BUILDING A CULTURE OF EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION
According to David Brown founder and President of Datotel an IT services storage business, was dismayed to find that the employee of the month program wasn’t helping motivate his workers at all. To him it seemed like a great idea at the time that would make them feel appreciated and motivate them to work harder.
What is surprising is that According to a recent study that was conducted by International Association of Administration Professional, showed that Employees ranked Promotions and Bonuses as the most important to an Employee. This was not the case however with the Employees who considered a person to person than you as more important or a good job well done reported to senior management. This clearly shows that even though Bonuses are highly coveted in any workplace, still employers consider a face to face thank you as important.
Employee Appreciation is especially important in tough economic times, as this is when it’s important to give people face time and basic human appreciation on a regular basis. As Debra Carden a business psychologist puts it “A plaque may be fine for 15min, but once it goes on the wall people tend to forget it.”Brown also admit that giving out bonuses looked like the simplest way to do as it was least time consuming, but as he also found out during informal discussions, it was going to take a less rigid approach. For example he set the set aside part of his daily morning phone call with senior executives to discuss exemplary work, in addition to 15 minutes in the middle of each weekly management meeting.
Already David Brown is making Inroads trying out the new systems, for example, Stephanie, an engineer who joined Datotel three years ago, was pleasantly surprised to find a note from Brown in her mailbox this past June. In the note, handwritten on Datotel stationery, Brown noted that Lewis had been praised during several recent management meetings for working closely with a customer and thanked her for her hard work. “It made me feel important to get something so personal and unique; especially since I’m sure David has several hundred other things.
Its tough job trying to convince managers to change their ways,just ask Ken Wisnefski, founder of WebiMax, an online marketing company in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, had to have a difficult talk with a manager at his previous company, which he sold last year. Wisnefski says the manager had a habit of “throwing employees under the bus” during meetings and taking credit for their accomplishments. According to a former employee for WebiMax she had to tiptoe around the Manager who she says ” would recognize when people did something wrong, but not when they did something well”.
It takes time to sit down and write out a note, or shoe appreciation to your employees but it goes a long way, for example it may make employees take criticism better. It may just as well rub of somebody else as well a forge a very satisfied wor
Information Technologi 