The Audience is Listening…

Well, actually, they’re probably not. Anyone who has spent any time at all in Corporate America has probably complained that management isn’t listening to the employees at least once. Let me say up front that you should not take this personally; I was once the senior business analyst of a $450 million dollar wholesale unit, and my division President refused to listen to me, despite the fact that I had been consistently accurate. Unfortunately, even people who do, in fact, know better will sometimes refuse to listen to input from their subordinates, either to establish how important they are, put the subordinate in their place, or just because thinking about input requires work, while a knee-jerk rejection does not.

That this type of behavior is stupid should be obvious; if you do not listen to your subordinates, how will you know what is going on within your unit? What is less obvious is that in addition to being poor management practice, this also fails to address the needs of the employees at level 4 of the Hierarchy of Needs : Recognition.

No one wants to feel like a faceless cog in the machine, especially if they are. So once their survival and security needs are met, and they begin to form social connections to the employees around them, most people will begin looking for recognition of the quality of their work, their importance to the organization, and the fact that their input matters to higher levels of management. This may or may not have a competitive element, depending on the psychology of the individual, but even those people who do not feel any need to compete with their peers still like to feel appreciated.

The most obvious form of recognition, monetary reward, is harder to utilize than most people believe; even if your department has the budget to do so, it is not practical to be constantly handing chunks of money to the employees. Many companies make use of non-monetary awards, such as certificates of appreciation, but these are ultimately little more than adult versions of the gold stars we received in Kindergarten; unless the award itself is of value/prestige to the employee, the piece of paper itself will have little value.

The first step in providing proper recognition for your workforce is simply listening. Make it clear to your people that you want their input, and if you find their ideas sound, you will act on them. When you do implement an employee suggestion, make sure their peers (as much of the company as possible, in fact) know that you have done so. If someone has achieved high levels of productivity, make sure that everyone knows about that, as well. A token of your esteem (like a certificate) can work if it fulfills the employee’s fourth-level needs; so can an extra perk like an afternoon off with pay, or tickets to a sporting event, so long as they come with “bragging rights” – recognition from the rest of the group that the individual is being rewarded for their high performance.

One of the best variations of this idea I have ever seen was the “Lunch with the CEO” program. The idea was, each month the CEO of a large corporation would select the Employee of the Month from a list of candidates forwarded up through the Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers, Supervisors and Team Leaders. Instead of a nice certificate, however, what the Employee of the Month got was a one-on-one lunch meeting with the CEO, in the Executive Lunchroom. The meeting was a “no ranks” conversation; the CEO made a point of getting the employee’s first name and calling him by it, and asking for the employee’s input on the direction of the company (and any other issues the employee felt were important).

It’s debatable whether the CEO ever actually learned any deep, dark secrets this way – although these lunches undoubtedly gave him a look into life on the factory floor, in the warehouse, and down on the cubicle farm that he would otherwise never have gotten. The effect on morale, on the other hand, was quite obvious. Every time this happened, the employee would go back to the floor and tell his (or her) peers about having lunch with the CEO, and how the head of their company wanted the employee’s input and how he LISTENED to everything he/she said.

And this cost the company… One lunch. Usually a nice lunch, something a CEO wouldn’t mind eating, but still less than $20 for a boost in morale that thousands of dollars in company-sponsored social events could not have equaled. It’s worth thinking about…