Take your Engagement Program from Meh to Hell Yah!

Peter PsichogiosLeadership, Recognition & Engagement Leadership

Are your employees bored, unengaged and unmotivated? Are you an HR leader tasked with the important goal of engaging your employees? It’s a tricky task to try and engage your employees in meaningful ways that will unlock their discretionary energy and motivation.

A large majority of organizations that are providing employee engagement incentives to their employees are not getting a return on their investment. Part of the reason is that employee engagement has become too focused on generating ‘buzz’ and using superficial ways of engaging employees like stocking the company fridge or having a fuseball table in the break room. Now it’s not to say that these types of engagement strategy can’t work, but in addition to these fun perks it is critical that you provide your employees with deeper, meaningful forms of engagement that will enable your employees to grow and do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons with their colleagues and customers.

Now the key to taking your employee engagement program from meh to hell yah, is by uniquely personalizing the incentive and recognition process to each individual employee and giving them choice. Those participating in the recognition program must be motivated by the incentives.

Beyond being personalized and individualized, incentives and recognition need to be tied directly to superior performance, learning and development, and key customer and operational metrics.

An effective way to take your recognition program from meh to hell yah is to use situation recognition. Situational recognition means diagnosing each individual and each desired outcome.

If you provide the same recognition for everyone in your organization, I guarantee you that your program will be ineffective and disappointing. When you focus on situational recognition, you are focusing on the individual’s ability, competence, willingness and commitment to create positive results.

Additionally, situational recognition means getting to know the person beyond the job they do. And when you get to know people and care about them beyond the job, they will feel more connected to you and your organization, and thus be more motivated to give you their discretionary energy.

Our global research has shown that employees want to feel supported by their direct supervisor and be involved in business decisions. When it comes to providing recognition, it is essential to know individual personality types and preferences, as recognition should be a one size fits one mentality.

For more information on how to create a personalized recognition program for your employees, get in touch for a 15-minute demonstration of GES’s recognition solutions.