It's Just a Certificate

"User Experience", "User Interface", "Branding", "Good Design" etc. are terms which mean only one thing to a typical HR manager running a Recognition program - doing this will cost me money. In our approach and intent to do everything at the lowest possible cost, I believe that we end up being "Penny Wise, Pound Foolish" in a number of occasions. Let me give you an example:

A number of companies have a Recognition program which includes certificates of some kind. If you have ever received one of these certificates, how did you really "FEEL" about the certificate. I have been terribly disappointed with the quality of the certificates that companies use - even the really large ones which are so fussy about branding when it comes to their products. I will not be exaggerating if I say that majority of these certificates are very poorly designed by some guy who installed Coreldraw or Photoshop in his computer just a day before or decided to use Powerpoint/Word for designing the certificate.

If I was giving a certificate to anyone, I would want them to feel good (Real good) about the certificate. I want them to take the certificate home and show it to their family, show it to their colleagues and possibly keep it in their desk for everyone to see. For this to happen, the certificate needs to look GOOD. In most cases, the recipient takes the certificate, thanks the giver, and then shoves the certificate in a file in his draw.

It's time we start spending money on designing great quality certificates - for about 1000-5000 bucks, we can get a freelance designer to do a real good certificate using paid images available on istockphoto.com, imagesbazaar.com etc.

Employee's Date of Joining - Just another day in "Paradise"

For the last several weeks, I have been asking a simple set of questions to the clients I met with:

1) Do they remember the exact date on which they joined the company?

The answer has been "Yes" 100% of the time.

2) On any of your anniversary dates, has your manager called you and acknowledged the fact that you have completed "x" number of years by saying "Thanks"?

The response rate drops to a dismal 10%. A few did mention that they got an email from an automated system and some even said that they received a gift in the mail on one occasion.

3) Do they believe that every employee in the organization remembers their date of joining? After a quick thought the response has been "Mostly / Majority / Yes, I think so".

4) Do you believe that your employees want to be atleast acknowledged on their service anniversary - whether it is year 1,2,3 or whatever?

Again the answer has been "Yes, I think so" in 90% of the cases.

Here we have a day/date that is very meaningful to the employee "year-on-year", but it is just another day in the calendar for the company.

From an other perspective, isn't this a great opportunity which does not cost anything, for the manager to build a relationship with the employee and show that these occasions are important and meaningful? If the company can support this with a meal voucher for 2, to allow the manager to take the employee out for lunch, won't the Manager-Employee relationship be significantly strengthened?

By missing out on this easy opportunity, the employee's date of joining ends up being "Just another day in Hell - oops sorry - Paradise".

Recognition in Government Organizations

Over the last week, I met with several officials from the Ministry of Finance, the Government of India, talking to them about the impact of Employee Recognition programs.

The government's HR issues are different from the private sector:

1) Employee Attrition: Their attrition rates are close to Zero. Their employee benefits are best in class, though compensation as a independent component is in the bottom 25percentile in the industry. Stability, Benefits (while on duty and post retirement), Pride and Power associated with government jobs and no real threat to the job due to poor performance / lack of performance makes a government job quite coveted. Essentially, once you have entered the door, life is good.

2) Role of a Supervisor: Being a middle manager in the government is probably one of the toughest roles - these are essentially the civil services officers (IAS, IFS, IPS etc.). Their bosses are typically the ministers / ministry officials who are quite demanding. The people they manage act in a manner that they are doing a favour by doing work. To manage a non-performing employee, the only tool the supervisor has is to write a performance note that goes into the employee's file for life. Given the serious implications of this note, it is used very rarely (covering probably 2-4% of the total employee population). In terms of carrots, the supervisor can influence promotions, postings to a small extent. They also currenrtly issue certificates to the top performersm typically signed by the minister responsible for the department - all this touches 2-4% of the employee population. So how does a supervisor effectively the remaining 92% employees? This, I believe is one of the moist critical HR challenges the government has today.

So what are some of the ways the government can address this (and they seem to really want to).

1) Using a Stick to manage performance: Typically, when a supervisor tries this approach, the employee write an interference not to the ministry which results in the supervisor getting transferred to another department. So using the stick is not easy.

2) Anything related to compensation is determined for the entire government by the Pay Commission. So again there is very little individual departments or supervisors can do about this.

3) Given the constraints with using the stick approach and differential compensation, the only real option for a supervisor to create a high performing organization is to make his/her employees genuinely want to do work and deliver their best. If the employees trust and respect the supervisor, I believe that they will give their best voluntarily. So how does a supervisor build this trust and respect.

Here is where a very simple and low cost Employee Recognition program can have a significant impact. If every supervisor had access to a set of tools he/she could use, then over a period of time, they can build this respect and trust, atleast with a small percentage of their employee groups, thus elevating performance.

The tools the government can start off with could be the following:

1) A set of Birthday cards, Thank You Cards, Anniversary Notification cards that the supervisor can use at his/her discretion.

2) A simple low value Spot Award program that comes with a certificate signed by a unit level head / representative from the ministry.

Infact, one of the government representatives we met, mentioned a practice the ex Chief Election Commissioner, N. Gopalaswami (2006-2009), followed diligently. His secretary was asked to track the birthdays of all employees within his group and he would take an effort to personally write a birthday note and mail it to the employee ensuring that the employee receives the card on his / her birthday at their home. It is apparent that a number of supervisors within the government may be using creative ways to build respect and trust with their employees even with the constraints of the workings of the governments. So if the government is able to formalize this practice, the impact can be far-reaching and will significantly drive positive behaviours.

The HR Showcase - Public Recognition for work done within companies

I had the opportunity and the honour to design and anchor the "HR Showcase" event at the recently concluded NHRD Network's National Conference 2011 (www.hrconference2011.com). The idea behind the Showcase was simple - Rather than providing learning opportunities only through PPTs, monologues (Speaking sessions) and dialogues (Panel discussions), why not create an exhibition style setting, where companies can showcase their best HR practices in a creative manner using the space available in an exhibition booth. Visitors could spend as much time as they wanted at each of the booths, interact with the HR folks who have designed and implemented those practices within their organizations and learn what they specifically want to.

Preparations for the Showcase started about 2 months ago, when we received 105 applications. A jury comprising of academicians, industry stalwarts and business media professionals shortlisted 56 of the most impactful best practices, out of which 42 HR practices were actually showcased during the event. The enthusiasm with which companies set up their booths coupled with over 1200 visitors (HR professionals) made the 4 hour event hugely popular, with enough feedback that the event needed to be longer.

At the end, the jury selected 8 of the most impactful practices (best among the best) for an award. In addition, awards were given to the 3 most popular exhibits - through an SMS polling mechanism, where the visitors voted for the exhibits they liked, through an SMS.

The enthusiasm with which the companies participated in the event surpassed our expectations and I chatted with a few of the participants and asked them about the motivation behind their energy and enthusiasm. The response from the HR heads was universal - the event gave us an opportunity to rally our HR team together and help them understand why the work they are doing is very meaningful and has a high business impact.

