

Stat of the week: 64% don’t receive frequent recognition at work - athroop
http://blog.rypple.com/2010/10/64-dont-receive-frequent-recognition-at-work/

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mcgraw
My first position during high school (1.5 yr fast food), only recieved
feedback during promotions. Jumped to the Marines and recieved a mega-ton of
feedback. Fastforward to now, I've been in my current technology position for
a year-and-a-half and the only time I heard feedback for my work was when a
promotion came. I recently took on some telecommute contract work saving a
product from failure and I receieved quite a bit of positive feedback (phone
have something to do with it?).

So yeah, sounds about right. I would attribute it to a lot of people in
leadership positions not really having training as to the processes of actual
leading people. They may know how to make a phenominal gantt chart, but most
of all flounder when it comes to maintaining interpersonal relationships.

The bottom line is that you have direct influence into a persons attitude,
good or bad. If you completely lash out against somebody, that will produce
negative results. If you praise and talk about what you liked about something,
that will be a motivational nudge. Find a good middle ground where you can
provide feedback both good/bad for somebody. Feedback is hugely important
otherwise the person is just lost/assuming their own way.

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Construct
Even worse, many manager-types tend to be hands-off when everything is going
well but are quick to seize upon failures or shortcomings as they come up.
This has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging employees to keep a low
profile and not pursue anything risky or innovative. As innovation goes out
the window, the company stagnates.

I've had too many managers go this route, which is why I always make a point
to stop by coworkers' cubicles and thank them for their help or work on
different projects.

~~~
tompetty
I agree. In my experience there has been far too much emphasis on the
negative, whilst taking the positive for granted.

Very interesting to note that praise and recognition are better motivators
than financial incentives. Obvious once you think of it, but easy to lose
sight of.

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Alex3917
One of the biggest surprises about doing a startup is that there's no one
whose job it is to be impressed if you work hard. I vaguely suspect that
humans weren't designed for that, which is part of why startups are so
stressful.

~~~
seanalltogether
"I vaguely suspect that humans weren't designed for that"

I agree. People are quick to praise children for advancing in life, but care
little for adults doing the same. The history of humanity is worrying more
about your own fight for survival rather than praising other adults for
theirs.

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iuytgfrdsza
I feel good if the card reader at the door recognizes me!

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callmeed
What time are YC apps due?

First thing that comes to mind reading this: _this could totally be a fairly
easy but popular startup_

Base it on email to make it Posterous-easy. joe@company.com sends an email to
praise@workpraise.com and says "nancy@company.com did an aweosome job on her
TPS reports. She rocks!" ... manager approves, praise can be redeemed for
cash/products/paid vacation days ... morale goes up, retention goes up,
productivity goes up. hr costs go down.

profit.

~~~
lukesandberg
I don't think this would work too well. For me at least, praise in the form of
small gifts is not that worthwhile. I would much rather get honest direct
feedback in the form of a conversation than an email with a link to 20 dollars
of at applebees. (I mean the giftcard would be nice but it would feel
belittling without the personal interaction)

I think there's a joel spolsky article on inc.com about this, intrinsic vs.
Extrinsic motivation.

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callmeed
Gifts aren't the end-game in my mind–sorry if I gave that impression.

I think the value is simply knowing that other people notice your work,
trickling that praise up to management, and making it super-simple to submit
such praise.

It would still be up to managers to look at the praise and do the right thing
after.

~~~
lukesandberg
yeah, ok.

However, if thats the case then it already is super simple to submit the
praise...walk over to their desk/call them/ping them/email them...

~~~
mr_november
But your super simple methods fail to further a culture of feedback. If there
is a central place where all employees can see positive feedback given to each
other, it encourages everyone to continue giving this short notes of
encouragement/thanks which keeps morales high (hopefully).

I'm not sure if having a central repository of feedback is really what
callmeed was getting at but it's what I've built with my small app so this was
my line of thinking.

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uast23
A cliche says that getting recognition at work is more about the attitude
rather than the work; but in my experience it is a mix of both. If the quality
of work is good and you have let people know that you know that your work is
good, recognition is not going anywhere. Unless people know that you totally
respect yourself, they treat you like no-one.

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photon_off
The original statistic was "36% of employees _frequently_ receive recognition
at work". This does not mean the remaining 64% do not receive recognition.
Furthermore, both the original report (Tower Watson), and this blog (Rypple),
are incentivized to report the sicknesses of the workplace, as they happily
sell the cures.

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Dylanlacey
I think 64% is a low number and a lot of people imagine that vague assurances
are actually recognition.

I further think that this leads to the company not receiving feedback from
it's staff except for the ultimate: quitting. So you have staff who don't want
to talk about how you could make things better, who don't want to innovate,
who don't rock the boat, and who then leave because you don't seem open to
communication.

And in the worst example, the company then explains away their absence via a
"Well, THEY didn't have the right Culture, did they?"

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nysauhem
I think this statistic is neither surprising nor problematic. Would you really
expect more than 36% of the workforce to be frequently deserving of
recognition? The job of management is not to give lip-service praise to all
their employees.

~~~
msbarnett
I disagree -- if an employee is providing an indispensable contribution to the
company, you need to be recognizing and praising them, or sooner or later they
are going to stop contributing at a high level or jump to another opportunity.

And if an employee isn't providing an indispensable contribution, why are you
still employing them? If _64%_ of your workforce isn't providing any value
worth recognizing, your workforce is far too large.

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JoeAltmaier
This article received (10/19 9PM) 9/11 positive feedback comments
(agreement/extrapolation etc).

Thats 81% - ahead of the curve!

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lauraglu
I rarely received feedback at previous jobs.

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geuis
Just had this happen yesterday. Spent the last month and a half working on
<http://chow.com/tv>. The email that was sent out announcing the launch and
the 2nd spot placement in the Google TV Spotlight gallery was "A big thanks to
everyone who made this happen on such a tight schedule!" Some caveats, I
didn't do the graphics design (two of our awesome designers worked on that)
though I provided some early feedback and recommended a couple of changes
based on actual implementation. However, I did the layout, operational code,
and basically all of the testing. Not angry or anything, but getting a little
name-drop would have been nice.

