Recognise This! — Social Recognition is a business decision that is also a powerful means of employee engagement.
Today, I’d like to you point you to my most recent posts on Compensation Cafe and a new book written by 3/8 of the Compensation Cafe Team:
Is It a Reward, a Perk, or a Business Decision?
In this post, I look at recent news of the US government investigating taxation of employee free-food cafeterias such as the benefit offered by Google. How companies perceive the benefit itself will weight most heavily in the ultimate decision on what to do about employee benefits such as free-food offerings. If you think of the cafeterias as merely a “perk” designed to increase your corporate reputation as a “cool company,” then your motivation is coming from the wrong place. However, if you think of fully loaded, free-food employee cafeterias as a business decision, then I’d be willing to wager the programmes will continue even in the face of 30% increased taxes (which are paid by the company, not the employee, in most cases). Many companies perceive this benefit (as well as free on-site dry cleaning, day care, and many more) as a terrific way to keep employees on campus, focussed and working hard for longer hours at a stretch. It is a business decision that directly impacts productivity and potentially profitability.
The “I’ve Got Your Back” Measure of Employee Engagement
Knowing your boss and teammates have your back is powerfully engaging for employees. In this post, I look at three ways you can communicate “I’ve got your back” to members of your team. Read the post for the full details on these techniques below:
- Compensate them fairly
- Look for ways to recognise efforts, contributions and achievements
- Communicate publicly and privately
Read the Book: Everything You Do in Compensation is Communication
Here’s the description of the book from the Compensation Cafe contributor authors, Ann Bares, Margaret O’Hanlon, and Dan Walter:
“You’re an expert at your job, so why do you need this book? We bet that like us you want your compensation work to have more impact. That’s why you are always looking for a way to do your work better.Whether you are an analyst or vice president, there’s a good argument to be made for thinking about compensation in a different way. Looking beyond Excel spreadsheets. Finding the significance of our work and the influence we can have. We have one goal, to share with you what we’ve learned: When we acknowledge that everything that we do in compensation is communication, our work has far greater influence on our company’s success.”