For me, the event threw open a whole new dimension to Recognizing employees using external opportunities. It became apparent to me that most of the companies who participated in the Showcase now need to do very little to keep their HR folks who participated in the event, motivated and engaged for the next several months.

NHRD Network's National HR Conference 2011 - Bangalore

The NHRD Network's National HR Conference 2011 in Bangalore between Nov 17 and 19 promises to be a cracker of an event with over 1,200 HR professionals expected to attend. Here are some key highlights of the conference (www.hrconference2011.com)

1) HR Showcase on the 17th: An exhibition style setting where the 50 most impactful HR Practices will be showcased by companies that have been selected through a rigorous application process. This unique event will give visitors an opportunity to interact and learn directly from the company representatives involved in designing and implementing the HR practices being showcased. The Showcase is an open event - so even those not attending the full conference can visit the Showcase.

2) Pre-Conference Workshops for Free: All conference delegates are entitled to attend a world class pre-conference workshop of their choice. Workshops includes sessions by DDI, the Hay Group, CCL, Aon Hewitt etc.

3) Inaugural notes by Sam Pitroda & Sri Sri Ravishankar: Will be a cracker of a session.

4) Dave Ulrich & Ed Lawler Keynotes: Clearly a big highlight of the conference

Hope to see a lot of you out there.

What should you Recognize Employees for?

The typical response to this question is "For things they do above and beyond their normal work". Here is the problem with this response.

Let's take a company which has a stated 3 year focus to cut costs and drive efficiency in their processes. Now let's take an example of a sales rep who is dealing with a customer whose order has been botched up by the fulfillment department. To satisfy the customer, the sales rep reorders the products (express mode), personally picks up the products ordered by the customer and delivers it, again personally, to the customer. At the end of it, the customer is OK to some extent with the situation. Now the Sales Rep's manager recognizes the employee for "Going Above and Beyond" his normal work and gives him an award in the monthly team meeting.

Here is the problem with this. You are recognizing an employee for fire-fighting a situation which should have really been something taken care of by the fulfillment department without any fuss. So what you are communicating to the employees is that "If things get messed up and you come up with a band-aid solution, you will get recognized and awarded". Instead of this, given the focus of the company on cost cutting and improving efficiency, the manager should have urged the employee to find out what caused the problem and why he had to spend so much time and effort in fire-fighting. If the employee actually did that and this episode forced the Fulfillment department to get their act together to prevent such occurences in the future, then that is something where Recognition could be used very effectively. Now you are recognizing the employee for helping the company improve efficiency, collaborating with other departments and while doing the recognition, the manager could narrate the fire-fighting story as an example and tell employees how these type of situations could be avoided in the future. Now the Recognition is aligned with the company's stated business objectives and the manager is reinforcing this and encouraging employees to exhibit behaviours that will support these business objectives.

So the one line answer to the question we started off with should really be the following:

"You should Recognize employees for exhibiting behaviours that are aligned to the company's business objectives". You can add Values, Vision & Mission to this.

Similarity between Recognition & Marketing Spends

I was chatting recently with a college buddy who happens to lead Marketing initiatives for a popular consumer brand in India. After the initial chit chat about how things were going for each other, he started venting his frustration about him having to repeatedly spend significant time and effort in justifying the investments the company was making in marketing. The three questions he grappled with all the time were the following:

1) By doing this marketing initiative what is the direct short term impact on our Product Sales & Profitability?

2) Have our competitors invested in a similar marketing initiative?

3) Can't the marketing initiative be rolled out at a much lower cost - say 10% of the proposed cost?

Impact on Sales & Profitability:

ROI (Return on Investment) calculations for marketing can be quite complex because of the all the variables involved. If "x" is the amount spent and "y" is the increase in sales in the next quarter, and "z" is the % increase in sales attributable to the marketing initiative, then the ROI = (z*y)/x. The trouble with this calculation - while "x" and "y" are easily measurable figures, "z" is a subjective figure that needs to be agreed upon. Why? Typically alongwith the marketing initiatives, there are other efforts which are made to improve sales - maybe sales training, better short term incentives for sales reps, better consumer spending climate etc. You can even argue that the impact of the marketing initiative is actually non existent and you could have achieved the increased sales simply because of all the other factors.

Investments made by Competitors:

My buddy went on to tell me how easy it was to get marketing budgets approved for doing similar things that their competitors had already done - e.g. if our competitor has sponsored a cricket match, getting a large budget to sponsor the next cricket tournament was easy. No questions were asked about RoI etc. - essentially, if they are doing it, then it must be working - so let's do it.

Actual Cost of the Marketing Initiative:

Even after the marketing initiative has been approved in principle, questions are asked about every rupee that is proposed to be spent - Can't we hire a cheaper photographer for the photo shoot, can't we advertise only in the metro cities etc. All this after the marketing initiative proposition provides a clear analysis of why and what we are recommending. It is as though, people start thinking about the spend, once they have approved the marketing initiative in principle.

If you look at the above scenario, companies view "Employee Recognition" initiatives the same way. It starts with the question on whether "Employee Recognition" spends has a tangible impact on any key employee factors (e.g. Employee Retention), and if yes, to what degree? This is highly subjective - should this number be 1%, 5%, 10%, 15%?

Next, what are our competitors doing? Again, if they are doing it, then it must be working. So let's do it.

Third - Do we really need to give out 2000 rupee trophies - can't we just do printed certificates? Does the spot award need to be 500 bucks - won't 100 bucks suffice?

In practical terms, both marketing expenses and Employee Recognition expenses are viewed as costs and not as investments. So the key to create buy-in for a long lasting Employee Recognition program would be to start with a small budget, identify the key factors you want to impact using the program (e.g. Employee Retention & Engagement), put in place mechanisms to measure & monitor the investments made, make some assumptions on the impact variables (prior to the launch of the program) and compare the returns with the other investments being made to improve the same factors - Employee Retention and Engagement.

Spot Awards - Is there a guideline for the tangible value of the award?

We were helping a client redesign their Global Recognition program and were trying to determine the values for their Spot Award program. As a philosophy, the client wanted the Spot Award to be a tool available with every people manager to instantly recognize their employees for accomplishments or measurable behaviours aligned with the Company Values. They wanted a tangible award in addition to an e-Certificate.

After a lot of deliberation, we came to the conclusion that a Spot Award of this nature should at the least enable the individual to have a cup of coffee and a snack with a colleague/friend. So in that sense the award value would have to be around Rs.200/Rs.250 in India and perhaps $10 in the US. We used the same yardstick to determine the figures for other locations.

We also considered using a range, starting from a coffee and a snack for 2 (Rs.200/Rs.250) to a meal for 2 (Rs.800/Rs.1000) at the top end of the spot award program. The manager would have discretion on the award value based on what the employee was being recognized for and the business impact of the accomplishment.

