Blog: Human Resources Archive
This Friday, March 2, is Employee Appreciation Day. And while it might be nice to have a day designated as Employee Appreciation Day, every day should be Employee Appreciation Day in your office! That’s right. Every day.
Why Appreciation is So Important
In the book, How Full is Your Bucket?, by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, the authors cite a U.S. Department of Labor Study that found the #1 reason people leave their jobs is because they don’t feel appreciated on a day-to-day basis. But people who do feel appreciated are more likely to be “engaged.” An engaged employee: shows up on time (or early), stays late when needed, smiles, shows enthusiasm, is a great ambassador for the firm and recruits other engaged employees.
On the other hand, people who don’t feel appreciated are more likely to be “actively disengaged” from work. You do not want actively disengaged people working for you. An actively disengaged employee will not only make your life miserable, he’ll tell others that your firm is a horrible place to work.
Show Your Appreciation
So how do you make sure your employees are engaged and not disengaged? It’s really simpler than you may think. Show your genuine appreciation for the work they do. Not just one or two days a year, but every day. Say “thank you” for even the little things. It’s OK – really – and it doesn’t cost you anything.
The Losada Line
Research by psychologist and business consultant, Marcial Losada, and reported in The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor, found that it takes about three positive comments to offset one negative comment. And the very best, most productive teams have a ratio of about 6 to 1.
Get Specific About the Good Stuff
Have you ever noticed that when you’re giving someone constructive criticism, you’re very specific? Yet, when you praise someone it’s usually a very general, “Nice job!” Guess what? Our brains remember the specific, not the general. That’s why we can remember a piece of stinging criticism for years, but have trouble remembering a time when we felt truly appreciated. So get specific with your praise.
Make Appreciation a Daily Habit
If you show your appreciation daily, remember the Losada Line, and get specific with your praise, your employees will show their appreciation by showing up engaged – not disengaged. It won’t cost you a penny, and you’ll create a happier and much more productive office. Like the Beatles said: Money can’t buy you love. And all the money in the world can’t buy an engaged employee.
Click here for a great TED Talk on “The Happy Secret to Better Work,” by Shawn Achor.
Do you know what all great leaders have in common? They are willing to get out of their fish bowls. What I mean by that is great leaders adapt their behavior. They are aware of how they are perceived by others, and they learn to adapt their behavior in a variety of ways. Why is that so important?
Think of adapting your behavior like learning a new language. If you’re visiting another country, you’ll have a much better time if you learn the language of the country. Learning a new language is one way of adapting. And if you want to be a better leader for your law firm, you need to understand the language of the people who work with you. Yes, you and everyone on your team speaks a different language – a different behavioral language. You’re all swimming in different fish bowls. So, how do you get out of your fish bowl? The DISC behavioral assessment is one way.
Click here to read more about how law firms are using DISC to enhance effectiveness and build better teams.
Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience.
Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind.
Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to use by people with all the other qualities.
- Dee Hock, founder and CEO emeritus of Visa in The War for Talent.
Experience does matter. But it shouldn’t be the first quality you look for when hiring. In fact, it ought to be pretty far down the list. Let me be clear, I’m not saying that competence and skills don’t matter. They do. But they’re not everything. All the competence and skill, and experience in the world won’t make up for a lack of integrity, shared values or cultural fit. You know what I’m talking about. When you have someone on your staff who lacks integrity or doesn’t share your firm’s values, it will make you and everyone else in your office miserable. You’ll begin to dread having to talk to the person, regardless of how productive they may be. And they’ll bring down the morale of your whole office. Maybe this has happened to you.
So, if shared values and cultural fit are so important, why don’t more law offices consider these things when hiring? – Because it’s not that easy. But you can do it. In a recent article from the Harvard Business Review online, Alan Lewis, the owner of Grand Circle Travel, a $600 million international tour operator explains how his company assesses the cultural fit of every hire.
1. Don’t just ask candidates to tell you how they espouse your company’s values; let them show you. Observe candidates through all phases of the interview process. How do they react when asked to take skills assessments? Are they nice to your receptionist? Use a group interview process, and get feedback from everyone on your team about each candidate.
2. Be crystal clear about your culture and values. If you’re not already crystal clear about your firm’s culture and values, now’s the time to get clear. According to Lewis, hiring someone who doesn’t fit with your values, means you’re hiring someone who is destined to fail.
3. Don’t combine skills interviews with values interviews. If you focus first on skills, then someone with less experience will likely be eliminated. You might overlook someone who has the integrity, motivation, capacity, understanding and knowledge to be a perfect fit for your firm.
Read the entire article at Harvard Business Review Online.
If you still think retention is mainly about money, find out how much it is costing your competition to get people to leave you. That’s called your “poach rate.” If your poach rate is less than 20 percent, it ain’t the money, honey! People who love their work, love their boss, and love their company don’t leave unless the offer is coming from the Godfather.
- John Putzier
So you’re ready to rethink your associate and staff compensation systems. That’s a good thing. Many law firms give little thought to how their compensation plans are structured. And while everyone wants to be well paid for their work, in terms of compensation, the old saying is true: Money isn’t everything, and it definitely isn’t the only thing. I’m not saying that monetary compensation isn’t important. It is. What I’m saying is that if you’re focused solely on dollars, you’re not likely to attract and retain the best and brightest associates or staff.
In his book, Drive, Daniel Pink explains that based on years of behavioral and motivational research:
When organizations use rewards like money to motivate staff, ‘that’s when they’re most demotivating.’ The better strategy is to get compensation right – and then get it out of sight. Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.
While this may sound very counterintuitive, think about it for a moment. Pink isn’t suggesting that you underpay your people. Rather, he suggests that you pay more than average. Paying your people at or above what the market is paying is important to both attracting and retaining great people. But competitive pay is just one – rather small – part of the compensation equation.
In fact, database research maintained by the Saratoga Institute of 19,700 exit interviews and current employee surveys conducted from 1999 through 2003, found that compensation issues represented only 12 percent of all reasons employees leave their jobs. In The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave: How to Recognize the Subtle Signs and Act Before It’s Too Late, Leigh Burnham reports the findings of the Saratoga Institute which make clear that money alone will not keep your best people from leaving you.
So when you think about compensation for your staff and associates, you’ve got to think about more than just dollars. Here are just a few of the hidden reasons, other than pay, why employees leave, according to Burnham:
• The workplace was not as expected: Have you ever put on your “best face” for the interview process and hired someone whose expectations of what working at your firm is really like were unrealistic?
• Too little coaching and feedback: When was the last time you spent an hour each month with your key people – staff or associates – just to coach and develop them? One hour a month is less than one percent of the typical 160 hours an employee works in a month.
• Feeling devalued and unrecognized: How often do you say “thank you?” How often to truly acknowledge a job well-done?
• Stress from overwork and work-life balance: Does your firm offer flex time? Are your people stressed out because you’re addicted to the adrenaline rush of working on a deadline?
• Loss of trust and confidence in leadership: Are you really leading your firm? Or are you so caught up in the work that you don’t really have time for your people?
Compensation includes the sum and substance of what it means to work at your firm. So, when you evaluate your compensation systems, be sure to include non-monetary compensation, and don’t leave your firm vulnerable to the poachers.
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