Leaders Never Stop Learning

Welcome back friend😊

I am so excited to have you back this week! Let’s talk about employee recognition and what benefits it has for retention.

Did you know that there is a difference between Appreciation and Recognition?  Well, I learned that there was a difference recently.

Appreciation is when you are showing gratitude for a person’s value. 

Recognition is when you are showing a person you are grateful for their actions. You are showing specific attention to a task or a project that was well done.

Have you ever gotten to the end of the day and been like “phew I made it”? As you reflect on the day, you think; I was able to get each of the classrooms covered from the 3 call outs, put the food delivery order away because the cook left early, and only had to cover one lunch break.

Are you aware of the wins your staff had today or how they pivoted to help the day be successful? This would be a great opportunity to recognize each employee for the specific actions they did to make the day successful. Examples are: coming in early and staying late, shifting their break-times around, washing the snack dishes at the end of the day, or doing a bus run in the afternoon.

Employee recognition is another way to help retain great talent and create bonds with your employees, because they will feel engaged, see, and HEARD (cue last weeks conversation!)

Employee recognition encourages problem solving, taking initiative, high quality work and skill sharing which will raise up center morale because they will work at a place, they feel valued and want to be instead of dreading coming to work.

Tips when you are recognizing employees for a job well done:

🧡Be authentic and genuine.

🏆Make sure the recognition is done immediately, if you take too long it will lose meaning.

⁉️Be specific in what the action was and why this was important for you to recognize them.

🎗️Make it memorable⬇️⬇️

A couple of my favorite ways to recognize employees:

💌 I mail handwritten notes to the employee’s home. I keep note cards, envelopes, and stamps in my desk and at the end of the day before I leave a take a few minutes to write the note.

🍴I will take an employee out to lunch for a one-on-one conversation. This gives me the time to build a positive relationship and to let them know how their action of problem solving or taking the initiative has helped our Center be successful.

Till Next time,

Jen

P.s. Please interact in our Facebook group as much as you like— you can ask questions or pose your struggles/wins at any time! It’s a good supplement to our time here each week!

P.p.s. The picture above is linked to our #TeamBuildingTuesday post for a good peer recognition activity!