Given that this company is just beginning to invest in creating a Recognition culture, we wanted the initial program to be really simple. So we ended up making a decision that the initial Spot Award program would have a single value and in the next year, we would introduce a range of values.

Annual Gifts for all Employees

I had a HR head of a mid size company call me recently asking me to refer a few good merchandise suppliers for their annual gifting program. Essentially, the company gives out an annual gift to all employees on a particular day - the gift is typically a laptop bag, a nice pen set or equivalent (value around 500-2000 bucks).

From a recognition perspective, I have seen this practice to be unsustainable and invariably it gets dropped at some point of time in the company’s evolution - either because of size, budget cuts in a bad year or someone senior enough simply asking the question "Why are we doing this?".

Before spending the money on this, you need to ask the questions – what business value do I get by spending money on an annual award? How meaningful is the award for my employees? Are there better ways to use the same budget and do something more meaningful and more value adding for the business and for my employees? My idea is not to discourage companies from doing annual gifts, but to share some perspective I have on this.

If you really want to do an annual gift that will serve a purpose, give them something that most individuals as consumers will not buy (or see value in buying), but is very desirable – e.g. Bose headphones, a Hidesign bag, a Mont Blanc pen etc. This way, they get something they would normally not buy on their own, but have an aspiration for - so they feel really good about the gift. This means that they would tend to talk about this to other people and help build your employer brand etc. Again such aspirational gifts tend to be expensive and may not fit within your budgets. For simple branded utility stuff, such as laptop bags, pen sets etc., a better idea may be to set up an online branded company store and allow employees to buy stuff at discounted prices. Many merchandisers offer a simple online platform for this now - free if you negotiate hard enough and don't need too much customization.

The most well known example in India of the "Annual Gifting" practice was Cognizant, where all employees would get an annual gift every year. In the last few years, before they discontinued this practice, employees literally had to go to a merchandise warehouse in a remote industrial area to collect their gift. Guess, someone at Cognizant asked the question "Why" and they scrapped this program last year.

Lessons from the Lion Whisperer

This post has nothing to do directly with "Recognition", but is just some information about how powerful "Trusting Relationships" can be.

I just finished seeing a very unique and fascinating documentary on "National Geographic TV" on a guy, "Kevin Richardson", who runs a private wild-life sanctuary called the Kingdom in South Africa. The Kingdom houses lions and hyenas and Kevin cares for them in an unreal manner.

I picked the following words from his website: http://www.lionwhisperer.co.za/

"As a self-taught animal behaviorist, Richardson has broken every safety rule known to humans when working with these wild animals. Flouting common misconceptions that breaking an animal’s spirit with sticks and chains is the best way to subdue them, he uses love, understanding and trust to develop personal bonds with them. His unique method of getting to know their individual personalities, what makes each of them angry, happy, upset, or irritated-just like a mother understands a child-has caused them to accept him like one of their own into their fold".

Dude - Get me the Coffee!!!

I was recently on a short vacation to Thailand and was almost shocked at the courtesy and customer service orientation of the folks who worked at hotels, restaurants and shops there.

We were staying at a Courtyard Marriott and went one morning for breakfast. we promptly had a hostess invite us very politely, and request us to find a place. The problem was we couldn't find a place and came back to the hostess. The hostess apologized profusely and went around looking for a place and came back and told us that there was no place - we already knew this as we had done the rounds. So I asked her, if we can reserve a table and come back. She said that they don't accept reservations for breakfast. Ok - we asked her what we should do. She had no clue. So I told her that we would wait for a few more minutes and see if someone gets off a table and we would just grab it. We did exactly that.

Again, we had a very polite waiter come and greet us - we told him to get the table cleaned. Again, the guy was polite, apologetic, but took a really long time to clean the table and set new place-mats and cutlery for us. Since it was a buffet, we quickly grabbed our food. The waiter approached us again and asked if we wanted something to drink - Coffee, tea etc. We asked him for 2 coffees. he said "Rightaway Sir' and went. After about 10 minutes, I waved my hand towards the waiter - he promptly came and I asked him about our coffees. He profusely apologized and said he will be right back. 5 more minutes passed and I could see the waiter literally going from table to table, apologizing to everyone for something or the other. It seemed to be a case of the waiter going to anyone who called him, but not really doing any real work. We finally got our coffee - cold. We did not even bother to drink it or call the waiter back as we knew how the events would play out.

This was a classic case of "Inefficient Politeness/Courtesy" - Given a choice, I would have preferred a waiter who was efficient, but not very polite rather than a very polite waiter, but a really inefficient one. This type of event played out repeatedly at a few restaurants we visited, with the hotel check-in staff etc.

This was a classic case of "Artificial Recognition" of us as customers - the waiters/staff were very polite, courteous & well meaning, but just didn't deliver the goods. I wondered how many managers treat their employees this way - telling them all the time "Thanks", "Great Job" etc., but when it came to things that mattered - appraisal ratings, promotions, training opportunities, project opportunities etc., they just don't work/push hard enough to deliver. This seriously dents their credibility and creates problems for them.

Managers & Employees

I have wondered what goes through an employee's mind when they get a phone call from their manager, when they are not in the office. Are they eager to pick the call or do they wonder "what the hell does the id**t want now?". The same probably holds good when the manager stops by the employee's desk or calls them into their office.

I quizzed a dozen people managers on the interactions they have had with their employees lastweek (the last 5 days). Everyone said that they spoke with their most of their employees a few times during the week. The nature of the conversations were all very work specific - what is happening with customer A's issue? What is the status of Project X? Have you received the payment from Customer B? Did you meet with C? etc. I asked them if they spoke with them on anything that wasn't a status update or specific work query? Yes, we spoke the weather, a new restaurant which has opened, the new movie that was released etc.

The purpose of each of those conversations with the employee was to enquire about the status of a work activity. Everything else was meaningless chit-chat. The employee knows why the manager was really talking to him/her and the manager is also pretty clear about the purpose of the conversation. If this is the case, why are we even surprised if an employee does not really look forward to a call from his/her manager.

If an employee receives a call from their manager and the purpose of the manager's call is to inform the employee that he will be getting a spot reward for a specific activity he did last month, or if the purpose is to just say "Thanks" for something the employee has done, would'nt the employee's attitude towards the manager change over a period of time. Would'nt these simple acts on a consistent basis transform the Manager-Employee relationship over a period of time?

What can the HR organization do to support this? Create a easy to use Recognition program that incorporates no cost "Thank You" Cards, low value spot awards, which can be used by a manager at his/her own discretion.

Designing a Service Awards Program for your Organization

How do you go about designing a Service Awards program for your organization?

The 3 big factors you need to consider are:
1) Which anniversary milestones do you want to Recognize?
2) How should the employee be Recognized for each of those milestones?
3) What should be the Award and how much should you spend for each of the milestones?

