gTY Archives

Workplace tension gets a lot of laughs in our favorite films and TV shows, from “Office Space” to “The Office” to “Horrible Bosses.” But in the real world, workplace kindness packs a bigger punch than any other behavior! In fact, according to the latest research, it can transform your workplace!
Kindness in the workplace isn’t just about being “nice.” It also builds and enhances positive workplace dynamics, from employee engagement and happiness to cooperation and productivity.
In honor of World Kindness Day, invigorate your company’s commitment to developing kindness in the workplace — and leave the rudeness, gossip and other uncivil behaviors where they belong: on TV.
(more…)

Keeping employees happy and productive takes more than fun and games. It takes a cultural shift.
Happy, productive workers thrive in a certain type of workplace culture — one that values respect, appreciation, innovation and teamwork.
No matter what type of workplace your company has — a factory, office or shipping plant, restaurant, hotel or other service facility, or even a distributed workforce — you can take steps starting today to build this healthy culture among your employees.
Read on to find out why keeping employees happy and productive is actually easier than you may think!
(more…)

Employee motivation is an essential driver for successful companies, especially in today’s business environment. If you want especially motivated employees, focus your efforts on these three key drivers – the “E’s”:

• Engagement
• Encouragement
• Environment

Let’s look at them one-by-one to explore why they’re so important.

(more…)

One of our posts argued that a commitment to a culture of workplace gratitude can transform a company’s culture allowing it to excel and insulating it in crisis.

To better understand the power of gratitude in the workplace, let’s learn from real-world examples of workplace gratitude in action.

Eric Mosely and Derek Irvine identify hugely successful businesses that have harnessed that power and know how to deliver workplace thank you’s that resonate in their recent book, The Power of Thanks.

What happens when you embrace workplace gratitude

JetBlue

At JetBlue, company founders aimed to erase the inconvenient and annoying aspects of airline travel through extraordinary customer service. Mostly and Irvine cite Michael Elliott, JetBlue’s senior vice president of people, who says the airline’s mission is to “inspire humanity,” beginning by treating the airline’s “crewmembers” with gratitude and kindness.

“Our five Values—Safety, Caring, Integrity, Passion and Fun—set us apart from the other guys,” Elliott says. “Together, our crewmembers live these values, and in turn, make the JetBlue experience for our customers unmatchable. We strive to make it a down-to-earth company by hiring kind, hard-working crewmembers. Once they get here, we recognize and applaud them for being the heart of our brand.”

Many companies experience growing pains, especially when their growth is rapid, as JetBlue’s was. In just a few years, the airline grew from 1,000 to 16,000 employees, with its workforce spread across the U.S. and its skies.

JetBlue has been steadfast in bolstering its mission and culture, using frequent workplace thank you’s to recognize its employees and remind them of how valued they are. This has prompted employees to show customers the same level of appreciation, garnering customer loyalty in the process. The company has earned 11 honors from J.D. Power for the highest customer satisfaction among low-cost carriers in North America.

“Knowing who delivers extraordinary customer service, who truly lives the values, and who contributes to the JetBlue culture is critical,” says Elliott. “This provides a competitive advantage for us while keeping our customers happy and our company feeling small as we grow. If we can ensure we are recognizing crewmembers and inspiring them to keep up our exceptional level of service year after year, we can go anywhere.”

Ford

In 2006 Mark Fields, Ford’s then-COO and current CEO, posted a sign in the company’s “war room,” quoting management guru Peter Drucker. The sign says:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Ford lives that credo, and Mosely and Irvine maintain it’s one of the main reasons the company survived the national economic meltdown of 2008, which left the two other “big three” automakers—GM and Chrysler—looking for a federal bailout.

Then-chairman Alan Mulally joined Ford from Boeing in 2006 and asked Fields to change Ford’s culture from, as The Power of Thanks says:

“The classic industrial-company combination of contention, distrust, and zero-sum negotiations (for me to win, you have to lose) with a set of values and behaviors called ‘One Ford,’ that define the automaker’s current culture.”

These include:

• Working together. Everyone respects, listens to, helps, and appreciates others and honors their contributions.
• Modeling values. Crew members have can-do, find-a-way attitudes, enjoy their work, and have fun.
• Delivering results.  Workers inspire others and hold themselves and their team members responsible and accountable.

As the book says:

“Ford sees a culture of positivity, inspiration, and accountability not as a feel-good, nice-to-have part of the company but as essential to delivering results.”

Mulally told McKinsey Insights in 2013:

“Some prefer to work in a different way. Ultimately, they will either adopt the Ford culture, or they will leave.”

