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Acknowledgement – don’t forget to do it
Our next door neighbour used to own a pub in the local village. It was a legend in the area and apparently even people from Spain came to our rural Somerset to sample her paella. She was reminiscing over a cup of tea last week and wondered if she should throw some of her pub memorabilia away. After all it was many years ago and all that stuff was cluttering up the loft. The menus, the visitors book, the awards for her great cooking, she had them all. ‘But this is a part of you’ I argued and you know you will regret it as soon as you have done it.
I then remembered that I still had stuff from my first sales career in my early 20s. Those letters we received from the top management announcing on their colourful notepaper that I was top of the league for period 2 or had won this or that completion. There were the names from those days too, all now long gone, thanking me for my hard work. No email then. These were on nice crunchy paper especially used for the purpose all sent in an envelope which I could open and show the wife.
Now we have email and it is so easy to acknowledge performance. Just a few words hit the enter key and there you are. But how often do we do thank or praise the people who work for us or those we work with? Not just for the big things but for something small that really made a difference or for keeping going at a difficult job. Lack of acknowledgement is probably the most cited reason employees give for leaving a company. The person just does not feel valued. Who could you acknowledge, praise or thank for their contribution to your working life today? Just name them and do it.
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October 18th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I believe that instrinsic job satisfaction is a key motivator in the information age. Having people that have a totally instrumental orientation to work in that they are simply motivated by money is a paradigm that belongs to the industrial age.
People have complex holistic requirements and deserve for all of those requirements to be met in the workplace. I would always encourage anyone with a responsibility to motivate others like business owners and managers to consider how all the needs of the employees are being met.
It is my belief that having a fun and relaxed working environment where you can truly be yourself is of huge importance. The additional motivation that results and an environment that is conducive to ideas being generated is a massive and underused benefit in most organisations. What’s worse is this a resource that can give a business leverage and it is free! Bring back pool, table football and social events that really help people to be themselves. When people feel as though they can be themselves, ideas and magic can happen! Ignore cultural and social issues in your organisation at your peril!