The easy answers to the 3 questions are:
1) Which anniversary milestones do you want to Recognize?
a. Use 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 & 30 years (and so on in multiples of 5) as the milestones for which an employee would be recognized and receive some sort of an award.
b. For the other anniversaries (2,4,6,7,8,9 and so on), you may want to introduce an automated anniversary advisor sent o the employee and/or the manager. So the recognition would come from the manager.

2) How should the employee be Recognized for each of those milestones?
a. For the minor milestones (upto say 10 years), the recognition could be at the team level, with the employee’s manager speaking a few words about the employee and handing over the award to the employee.
b. For the major milestones (10 and above), the recognition could be at a large organization wide event, with a member of the senior management handing out the award to the employee.
c. For the non-milestone anniversaries, the Recognition would come from the manager sharing a few words with the employee one-to-one and handing out a voucher if applicable.

What you define as “Major” and “Minor” milestones need to be based on what you can sustain from an budget/administration perspective, even 10-15 years later. So it is better to be conservative when you launch the program rather than pullback on the recognition at a later stage.

3) What should be the Award and how much should you spend for each of the milestones?
a. For the milestone awards, I would recommend an emblematic award of progressively increasing value alongwith a material gift/cash award/voucher, again of progressively increasing value. You can start with a budget as low as 250-500 bucks for the Year 1 anniversary and progressively increase the budget for each additional milestone year.
b. For the non-milestone anniversaries, you can send a voucher for say, 100-400 bucks for the manager to take the employee out for coffee/lunch. Even if your budget won’t allow for vouchers, I would still recommend that the manager atleast call the employee and wish him on the anniversary date.

For service Awards, I would strongly recommended forecasting a budget for 10-15 years and ensure that you don’t make changes for that period.

Like I mentioned, the answers above are the easy ones – you need to use them as a guide for creating something that will work within your organization and culture.

More Recognition Money for managers who use Recognition better

During a recent conversation with a CHRO of a 25,000 employee size company, the CHRO made a very interesting point. In his company's recognition program, he wanted to give more recognition budgets to those managers and teams who use Recognition more effectively in a consistent manner. The logic and the reason behind his idea were sound. But how do you practically do this? I am an advocate of consistent Recognition and recommend clients to do Recognition even in bad years. But why do you waste money with managers who do not use Recognition meaningfully. Thinking about a practical way to implement this, here is what I came up with.

Rather than providing different Recognition budgets, what can be done is to link the Recognition event spend to how well a manager/team uses Recognition. This will serve 2 purposes - Every employee gets access to the same Recognition opportunities and the award budgets are consistent. But the ones who use Recognition better get more money for the Recognition events, allowing them to create more excitement, better food, maybe hiring a professional performer etc. With a better event, other teams are going to question their managers/leaders on why their team can't do a bigger event and this will force the leaders/managers to try and use Recognition opportunities available to them more meaningfully.

Touchpoints & Recognition

I had the opportunity to listen to "Doug Conant" last week, speak about his concept of "Touchpoints" and his book by the same name. Doug was most recently the CEO of Campbell Soup Company, was earlier the President of Nabisco and spent the early part of his career with General Mills & Kraft Foods.

In summary, his book tells you that any interaction you have with your people in an organization is a TOUCHPOINT - essentially an opportunity to connect with them and help them with their issue to the extent possible, while being tough minded "and" tender hearted at the same time.

For several years now, we have been a strong proponent of the fact that "Recognition" is truly about conveying "Respect" and not about the "Stuff". In an organization, managers need to view Recognition opportunities (whether it be a spot award, a simple Thank you note, or a nomination for an organization award) as opportunities to convey respect to the individuals/teams and use them as positive & motivating "Touchpoints".

Just imagine the day when your boss or a colleague sends you an email sincerely thanking you for something you did well. Your entire day goes well, you go home in the evening, treat your spouse and kids better, thus transmitting your positivity to everyone else you interact with during the day. That is the impact simple Touchpoints tend to have. So start Recognizing people who perform tasks and activities that meet your high standards - You can be Tough Minded "and" Tender Hearted at the same time, or as Doug says "the genius of the AND".

Company Values - How to get your employees to understand and imbibe them?

Every company has a well defined set of Values – Almost every “Values” list I have seen has the same content – Integrity, Respect for Others, Customer Delight etc. Over the last 2 weeks, I asked a dozen companies what they do to reinforce the Values and help their employees imbibe them on a day-to-day basis. The answers ranged from “That is a good question – I don’t think we do anything about it”, to “We have our “Values” posters displayed at various vantage points – e.g. Cafeterias, Conference rooms, Screensavers on all employee computers etc. “
Eleven out of the dozen executives asked me “What do other companies do? Do you have any suggestions?”
A Recognition Program can be used as a fantastic tool to reinforce company Values on a day-to-day basis. You can have a simple Peer-2-Peer Recognition program, where every employee can recognize any other employee using an e-Card (with or without any value/gift associated with it). All the recognition can force the nominator to pick 1 or 2 of the company “Values” and a small text box, where the specifics of the nomination (Why does the nominator want to recognize the recipient?), can be included.
On the same lines, you can create an easy-to-use Spot Reward program, where the primary or one of the reasons for the recognition can be “a Value” – a behavior or an action of the employee that is aligned with one of the company’s Values.
From an employee perspective, now “Values” become much more than senior management reading them off a slide or seeing the words on a poster or on their screen-savers. They get something tangible, something they value, for exhibiting behaviours and actions aligned to those Values. If this is done consistently over a 2-3 year period, the Values will become a part of the company’s DNA.

Recognition Criteria

Clients generally ask me about the criteria they need to define for the most premium Recognition program they run. Is there a way to define the criteria in a 100% objective manner, so that everyone is clear on why someone gets an award and there is no controversy over the award winners?

The answer is “NO” in most situations – You cannot remove the subjectivity fully, unless it is a data based program such as a Sales Quota achievement award (even here, there is some subjectivity in defining the quota in the first place).
The better approach may be to use data points to create a short-list of possible awardees (nominees) and then use a subjective mechanism to determine who should get the award. The subjective mechanism could be everyone in the Leadership Team/Recognition Panel saying “YES”, with even one “NO” being used as a veto. Alternately, if the voting group is large, then a percentage cut-off can be used (80% or more need to say “YES”).

