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Engagement = Growth
By Kari English

Fifty-six percent of senior management think they are above average in giving their employees recognition; 35 percent of middle-management believe this to be true. Only 23 percent of employees, however, think management provides above-average recognition. This is according to a survey by Chester Elton, speaker and co-author of several leadership books. Elton spoke at the Nebraska Bankers Association’s annual convention about the “carrot culture.” Essentially, Elton said recognition drives employee engagement, thus improving productivity and the bottom line. Elton believes that recognizing excellence can have a return on equity of as much as three times higher than not recognizing excellence.

The carrot culture consists of frequent praise because, according to Elton, employees can’t hear “thank you” too much. That praise should be specific because general praise has no impact on people. He suggested instead of just saying “good job” say “good job on finding that error” or “thank you for staying late.” And, the praise should be timely because that means you are paying attention to your employees if you do it quickly.

Elton told the NBA members that praise and recognition are two different things. He said you should always praise effort even if you don’t always get the results you want. But you should reward results. If you don’t know how to reward an employee, Elton suggested you find out by simply asking, “If you had a day to do whatever you wanted, what would you do?”

“Everyone thinks compensation differentiates competitors, but that’s not true,” said Elton. A lot of people will say they left a job because of money, but Elton believes that’s a lie because the average salary increase from changing jobs is 3 percent. He believes the majority of people leave their jobs because they feel unappreciated.

Elton said common reasons that managers don’t recognize employees include they don’t want to get too familiar with their employees; they never received recognition; they don’t think there is anything in it for them; and they don’t want to play favorites. He also said some managers believe a paycheck is recognition, but it is not.

Ultimately, Elton said people join organizations but leave people. And if you don’t want to lose your best employees you need to recognize and reward their efforts. To learn some ways to do just that, go to this special report at BankNews.com.

Kari English is associate editor of BankNews.

Copyright © June 2010 BankNews Media