Although Ford’s sales dropped dramatically during the Great Recession, the company’s culture—which embraced the strategy of workforce gratitude—helped it rebound with lower costs and better products.

Timely Workplace Thank You’s Help

As Southwest Airlines’ cofounder and chairman Herb Kelleher has said:

“Culture is what you do when people aren’t looking.”

If your company stresses values and behaviors that align with organizational goals, employees’ instincts will lead them to behave in ways that support those values, strengthening your culture. If you commit to building a culture of appreciation, overtime your workplace will embody it.

How does your workforce behave when you’re not looking? It’s an insight into what your real culture is all about.

Learn more about harnessing the power of workplace gratitude in our popular free eBook, “Transform Your Workplace with Gratitude.” Click the image below and start transforming your workplace today! 

About gThankYou, LLC
Turkey Gift Certificates and Turkey Or Ham Gift Certificates by gThankYou! are two of America’s favorite employee gifts and can be redeemed for any Brand (Turkey or Turkey Or Ham), at virtually any Grocery Store in the U.S.
gThankYou, LLC provides company leaders with a variety of easy, meaningful and affordable ways to recognize and reward employees, holiday time or anytime. gThankYou! Certificates of Gratitude and our free Enclosure Cards are customizable including incorporating your company logo. And, nearly all orders ship same day.
gThankYou, LLC (www.gthankyou.com) is based in Madison, Wisconsin. Contact: Rick Kiley, Chief ThankYou! Officer, gThankYou, LLC at info@gthankyou.com or 888-970-6773.
Follow the Company Blog – “Celebrating Work”.
Join the Conversation @gThankYou 
“G” logo and “Certificates of Gratitude” are trademarks and “gThankYou” is a registered trademark of gThankYou, LLC.

Easy employee gifts are now even easier with gThankYou‘s new and improved website design! After embarking on our ninth year of offering America’s favorite Turkey Gift Certificate and Ham Gift Certificate, we decided it was time for a fresh look and an easier-to-navigate website for our customers.

Our updated website design is geared toward convenience — for you, your gift recipients and grocers — as well as making your workplace gift-giving a success with expert guidance from our experienced staff.
As always, gThankYou is about more than employee turkey gifts. In addition to offering convenient, practical and affordable Employee Gift Certificates for a wide variety of grocery store purchases, we’re passionate about helping companies celebrate employees (and customers!) and build a vibrant culture of workplace gratitude.
The new gThankYou! website design makes it even more convenient to find easy employee gifts that suit every workplace, for any occasion! Meanwhile, we continue to cover up-to-date engagement tips and employee recognition trends on our blog, Celebrating Work.
Ready for a tour? Let’s take a look at the new and improved gThankYou website and how it helps you. Employee recognition can be a challenge in today’s job climate, but finding easy employee gifts and recognition support shouldn’t be!
(more…)

Make A Difference Day — celebrated tomorrow, Oct. 24 — is a great opportunity to engage your employees in the community and the workplace.
Started more than two decades ago by the USA TODAY Weekender magazine, Make A Difference Day has a simple goal: to improve lives. That simple goal has grown Make A Difference Day into the nation’s largest day of community service. It’s now a USA TODAY/Gannett and TEGNA initiative with sponsorship from Newman’s Own and NBC News!
Employees today want opportunities to give back to the community alongside their coworkers. In fact, as we recently covered in “Trends in Team Motivation: A Culture of Giving Back,” the up-and-coming generation of prospective employees are seeking out companies that value workplace volunteerism!
Volunteering together with your team on Make A Difference Day fosters employee engagement, builds goodwill with the community and, most importantly, makes a difference in the lives of others!
Even a few hours of volunteering — stocking shelves at a food bank or weeding a flower bed — will make a difference.
That’s the beauty of Make A Difference Day. It puts good intentions into action, even on a small scale. Read on for workplace resources and inspiration to plan a Make A Difference Day project with your team.
(more…)

Engaged managers know how to engage their employees—and study after study shows that engaged employees are more productive and more satisfied with their jobs! Their connectedness boosts organization efficiency and profitability.

However, a recent Gallup study shows that a majority of U.S. managers aren’t actually engaged. Gallup writer and editor Amy Adkins spells it out in “Only 35% of U.S. Managers Are Engaged in Their Jobs:” 51% of managers are unengaged and 14% are actively disengaged. Gallup identifies a “cascade effect” in which managers’ lack of concern spreads to employees.

