February 2012 Blog Posts (22)

Recognize This! – Great books on organization culture are few and far between. Building a Magnetic Culture is a must read.

Readers of my blog know that organization culture is passion of mine – especially how to build a culture of recognition and then…

Recognize This! – Knowing your business, defining your culture and – critically – ensuring every employee understands both are fundamental to success.

Banks and bankers have been much in the news the last few years, usually taking the heat for poor or questionable business practices that have inarguably hurt the economy at large as well as the average homeowner. Yet Wells Fargo’s story is different. A recent…

Recognize This! – Without a foundational “belief system” in your organization, you cannot align employees with your goals and objectives.

Regular readers of Recognize This! know that the New York Times “Corner Office” column is a perennial favorite of mine. Every Sunday, Adam Bryant interviews a CEO discuss the challenges they see, how they address those challenges – essentially, how they lead.

I was particularly impressed with…

How social networks can extend the reach of the Human Resources Department

Anyone who thinks online social networking sites are just a passing fad needs to consider a few cold hard statistics. Facebook alone claims over 800 million users worldwide. That’s more than twice the total US population! It also happens to be more than the combined populations of France, Italy, Germany, UK, Ireland, Russia, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Mexico,…

Last year has been a huge year for Cloud Computing. The software giants have moved aggressively into the space. In the year 2011, SAP acquired cloud software vendor SuccessFactors for approximately $3.4 billion. The same year Oracle too announced acquisition of cloud CRM vendor RightNow. Collectively, SAP and Oracle spent nearly US $5 billion to acquire software vendors based in the cloud. Acquisition of cloud based performance management vendor Rypple by Salesforce.com also…

Recognize This! – Every organization has critical, but hidden, talent. Finding and utilizing them creates significant competitive advantage.

The U.S. sports world has been abuzz with “Linsanity” – hype about the excellent performance of Jeremy Lin, an NBA-league basketball player who came off the bench and immediately displayed stunning numbers.

Regular readers of my blog are likely asking, “Derek follows U.S. basketball?” No, not really. But I…

A few of my colleagues teased me that I didn’t write a post about “loving your employees” on Valentine’s Day earlier this week. Indeed, I did! But the teasing reminded me I haven’t shared with the Recognize This! community my recent posts on Compensation Café.…

Throughout our work and personal life, we make many plans. However, many of these plans end up going awry. Either through half-baked planning or a lack of foresight, we find that we are sometimes unable to complete the tasks we set ourselves. It is important to assess why this happens and how we can overcome this major problem.…

Recognize This! –CEO leadership is crucial to creating work environments in which employees will choose to engage.

In the last couple days, I featured very interesting research on the difference between Employee Engagement and Sustainable Employee Engagement from Towers Watson as well as research from Kenexa on…

Recognize This! – Measuring energy and enablement make it possible to ensure your employee engagement levels are sustained.

Abhishek Mittal, a Towers Watson management consultant based in Singapore, is one of my go-to sources for on-point research and thinking on employee engagement and, critically, how to apply that research and thinking in practice in the organization. A recent…

Recognize This! – If the vast majority of your employees are dissatisfied with your recognition program, perhaps it’s time to change the program.

I greatly enjoyed leading a webinar discussion yesterday with Evren Esen of SHRM on the results of our bi-annual Globoforce/SHRM Employee Recognition Tracker. (Recorded webinar available on HR.com.)

Commissioned to dive into the expectations and…

Recognize This! -In recognition and reward programs for Call Center employees, be sure you are reinforcing desired behaviors and outcomes, not just results.

Occasionally, I receive questions through the “Email Derek” button in the upper-right corner of this blog that have a broader interest to the readers of the blog. One such question came in from Sudan  over the weekend asking:

I work as an HR manager for a call center and HR consulting…

Recognize This! – Strategic Recognition programs lead to increased employee engagement, retention and performance.

I’m excited to once again lead a…

Recognize This! – Employee engagement most certainly is not something else you must do. It must be primary focus to gain greatest competitive advantage and success in the marketplace.

I’m quite impressed by the level of commitment in Britain to employee engagement, first demonstrated in the very comprehensive MacLeod…

Recognize This! -  The corporate culture appropriate for your organization is unique to you.

I write regularly about company culture, the importance of getting your culture right for your organization, and how strategic recognition is a powerful method for achieving that culture. But let’s be clear on two critical points:

1)   Your culture is unique…

Recognize This! – You have many options instead of forced ranking for effective performance management.

Yesterday, I shared my opinion on forced ranking as a performance management tool (it should die) along with a true story of the real damage force ranking does when…