Agile Development

Motivate Agile Teams with Organizational Recognition

That’s right. The number one thing that motivates people to do their best, as long as they are already being paid an acceptable base salary is recognition. 
 

“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”—Mark Twain.
 

The Benefits of Employee Recognition

Recognition is so powerful, because it meets one of our most basic human needs: acceptance. When we feel accepted and know that someone else has noticed our good work, we feel like we are valued by the person, team or organization, and that our efforts make a difference.

This is a very important factor in several ways. Recognition improves performance in the following ways:

• Lower turnover—Employees who have been with an organization for a while know the ropes and are familiar with their jobs. Each time you lose a trained employee, you lose time and money.
• Higher Loyalty—Once you have talented employees, your only choice is to pay them lots of money, or treat them better. Because it takes about $1000 US dollars compared to a few simple acts of recognition to create the same amount of loyalty, well, I think the right choice is pretty clear.
• Better Performance—Make the most of the team you have by boosting their morale and in turn their production. Happier employees that feel they are useful are naturally going to work harder, and have more confidence in what they do allowing them to be more creative and take initiative to make the right decisions.

Creating a System for Recognition

There are several ways a company, organization, or team can recognize their employees:

• Informal recognition: This is the simple, day-to-day recognition such as a “Thank You,” either written or verbal for something specific, or a small word of encouragement or praise. This can be done one-on-one, but public praise works well too.
• Formal recognition: This would be a way of recognizing employees in a more structured, expected, and regular way, such as “Employee of the Month,” or “Top Producer,” etc.
• Loyalty recognition: This would be recognition for the number of years an employee stays with the company. You can recognize their commitment and let them know that you appreciate their work and the time they have spent with your company.
• Milestone success recognition: This is where you recognize a person or a group when they complete a project or reach a goal.

Get the Most Impact from Recognition

There is not a lot of merit to recognition if other important areas of leadership are not currently in place. You must ensure that these four leadership areas are already being maximized before you can get the best results from your recognition program.

First, there must be clearly set goals in place. Without goals, there is no clear path for success. Second there must be honest and open communication between everyone in the organization. Third, there has to be trust, which breeds respect and a feeling of stability and transparency. And fourth, there needs to be accountability, which ensures that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

How much can your Company Benefit?

According to the Globoforce latest reports, companies that employ a successful recognition strategy can expect 3 times higher ROE (return on equity), ROI (return on investment), and ROA (return on assets), than those who do not, as well as a 6.6 percent operating margin for the former group, compared with just 1 percent for the latter.  For something as simple as a little recognition, the positive impact is significant.