Do Your Employees Feel Respected?

“Respect is like air. As long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all that people can think about.”

                                                            “Crucial Conversations” by Ron McMillan

In research of nearly 20,000 employees worldwide conducted by Christine Porath, respondents ranked respect as the most important leadership behavior.  Yet many surveys also report that over half of employees claim that they don’t regularly get respect.  What’s the disconnect?  One answer may be that leaders may simply be unaware of the problem.  While those employees who aren’t shown respect are keenly aware of its absence, others, especially those in managerial or other high-status jobs don’t think about it very much. But there are other issues to consider.

Respect and Recognition Go hand-in-hand

Do leaders have a good understanding of what constitutes workplace respect?  If not, even well-meaning efforts to provide a respectful workplace may fall short.  With the ‘PC” nature of today’s culture, it’s hard to imagine a workplace where respect isn’t accorded equally to all members of a work group or the organization; it meets the universal need to make them all feel included. It should be standard practice.  We have no doubt that management consistently affirms that respect is owed to all personnel.  But when employees display valued qualities or behaviors that exceed expectations they are not just owed standard respect they have earned the respect that should be confirmed with recognition, and at times formal recognition. 

In fact some research by Arizona State shows…

“When the standard owed respect and earned respect is not in balance it can create frustration for workers. Workplaces with lots of owed respect but little earned respect can make individual achievement a low priority for employees, because they perceive that everyone will be treated the same regardless of performance. By contrast, workplaces with low owed respect but high earned respect can encourage excessive competition among employees…possibly good for some environments (sales force) but can hinder people from sharing critical knowledge about their successes and failures, and it often promotes cutthroat, zero-sum behavior”

Respect in any organization is important because it is a great feedback mechanism and provides the building blocks for growth.  So too, recognizing the respect earned through achievement helps to solidify that respect in the organization. This will bring tremendous benefits to the company.  It is no secret that employees who say they feel respected are more satisfied with their jobs and more grateful for—and loyal to—their companies.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

The #1 Rewards Mistake Made 85% of the time.

This blog post is based on an article of the same title published recently in Incentive magazine by the editor, Bruce Bolger.  We’ve been reading articles by Bruce for years and he is often right on and has always seemed to have a good pulse of the industry.  However this one is a bit misleading. 

While we have no doubt that many organizations “employ little or no personalization in their loyalty, sales, dealer and employee awards presentations” it is certainly not as high as 85%, probably not even close.  This number comes from an informal survey of the leading rewards and recognition wholesalers who “found that no more than 15% of the packages they fulfill leave the warehouse with any kind of personalization.”  That would seem to assume that those same recognition wholesalers provide 100% of all the awards issued in any of the loyalty, sales, dealer and employee awards programs.  Again that’s not even close.

In addition, based on figures consistently presented in Incentive magazine regarding the various types of rewards used in these programs, merchandise supplied does not even make up 50%.  Without empirical evidence at our disposal we would venture to guess that when you added gift cards and travel to the award mix, merchandise might not even equal 25%.

We should also not forget that most reward programs found in business have a communication component and there is a great deal of budget dollars spent on the presentation of awards.  Many of the ways to personalize the presentation have already been done within these communication components.  Maybe to add additional notes or letters within the packaging of the item might be a nice touch?  Certainly it should be considered when no communications of the kind comes from within the program.  But to say that 85% are not shown this courtesy in our opinion is as mentioned somewhat misleading.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net