Roy in India - Thoughts from a first time business visitor to India

This post has nothing to do with Employee Recognition, but I thought folks will be interested in the content.
I recently had one of my colleagues, Roy Saunderson, visit India (Bangalore) for a few days for a client assignment. Roy is what you would call a classic conservative westerner – he lives in a small town - Windsor, Canada (near Toronto), with very little direct exposure outside of the developed world. Post his 4 day visit, I asked him to pen down a few thoughts of his first visit to India. Here is what he came up with (unedited) – Do note that Roy stayed at a Taj Hotel and his only visits outside the hotel was to UB City. So these comments are based on short drives between MG Road and UB City in Bangalore, and his experiences at the airports.
1) The extent of military and reserve people as your airport security
2) Stray dogs on street and reading about children being attacked
3) More traditional culture where men are the main providers... even in beauty stores!
4) The pushing survival of the fittest behaviour when exiting plane
5) Realization of what people are paid in service status
6) The concept of low regard for life because of population size that would impact things like safety and life and death
7) Security for entering hotels and realizing the reasons why
8) Driving through chaos (thanks for driving Jayanth) and viewing the total weaving and honking to get anywhere
9) Having bombings in Mumbai while there but hardly anyone talking about it the next day
10) Late arrival and start time for meetings
11) Unclear body language (oscillating head) and not sure how to read words and actions in a business meeting

Zappos - Featured on Real Recognition Radio

Zappos has become legendary for the way they treat employees and focus on keeping their work-place truly unique, exciting and a little weird in a positive way. On their website, they state that their biggest asset is their "Culture". Check out our Radio show featuring Zappos's leader of the Cruise Ship Operations Department within Human Resources, Jamie Naughton. The interview begins with why a HR sub-function at Zappos is called Cruise Ship operations and goes on to focus on why culture is so important to Zappos and what business value they derive from creating and maintaining such a unique Culture. This is a radio show you don't want to miss - Click the link below to hear the radio show - Enjoy: Real Recognition Radio Show featuring Zappos

What's Recognition Education in Companies got to do with Sex Education in Schools?

Whenever I have had the opportunity to meet with a CEO or someone in the executive leadership team of a company, I have asked the question “What do you want to achieve with Recognition?” Every single response has been the same - “I want to build a strong Recognition culture in our company, where every employee feels appreciated for the contributions he or she is making, however small the contributions may be”. Of course, the words used and the phrasing of the response varies, but the essence has always been the same.

So how do you go about creating a strong Recognition culture within an organization?

It needs to begin with Recognition Education – i.e. managers across the organization need to understand what real Recognition is and understand why Recognition is almost a fundamental expectation of the employees who work for them. This is very different from Recognition Training, which is about using the Recognition Programs (i.e. Tools) available to managers. As my colleague, Roy Saunderson, says – “Think of it as Sex education in schools – what kids need is Sex Education, and not Sex Training”. In companies, what managers need is Recognition Education. If they are educated, using the tools will come naturally to them.

The Google approach to Recognition Program Design

While designing Recognition programs for clients, we have found that clients get really surprised with the simplicity of the program design that we recommend. “Isn’t that too simple a program?” is a common question they ask. They probably are thinking “Did we pay these guys to design such a simple program for us?”

I call this is the Google approach to Recognition. When it comes to search engines, why is Google so popular. I believe it is because of the simplicity for the user – the interface is clean, uncluttered and simple. The results are relevant to the search and are displayed in an easy to understand manner. Essentially, they make the product very simple to use, although the back-end may be very complex.

When it comes to Recognition Programs, the primary focus for me would be to design something that the employees in the organization (the end users) will actually use extensively. If you create too many programs, offer too many award options, make them input too much data, it will confuse the end-users and make it cumbersome for them to use the system. While on the other end, if they can nominate/recognize someone very easily, the chances they would use the system more are higher.

We have repeatedly seen that as companies evolve with their Recognition programs, the programs get simpler and simpler on the front end, with all the complexity (budgets, nomination/approval rules, award fulfillment etc.) moving to the back-end. So for those in the initial stages of designing and implementing a recognition program, you might as well jump ahead and create a program that is simple and very usable for the employees.

Recognition for Very Small Enterprises

I had a great conversation with a lawyer recently. She runs a small law firm, sees value in recognizing her employees and wanted my thoughts on whether they need an online system for running a recognition program.

I asked her a few quick questions:

Q1) How many employees do you have, how many offices do you have and what is the profile of the employees?

A1) Half a dozen people managers, about 30 employees, all of them located in one office in one city. All employees are law graduates. The managers being in the mid 30s, with most other employees in the mid 20s.

Q2) Do you currently do any Recognition?

A2) Two years ago, we tried doing "Thank You" cards, and gave out a few awards during the monthly team meetings. But nothing beyond that. Currently, we do something really rarely.

Q3) Why do you want to do Recognition?

A3) Because all the 3 employees who left the firm in the last 6 months mentioned that they did not feel appreciated enough here.

Based on her responses to these 3 questions, I quickly told her my analysis of the situation.

"With the little information you have given me, the solution to your problem is not designing and rolling out a Recognition program. The Recognition program is just another tool for managers to use and build a trusting & strong relationship with their people. If the trust is not there, the tool will not work"

Her strong reaction was that "We have a lot of trust in our work-place. That can't be an issue".

"If that is the case, why did the employees who left tell you that they didn't feel appreciated? Do you really believe that giving them a few monthly awards would have made them feel appreciated?"

After a few more arguments along the same lines, I told her that the problem may not be with the manager's intent, but with the lack of effort on their part to build this trust.

She quickly asked me what she could do to create this strong & trusting manager-employee relationship. I told her to have my colleague S Max Brown, come in and deliver a 90 minute Real Leadership keynote to all her employees during the next monthly meeting.

"Once your people are sensitized to the fact around why people need appreciation and recognition, figuring out ways to do this will be easy. Given that you have one office with about 30 employees, you could then create a nice physical "Employee Wall" for folks to put up thank-you notes, communicate notable work that employees do, post appreciative emails from clients etc. You could also leverage one of your monthly meetings every quarter to give out a few simple awards. A monthly award for such a small group may make the awards frivolous. These simple tools should do the trick for you".

Recognition for Contract Workers

I was recently advising a large global company with local manufacturing facilities in India on various Recognition programs they could adopt for their Sales, Support and Manufacturing organizations. I learnt that over 20% of the total number of employees in the company were contractors employed through a third party staffing company. The contractors were at the lowest levels in the organization – field sales, factory workers etc. A number of supervisors/managers were including these contractors in their Reward and Recognition programs and wanted my advice how they could do more for them. To some extent, they considered them equivalent to full time employees when it came to recognition and wanted to integrate them into every program we would design for them.

This poses some legal questions. Can you include contract workers in your Recognition programs? The answer varies by geography and the legal/labour rules applicable locally. I decided to speak to a labour lawyer to get his opinion on this. I managed to find a good lawyer who would give me some quick advice without sending me an invoice.

The lawyer’s advice was exceptionally clear – For contract workers, the company should NOT provide any benefit outside of the fees payable to their employer (i.e. the contract staffing firm). Ideally, you should exclude contractors even from company celebrations to the extent possible. Individual rewards and recognition are an absolute “NO-NO”. Why? Because anything done for contractors outside of the contract fees is tantamount to “Pseudo Employment”. Such practices done over a period of time coupled with a few tenured contractors, could put the company at risk – essentially, the company can face legal action and be forced to employ the contractors as full-time employees and extend all employee benefits to them, retro-actively. This would pose a short term financial burden, longer term HR implications and impact long term benefit plans. So his answer in short was "IF you employ contractors, treat them as contractors and stick to the contract document on what you can do and what you cannot do – do not try to integrate them into the company and extend any employee benefits to them”.

