What would it look like for your business to have 18% less employee turnover, 64% fewer safety incidents and 23% greater profitability? What if I told you that you could do something consistently, and for free, to help your company get these results?
Employee recognition is that thing.
Many employee engagement surveys, including Gallup’s Q12, demonstrate a positive correlation between consistent recognition and business results. In addition, recognition builds trust. The more a team trusts each other, the more willing they are to go the extra mile during tough times. In the challenging and unpredictable world of snow, having a foundation of trust is essential.
Now that we know how important recognition is, let’s talk about how to provide it.
Effective recognition should be frequent. According to Gallup, the most engaged employees receive weekly positive recognition from their manager or others. Good employee recognition should be: personal, for all employees, timely, specific, and connected to your core values.
To make recognition personal, get to know your employees to find out how they prefer to be recognized. Do they prefer recognition publicly or in private? There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution; so as a manager, it is important to ask each employee what works best for them. This is a good conversation to add to the first week of new employee onboarding.
If you are a people manager, it is especially important for you to recognize all your direct reports since 70% of the difference in employee engagement is driven by the direct manager. A practical tip is to set a weekly recurring appointment in your calendar reminding you to recognize your team. Anything that’s important should be on your calendar, and recognizing your team is no exception.
Company owners and senior leaders: you set the direction of your company; therefore, if you provide recognition consistently, it will positively influence others to do the same.
Recognize employees soon after they do something well because if too much time passes, the recognition can diminish in value.
For example, if you are working on a big project, such as self-performing season prep, recognize your teammates as they successfully accomplish tasks that support this goal (e.g., staking sites, preparing equipment, purchasing weather reports, etc.).
I suggest adding “employee recognition” as an action item on your post-storm checklist to remind you to praise those employees for good work done during the past snow event.
When recognizing employees, share what you are recognizing them for and why it made a difference. For example, if you are managing snow for a distribution center, you can recognize an equipment operator by thanking them for keeping the area clear and sharing what good things the distribution center was still able to accomplish because of what they did (e.g., all trucks were able to get out on time).
For example, if one of your core values is “Courtesy and Respect,” you could recognize an account manager for handling a customer complaint by saying something like “you exemplified our core value of ‘Courtesy and Respect’ by listening to our customer’s complaint, apologizing, and quickly rectifying the issue. You showed that you care by listening and making it right.”
Now that you know how to provide good recognition, go build those “trust banks” with your team and watch your company thrive.
Creative recognition
Finding creative ways to provide recognition creates memories that stick with employees. Recently, I provided creative recognition to the many great snow pros by releasing a hip-hop song and video dedicated to the industry. This video allowed companies to recognize their teams and highlight the good work our industry does. Check out “Snow Fight Win” by Evan The Jack on all major streaming platforms and watch the video on YouTube.
Evan Tachoir is founder and CEO of Jack of All People Trades. Email him at evan@jackofallpeopletrades.com.