It’s extremely costly, writes journalist Dan Cook (“Bad bosses causing employees to quit in droves”). He echoes Gallup’s estimates: unengaged managers cost U.S. businesses $77 – $96 billion each year! Add in the effect of actively disengaged managers, and the annual costs rises to $319 – $398 billion. Wow!

Another Gallup study, “State of the American Manager,” survey finds that half of employees say they’ve left a job because of a disengaged manager.

There’s no doubt about it: manager engagement matters. Read on and learn more about how to grow engagement from the roots up and the top-down!

(more…)

A sincere employee Thank You is easy and priceless — losing your valued employees is not.
A TINYpulse study of thousands of employees found a strong link between how valued people feel and the likelihood that they’d reapply to their current job.
“It might seem too good to be true that something as simple as recognizing your employees can be so important to job satisfaction,” writes Dora Wang in her When I Work blog post “Using Employee Recognition to Prevent Workers from Quitting.”
But it is true: a simple employee Thank You — a few words of gratitude for being kind to a customer, for taking initiative on a tough project or for working quickly to meet a deadline — is a powerful, cost-effective way to keep your employees feeling valued, motivated and engaged in their jobs.

Now is no time to lose staff for want of gratitude, either — especially if your business is gearing up for the busy holiday season. Read on for tips on building your company’s culture of gratitude, one employee Thank You at a time!
(more…)

Remember the fun and excitement of Halloween when you were a kid? Halloween in the workplace can still be just as exciting for adults – they just might need a reminder it’s OK to have fun.

Help your team connect, enjoy each other and remember why they love working for you with some Halloween fun.  Have a costume party, a cubical decorating contest, host a trick or treat event for a local food pantry or delight colleagues with a surprise gift of thanks such as gThankYou! Candy Gift Certificates. Know what would work in your workplace, challenge people’s creativity and unleash the joy of the holiday in your workplace this year!

As human resources expert Susan Heathfield says in “Celebrate Halloween at Work,”

“Traditions are important in companies just as they are in families. And Halloween is one of the best holiday traditions to establish and to celebrate at work.”

Halloween is now the second most popular U.S. holiday, she notes, so it’s one your employees are likely fond of. It’s all about fun and has plenty of fun, team-based activities to choose from!

Remember though, Heathfield cautions, that no employee feels pressured to participate in the festivities or any other activity not related to their job tasks.

(more…)

Building a culture of giving back is one of the strongest ways to build team motivation — it’s reliable, affordable and gets results fast.
In fact, volunteerism is so important to employees that companies even field questions about it during hiring interviews, according to a Madison Nonprofit Day panel discussion in Wisconsin this week.

There’s a “millennial appetite for giving back,” said Steve Goldberg, executive director of the CUNA Mutual Foundation, the nonprofit arm of credit union insurance company CUNA Mutual Group.

“It’s in our self interest,” Goldberg said of offering volunteer opportunities to employees.

He said one of the most common interview questions from potential employees is, “What do you do to give back?”

By popular demand, companies are refining employee volunteer opportunities. But a culture of giving back isn’t just a nice, “feel good” perk to attract potential employees. It’s also a strategic, meaningful way to engage and retain your existing workforce.
Read on to find out how companies are developing their volunteer programs to build team motivation, develop employee work ethic and foster strong company spirit!
(more…)

Ideally—in our home and work lives—we all practice daily kindness. But today, “Do Something Nice Day,” is an especially good time to do good things for family, friends, and employees. Even a bright smile can lift someone’s spirits and become contagious – inspiring them to share kindness to others and setting in motion a wave of kindness!

You can do kind things openly or discretely.

(more…)

Disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity, according to Gallup’s comprehensive “State of the American Workplace” study.
Behind this astronomical figure are real people and real companies struggling with near epidemic levels of disengagement. Disengaged employees are more likely to show up late, miss work, waste time and drive away customers.
Disengaged employees are a plague in the workplace, but they’re also an opportunity. Each of them — yes, each and every one! — wants to do good work and wants to be engaged. No one starts a job intending to disengage!
Turning around disengagement is not only possible, it’s a process you can start today by helping managers change their attitudes and employee communication. The antidote to disengagement begins with managers who initiate genuine connection, positive communication and frequent gratitude with employees.
Hook your disengaged employees and see them as an engagement opportunity, not a liability! Read on for employee engagement tips you can start using right away.
(more…)

When you celebrate your employees, they know you value them, and it makes them feel more satisfied with their work. And that’s not all!

