3 Benefits Learned From 3rd Party Recognition Efforts

In the last few years, I have been on teams that have embraced 3rd party recognition which I wrote about a few months ago.

To be honest, it was a feel-good initiative when I started doing it but I have learned that it really has tangible benefits I did not imagine when it started.

That realization set in the last few months after reflections from skip-levels meetings and enterprise-wide changes that our team has navigated where I have come to appreciate how the recognition investments we made yielded material benefits.

In an ever-interdependent world, I’ll share the 3 tangible ways recognition drives results in your team and across your organization.

By focusing on these 3 benefits, you’ll gain more conviction about leveraging recognition as an enabler for driving transformation in your organization over time.

Its about Depositing Goodwill to Drive Results.

Here are the 3 benefits that I’ve seen recognition drive in people and teams.

Benefit 1: Make Someone’s Day

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve gotten feedback that a recognition call from a 3rd party made someone’s day or resulted in the recipient saying how happy they are to work with the person who recognized them.

One teammate said getting this type of call was the “easiest and happiest call I’ll take all day!”

Here’s the point. We all come to work with challenges we’re grappling with and that is the same for the colleagues we work with.

The fact is most times a teammate gets a call, it is because something went wrong or there is an issue. Thats work. This does not include the personal issues they are grappling with at home.

That’s why it is so important to encourage teammates in an authentic way.

Outside of financial rewards, I’ve not seen anything as powerful as a call from a 3rd party to thank them for a positive action they have taken.

Speaking with a teammate who joined our team a few months ago, She told me she had been in other parts of the business for 15 years and she had never felt as valued as she has the last 5 months as part of our team.

The only difference I see is recognition for the work she does. Try it!

Benefit 2: Build Your Team’s Esteem

With recognition, we are learning that teammates are becoming more confident in making decisions and acting as owners.

Here is an example of how that shows up.

In one of our customer-facing teams, we found that supervisor escalations where customers asked to speak to a supervisor after talking to a representative had dropped from 3-4 per day to almost nothing a week over the period in which we started our recognition programs.

As we dug into why, we came away with the conclusion that a large reason is that our teammates in this team know

• Their work is actively appreciated via recognition

• Their work is supported

• They are valued

We believe this translates into increased ownership of the frontline team as they interact with customers.

That’s pretty amazing! Wow!

Benefit 3: Build Goodwill Outside Your Team

What we found is the 3rd party recognition calls (or deposits) have helped us connect with other functional teammates and leaders in moments where we did not have a complaint or need anything from them.

Those deposits in goodwill are now at a point that when we do need help from them, we’ve seen them go above and beyond to help us acheive our goal.

In a conversation with a teammate on an major enterprise wide change, a colleague in another team told me, “thank you for whatever magic you did behind the scenes to ensure the attention we’ve been seeing with the project team”

As I reflected, I thought, I had actually not done any magic, the only difference is we’ve invested in recognizing various teammates spontaneously for months and now when we need help, they have gone above and beyond to help us.

In other words, because we made deposits much earlier and without expectation, we’re able to get a positively unusual amount of support in our moment of real need.

What these 3 benefits tell me is that recognition done way is an intangible enabler to driving confidence, ownership and partnership over time to transform your organization.

Simple Not Easy 🙂 

Thanks for reading. Have a great week!

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