Reduce benefits without a complete explanation and you destroy trust and morale. Seems pretty obvious, so why isn’t the necessary communication happening?

Do you have insights on this? I would like to hear from you.

I’ve been digging through some old posts that many readers of this employee recognition blog have never seen. Some are important enough that I want to draw them to your attention, especially when they offer low-cost ways to improve morale. This is one I hope you’ll read:

The Respect Filter

Are you familiar with the concept of the respect filter? The idea is that employees view what you do through a lense that is shaded according to the kind of relationship that you share. When the relationship is good they wear rose-colored glasses, and that is a good thing!

Yesterday, CareerBuilder.com posted the results of a recent survey.

They reported that those who were laid off in the past twelve months showed a strong preference for working for a small business. After job growth potential, the reasons given  included:

• A family-like work environment (56%),

• More employee recognition (49%),

• A sense that you can make a difference (48%), and

• An absence of corporate red tape (46%).

What I find interesting  isn’t that employee recognition appears on the list, but how all the listed reasons relate to the kind of employee recognition that I write about in Make Their Day! The key message of the book being that everything that contributes to an employee’s sense of visibility and value adds to their feeling of being recognized.

Let’s look at each of their reasons for preferring a small company in a bit more detail:

A family-like work environment. No one expects to feel invisible in a family or a small company. The expectation is that in a small company everybody knows and supports each other. People believe they will be more than a cog in a big machine. The assumption is that in a small company people are valued for who they are as much as what they do.

More employee recognition. When potential employees expect more recognition from a small company they certainly aren’t expecting more big incentives and awards. They anticipate being “seen” for what they accomplish in a much more meaningful way. I honestly don’t know why this is the case. I haven’t found that supervisors in small companies are any more accomplished at providing recognition. I have to think it goes back to the inherent forms of recognition found in the other three reasons for the small company preference.

A sense that you can make a difference. Throw a pebble in a pond and you see the ripples. Throw it in the ocean and, well… nothing much seems to happen. It is the same with big company versus small. Unless a manager takes on the responsibility for connecting the dots from an employee’s actions to corporate goals, employees in a big company tend to feel inconsequential and not very valuable.

An absence of corporate red tape. Bureaucracy sends a powerful message. That message is  “we have to regulate everything because we don’t trust you.” Being trusted and respected is a key component of feeling valued and recognized.

This careerbuilder.com survey tells us a great deal about the work environment that people find most motivating and luckily for the large company, it can be replicated by great managers and organizations of all sizes.

Cindy Ventrice