The Rewards Continuum!!

What kind of Rewards work best to drive employee engagement and motivate employees?

A colleague of mine “Jay Whitehead” (jaywhitehead@rideau.com) and I were recently at a client meeting, when the client asked “What kind of Rewards work best to drive employee engagement and motivate employees”? Jay answered the question very well and I thought his response will be useful to a lot of us. His response was the following:

Rewards work in a continuum. At one extreme, you have an investment banker working in Wall Street with 6 figure salaries - For him/her, merchandise awards, cash awards are nice, but not very significant. They crave for the softer Recognition – someone saying “Thank You” to them, getting a $20 plaque in front of the company employees, getting an email from the CEO congratulating him/her for a good job done etc. The Recognition for them is less dependent on the product/merchandise as it has very little value for them.

At the other end of the continuum, you can have a call center worker in India earning $300 per month, has a lot of unsatisfied basic needs and aspirations for a better life. So for them, dinner vouchers, household goods as awards, cash awards etc. mean a lot. Any recognition done without a product/material will be trivialized by them – e.g. an email from the CEO is nice, but I would love to get a TV from the company for the contributions I have made. For them the recognition experience must be matched with an appropriate product – the bigger the recognition, bigger the award value they inherently expect.

In between these 2 extremes, the balance between the recognition and the reward product changes in a linear manner.

So when you are looking at creating a Recognition program, you may want to design the mix between the recognition and the actual reward along this continuum. In most companies, this would mean that for the lower level/junior employees, merchandise/reward products would play a very important role and for the senior employees, the recognition experience would play a more critical role. This does not mean that we have no reward products for the senior employees, and no recognition experience for the junior employees. It is really about the balance between the two.

Recognition Program Design 101

I have consistently been receiving queries from HR folks about their company's recognition program. They typically send me their Recognition Policy document and ask me for feedback. Over a period of time, I figured out that I was getting these queries when the HR person was tasked with evaluating the company's Recognition programs and come up with a enhanced and better program. Based on what I have seen, I have given a very high level guidline you can use while designing a Recognition program.

The program you design needs to touch a large segment of the employee population i.e. around 60-70% of the organization should feel that they can actually get some of the awards/recognition. Recognition needs to be very pervasive within the organization - “Everyone likes to get Recognized – so Why are we stingy with this?”.

An ideal Recognition program should have a variety of initiatives/awards that can touch 100% of the employee population:
1) The Premier Corporate awards (for the best-of-the best): Touches about 10-15% of the employee population.
2) The BU/Department/Location level awards (Senior Manager driven awards): Touches about 25-30% of the employee population
3) Manager level awards: Spot rewards/low cost team level awards: Touches about 40-60% of the employee population
4) Standard Corporate Awards: Exhibiting corporate values, CSR, Long Service awards etc. (Touches 100% of the employee population).

In one of the following posts in the blog, I will try and provide a sample Recognition Program Design that you can readily use and customize for your organization.

NO ENTRY FOR MOST OF YOU. We Recognize only the Very Best!!

I have noticed that a very large number of companies do not have a well thought out Recognition Program that can offer a large number of employees in the organization an opportunity to win awards appropriate for their contribution levels and get recognized in a meaningful manner. The programs typically tend to be elitist in nature with only the very best getting the recognition and the rewards.

Imagine if in tennis, the only tournaments were the 4 grand slam events. Would there be the same kind of enthusiasm and interest in tennis from budding tennis players? There are a number of tournaments at the country level, state level, district level and even at the local club levels. Each of these tournaments offer opportunities for a large number of players to win and get recognition for their skills and efforts and gain the confidence to aspire for the bigger tournaments/awards.

In organizations, the HR leaders and the senior managers need to put in the effort to create opportunities for the non-superstars to get recognized and win awards at various levels. By doing this, if they can increase the confidence and engagement levels of the larger employee population, the business benefits from the increased value the larger employee population would add, will be sizable.

Meeting Rooms and Recognition

In most companies, you will notice that meeting rooms/conference rooms are named after countries, mountains, rivers, world famous personalities etc. The management and the facilities spend reasonable time in selecting the names/theme for the rooms.

During a visit to a large global organization a few weeks ago, I noticed something quite creative. Our meeting was in a room called “The Aditya Gupta” meeting room – Below the room name, they had Aditya Gupta’s photograph, a small write-up on Aditya Gupta’s profile, the work he had done for the company and why the room was named after him for the 6 month period, Jan to Jun 2011 – for an innovation he had delivered.

I learnt later that Aditya Gupta was a junior employee in the organization and as part of one of their recognition programs, the award was a framed certificate, a cash award of Rs. 5,000 and a meeting room named after him for 6 months. What a fantastic, low cost and highly effective way to recognize the employee.

Recognition Program Administration – How much do companies spend on it?

For large companies, designing, launching and administering a global employee recognition program is a big task. Whether companies do it themselves by assigning internal resources to run the program or find an external partner (outsourced Recognition service provider) to help them with it, there is a cost for administering the program. Though I would love to get some specific research around this, the figures below have been derived from typical administrative costs budgeted by large companies, whenever they outsource a HR process/program in its entirety.

1) In India – 6 to 8% of overall budget
2) In South Asia – 4 to 6% of overall budget
3) In the Middle east – 12-18% of overall budget
4) In North America – 15-18% of overall budget

A linked feature I have noticed in India and South Asia is the difficulty, companies have in paying anything for program administration. They seem very comfortable paying for “Stuff” (Reward products) and want everything else to be free. Instinctively, they also tend to assign a very low cost to manpower/resources required for the administration.

There is also the concept of “Landed Cost”, I have noticed very often. Clients want to know upfront how much they will be billed for products (including the cost of the product, taxes and shipping) and want to contract at this “Total Price” or the “Landed Cost”. Even if you visit a B2C online store such as Infibeam (www.infibeam.com), you will notice that the price they show on the website for a product typically includes taxes and shipping.

Why the Spend on Recognition Events needs to be a part of your Annual Recognition Budget?

When it comes to Recognition Programs, I have been really stunned to see how much of focus the HR folks have around Recognition initiatives & more specifically the events that involve the “C” level executives in their companies – e.g. an event where the CEO presents awards to employees.

When you add up the costs of these events – travel expenses for a lot of people (the CEO is coming – so the event must be important, we should also attend), venue costs (the CEO is participating, so we need a good location – a Taj hotel maybe), food costs, support costs, non-measurable time costs of all the people who attend the event, the actual awards being presented (if the CEO is giving it, the award needs to be nice a.k.a expensive), the numbers turn out to be sizeable. Now when you compare this number to the overall recognition spend in the company, that is when you realize that in many cases 30-40% of the Recognition spend (in some case 60%+) is for a few of these events.

I dived a little deeper into why this is the case and based on a reasonable sample set of conversations, the reason this happens can best be explained using the following analogy – when buying a house, almost everyone spends extraordinary time and effort in making sure we get the best possible deal at the lowest possible price – in most cases the measure used is the cost per square foot. After getting this figure down to a minimum (say Rs. 2000 per sft), say for a 1500 sft apartment, we end up spending the following:

Basic Cost of the Apartment: INR 30,00,000
1)Electricity & Water deposits: INR 200,000
2)Car Parking: INR 150,000
3)Service Tax: INR 80,000
4)VAT: INR 150,000
5)Stamp Duty & Registration Charges: INR 200,000
Total Additional Costs: INR 780,000
Total Cost of the Apartment: INR 37,80,000
Now this is a 26% increase over the basic cost.

Now we need to add the following:
1)Wardrobes: INR 100,000
2)Modular Kitchen: INR 100,000
3)Electrical Fittings: INR 50,000
4)Furniture: INR 100,000
5)Miscellaneous Interior works: INR 50,000
Additional Costs: INR 400,000
Final Cost of the Apartments: INR 41,80,000
This is a 40% increase over the basic cost.

Recognition seems to be working the same way – The HR folks fight hard to get a budget for the program – end up getting a number “x” – typically a low figure. Now this figure “x”, in most cases does not include the cost of the events. So in reality, the money for the events gets spent from “another budget/line item” – the CEO wants to do the event – so the finance folks will figure out where to place the expense. Travel gets booked under “Business Travel Expenses” etc.

This model is fine if the additional item is a small component of the overall Recognition budget (therefore negligible). But if the spend on the event turns out to be 40%-60% of the Annual Recognition budget of the company, isn’t there a problem – or Am I only one seeing it as a problem?

EuroAble - CSR in Action

In the Sunday Times of India yesterday, I saw a bright display ad titled "EuroAble". Now Eureka Forbes (http://www.eurekaforbes.com/) is a company I have been fascinated with for a few years now, more so after interacting with their leadership team over the last few months and understanding a little bit about their values, cultures and how they run their business. It looks like Eureka Forbes has done something spectacular yet again - they have set up a 80 seater call centre that is manned by handicapped individuals.

Whenever I have interacted with charities, I constantly hear that the people in need of help and support want something that will give them dignity, want opportunities where they can earn their living, rather than simply get free money/goods. A call centre job is something that is ideally suited for someone with physical disability that prevents them from moving around easily. I have often wondered why call centres don't make an extra effort to employ handicapped individuals - with the amount of investment & effort that goes into training in call centres, I was sure that companies could put in a little extra bit to train these individuals (even if it meant teaching them English from scratch). I also believed that this could have significant business benefits for call centre companies - managing attrition a little better. A CSR initiative to actively employ disabled individuals would be great - business benefit plus a tangible measurable benefit to a section of society that needs a little extra help.

What EuroAble has done with this ad in the newspaper and a Facebook page to its credit (www.facebook.com/eurekaforbes), is to ask everyone involved in call centers the question - Why haven't you done something like this? Even if some people wonder why Eureka Forbes placed this ad - for publicity sake maybe. If you don't tell anyone the good work you are doing, how will others be able to role model you? I think that the ripple effect the initiative and the publicising of it will have, should be significant. Way to go - Eureka Forbes.

Real Leader - Mahendra Singh Dhoni

MS Dhoni, Captain of the Indian Cricket team, has always been considered a good leader. Now that India has won the Cricket World Cup, he is being hailed as an all-time great leader and probably one of the best captains the game has ever seen worldwide. I believe that this victory is a manifestation of Dhoni's great leadership over the last several years. As many have indicated, this victory is the culmination of a number of years of great work in the back-end and building a team that is capable & confident and one, that can deliver the goods when it matters in crucial matches. India has always had a talented bunch of players, but invariably they have floundered as a team. Under Dhoni's leadership, they have won the World T20 Cup, are the No. 1 Test team in the world and now have won the ODI World Cup. No one will refute the fact that all this achievement has something more to do than just luck. I believe Dhoni's leadership has played a critical role in all this.

What are some of the key qualities he has consistently displayed over the last several years:

1) Humility - He is willing to accept this mistakes. Even in the recent post match interview of the semi-finals against Pakistan, he was quick to admit that he misread the pitch and played 3 seamers, instead of playing an extra spinner (Ashwin).

2) Staying Grounded and in touch with his Roots - I read an article in the Times of India, where there is a nice story about Dhoni desperately looking for a job when he was 20, and eventually getting a job in the Indian Railways in Kharagpur in the Sports quota. He made a few friends there and even now they claim that Dhoni always responds to their text messages and calls them. Apparently, whenever he visits Kharagpur, they get together and have a party in one of the empty rail coaches stationed at Kharagpur, like the old times.

3) Willingness to Trust his People - He seems to have this ability to identify players who in his assessment could be match winners and stay with them through difficult times. A classic example is Yuvraj Singh. When everyone (selectors, media, cricket experts) were pushing to remove Yuvraj Singh from the team due to lack of performance, Dhoni stuck his neck out and supported Yuvraj. For the trust Dhoni showed in him, Yuvraj returned several match winning performances during the world cup. This is also the reason India was able to pull off a victory yesterday against Sri Lanka, after the superstars (Sachin and Sehwag) failed to score - the youngsters (Gambhir & Virat) are the ones who did it for India in the finals.

4) Composure under Pressure - Nicknamed "Captain Cool", Dhoni has always carried himself in a very calm and composed manner on the field, even under high pressure situations in matches. His coolness shows his confidence in the team and their abilities and in several occasions, someone in the team has done something outstanding to turn the match around for India. e.g. Zaheer Khan taking Michael Hussey and Cameron White's wicket in the quarterfinals of the world cup.

5) Willingness to do what the team needs him to do - Dhoni has an outstanding record as a No.3 batsman, yet he has been playing at No. 6 and No. 7 in the last few years because he wanted to take the pressure on himself. In the World cup finals, Dhoni came in at No. 5, ahead of Yuvraj Singh who has been in great form, primarily to maintain a left-right combination at the crease and delivered a match winning performance with his bat, when Indian needed it.

It is obviously easy to do this analysis post mortem (after India won the world cup) - what if India had lost the match yesterday (Malinga taking a wicket or two in the middle overs would have rattled India)? Even then, I would argue that Dhoni has been a great leader. While a leader cannot always control the results, I believe that a great leader's true role is to create consistent and repeated opportunities for his team to win and invariably, just by the law of averages, they will end up winning a few. Dhoni has been able to do that for Team India.

South Africa’s defeat in the Cricket World Cup – Relevance to Corporates

Last evening, South Africa (well accepted as the best team in the cricket world cup and the most consistent team in the last several years) suffered a defeat at the hands of New Zealand, in the quarter-finals and are now out of contention. This is the fifth time South Africa has lost a knock-out match in the world-cup (infact, they have never won a knock-out match in the world cup so far).

How often do we find that in companies, the employees who should be getting the promotions, the best ratings, end up not getting those because of various rules/factors that come up during the performance appraisal process – e.g. freeze on promotions, restrictions on number of promotions.

While it is acceptable in sport tournaments that teams need to perform on those critical matches to win, shouldn’t we adopt a better process/approach to measure and evaluate people in companies. In companies, we want people who deliver results consistently, yet our performance management processes reward people who deliver the more visible results and can manipulate the process better, especially around the performance appraisal process timelines.

One way to do a better job is to use Recognition data in performance management. Let’s say an individual gets recognized repeatedly throughout the year for delivering results and exhibiting behaviour, that the company wants. If this data is linked to the performance appraisal process, it will be easier for the manager to identify the individuals who truly deserve the best ratings. It will also give an opportunity for HR to analyze the recognition data and performance data and assess if the performance management processes and the recognition philosophies are aligned.

Warren Buffett's Management Style

I watched the interviews of Warren Buffett http://profit.ndtv.com/video/show/194418 and Ajit Jain (President of Berkshire Hathway's Reinsurance business and the one tipped to be Warren Buffett's successor) http://profit.ndtv.com/video/show/194467 on NDTV Profit last night.

There was something Ajit mentioned about Warren's management style that really caught my attention - He mentioned that "Warren does an incredible job of decoupling the decision making before the outcome occurs and the actual outcome of the decision, while evaluating and measuring his people. So this makes it easy and very clear to work with Warren. He went on to elucidate by saying that the way the world typically works, you may have made a good decision, but end up with a bad outcome and the world comes down hard upon you. On the flip side, you may have made a bad decision and end up with a good outcome and praises are showered upon you".

This ability to do this differentiation repeatedly could well be one of the big reasons why Berkshire is so successful.

Warren Buffett in India

The Indian media has been buzzing this week with Warren Buffett's first visit to India. Buffett stated that "he is bit of a retard to come to India so late".

Though the general expectation is that Buffett is here to scout for investment opportunities in India (Berkshire Hathway's only investment in India is currently a small Bangalore based cutting tools company "Taegutec" - http://www.taegutec-india.com/), Buffett is actually here on his philantrophic drive "The Giving Pledge", to ask wealthy Indians to pledge money for social causes. He will be joined in this mission by Bill Gates - Wow - the world's second and third richest men in India - and for what - "Sharing their story on why they are giving and asking others to do the same".

My colleague S Max Brown (http://rideau.com/blogs/s-max-brown), in all his keynotes on Real Leadership, talks about being "Other Focused" as one of the principal traits of a good leader - What an example in Warren Buffett and Bill Gates! A few rich Indians have started to follow this path already (to some extent as their contributions are still a portion of their net wealth), the most significant ones being:

1) The Azim Premji Foundation (a grant of Rs. 8000 Cr ~ USD 1800 million by Azim Premji - Wipro's founder and Chairman) - to tackle the problem of basic education by creating a sustainable support system for improving the quality of the teachers at the grassroot level.

2) The GMR Varalaskhmi Foundation - This first generation entrepreneur, Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao, has pretty much given all his wealth (INR 1540 Cr ~ USD 340 million) to this foundation that intends to focus on education and vocational training for the underpriveleged.

3) Reliance (Mukesh Ambani - the world's 9th richest man) has created a foundation (INR 500 Cr ~ USD 110 million) to provide affordable healthcare and rural development.

I am not including the great work the Tatas have been doing over the last 70-80 years in India. I believe that they are one corporate that truly practises sustainable development and inclusive growth - just visit any of the towns where the Tatas have invested and you can see that the quality of life for everyone in that town is a couple of levels above other towns in that area - e.g. Jamshedpur.

Starting to use Recognition

“I have managed people for over 5 years now, but have never really done any kind of recognition for my people (outside of a few nominations for corporate wide award programs). I have now realized the value of recognition and want to really start using Recognition very effectively with my team. If I suddenly start now, won’t my people wonder what is wrong and feel suspicious”

This is probably one of the best questions someone has asked me about using recognition.

I first asked him why he wants to do recognition suddenly now? He told me that when he first became a manager, he felt that he had achieved something in his career and he felt he was superior than the folks he managed. Essentially he felt that he became a manager because he could do the job better than others and now his job was to teach the people on the team how to do their jobs. With time, he has realized that his job is really to just support his people and make available the resources they need, to perform their jobs, rather than telling them what to do. For this, he has realized that he needs to build trust with his people and drive up their engagement levels. He believes Recognition is a key component of doing this.

My response to him was quite simple – “At first, your people will wonder what your agenda is behind doing all this recognition suddenly now. They will be very skeptical and cautious and will probably not receive your first few instances of recognition very well. The best way to counter this would be to not stop doing it. If the Recognition is sincere and they see you doing it for a few months, they will start understanding that you are genuinely making an effort to appreciate them. The key here is to have a reasonable recognition plan (say for about 12 months), obtain the budget for it, communicate to the team and stick to the plan without worrying about the results”.

Recognition in the Restaurant Business in India

Whenever I visit McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell or Dominos in India, one thing I notice consistently is the enthusiasm and smile on the faces of the folks who work there – the counter staff, the waiters, the delivery boys etc. At the same time, when I go to other restaurants the staff is keen to service you as a customer, but I can’t see the spark on their faces – When I look at them they seem to be telling me “I am doing this job, because I need the money and I can’t find anything else better”.

While at McDonald’s, I get a different feeling – the employees seem proud to be working there – they seem to enjoy being there – they seem to belong there. Surprisingly the pay at McDonalds versus the other restaurants is almost the same – Infact, the local ones seem to be paying their staff a little better as that seems to be the only way they can get people to work for them.

While being a global brand, a large company etc. may help, I believe that the big companies have figured out that they need to have happy people as their frontline staff – since their brand is too dependent on them.

Not surprisingly, all these companies seem to take recognition quite seriously. Taco Bell had a poster with the words “Recognize, Recognize, Recognize”. McDonald’s has a large poster titled “Employee of the Month” with space for photographs of 12 employees to be placed on them for each month. These are located in the store in a place that a customer can take a look at, if he/she is interested. When I spoke to some of the employees, they told me that they keep getting rewarded and recognized for a number of things – for cross selling products that are more profitable for them – e.g. Fries and Coke with a burger; for staying an extra hour, for chipping in with a extra day of work in place of a co-worker etc. Above all they told me that what they liked was the fact that they were really busy throughout their work shift – which means business is good. They trusted that if business is good, their management will take care of them with bonuses, salary raises, benefits, growth etc.

Is it a coincidence that McDonald’s is the largest restaurant company in the world ($25 billion in revenues) or have they have really figured out what is it that matters for their business? Their people – especially their frontline staff. By building trust, by appreciating them consistently & sincerely and by empowering them to make decisions on the fly for the benefit of the customer, they have created a business that is exceptionally successful and profitable.