The 2015 Employee Recognition Report by the Society for Human Resource Management and Globoforce states that values-based employee recognition creates a stronger culture and improves overall financial performance. Values-based recognition rewards employees for demonstrating behaviors that support one or more of the company’s core values (like exceptional customer service or teamwork).

Matt Straz, founder and CEO of Namely, cites the report in his Entrepreneur article, “4 Ways Innovative Companies are Celebrating Their Employees.” He shares responses from 823 HR professionals who participated in the survey. According to them, employee recognition and celebration:

• Increases engagement (90% respondents )
• Improves employee happiness (86% respondents)
• Improves employee relationships (84% respondents)
• Increases retention (68% respondents)!

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it! Think again! Read on to learn how simple gestures in your workplace help celebrate your employees.
(more…)

Values-based employee recognition is all the rage because it works. Here are simple successful real-life examples to inspire your recognition planning!

First a little memory refresher: Values-driven employee recognition is rewarding workers for demonstrating behaviors that support one or more of the company’s core values, ranging from great customer service, commitment to quality, improving people’s’ lives or teamwork.

Some ways companies use values-driven employee recognition are:

• Recognizing one-year employees for living the mission
  
• Enabling peer-to-peer recognition to get employees in the habit of appreciating each other’s contributions and help teams bond
• Rewarding innovation and risk-taking
  
• Recognizing great work that supports important company values.

Matt Straz, founder and CEO of Namely, shares a few great examples of value-driven recognition in action in “4 Ways Innovative Companies are Celebrating Their Employees.”

(more…)

Employee recognition can improve companies’ financial performance, according to McKinsey & Co. researchers. That’s something  management can feel great about when supporting recognition efforts!

Linking your employee recognition program—individual and team goals, metrics, rewards—with business goals and objectives helps you retain motivate top-performing employees and motivate the entire workplace! According to the U.S. Motivation post, “Aligning Your Reward and Recognition Program for Organizational Success:”

“Your program should be structured to meet those specific goals, offering the right motivation and ability to achieve the goal.”

(more…)

The latest trends connecting vacation and employee engagement emphasize time off in ways that may surprise overworked Americans!
Americans are taking less vacation time than at any point in the past 40 years, according to an Oxford Economics study for the U.S. Travel Association, based on an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a June 2014 survey of 1,303 workers.
Shockingly, shrinking vacation time is by choice! American workers collectively lose 169 million days of paid time off each year by choosing not to take them— a financial loss of $52.4 billion in benefits (averaging $504 per employee).
Do companies at least reap the benefits of a more productive, dedicated workforce? Not at all! The Oxford Economics study finds that unused paid time off is of little benefit to anyone.
Contrary to popular opinion, more time at the office does not correlate with employee or employer success. The more unused paid days off an employee has, the less likely they are to receive a raise or bonus and the more likely they are to be stressed — and stressed employees are a liability and hidden cost for employers!
“America’s work martyrs aren’t more successful. We need to change our thinking. All work and no play is not going to get you ahead — it’s only going to get you more stress,” says Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association.
Current vacation trends follow this line of thinking and challenge traditional assumptions about time off and productivity. Read on to find out why savvy HR leaders are pushing for flexible, creative vacation time that actually boosts employee engagement.
(more…)

Want to make the most of your employee recognition efforts? You’ll want to learn about the latest trends in results-driven recognition before you update your recognition program.

2015 WorldatWork report, “Trends in Employee Recognition,” finds that 89% of companies offer recognition programs. Participating organizations with cultures of recognition said their employees have higher engagement, motivation, and satisfaction levels.

The study suggests that, in particular, companies with results-driven recognition programs experience greater overall success. A “results-driven program” is designed to support organizational strategies and business goals.

Let the following data inspire and inform your own recognition efforts!

(more…)

Some days, workplace gratitude comes so easily — everyone’s in a great mood, projects are coming along smoothly and the outlook is positive.
Other days — well, even finding one thing to be grateful for can feel like a challenge.
Yet it’s on these days, in the midst of stress, that workplace gratitude sustains us, fuels our happiness and keeps us on track!
As we gear up for World Gratitude Day this Monday, Sept. 21, take a few moments to reflect on the ways you can encourage a daily practice of workplace gratitude, especially on days when everyone would rather not. It’s on those days that you’ll discover the most engagement power from practicing gratitude!
(more…)

Kevin Sheridan is one of the most sought-after voices on the topic of employee engagement and, in particular, engaging a distributed workforce.
As an upper-level Human Capital Management consultant with over 30 years of experience, Sheridan has helped some of the world’s largest corporations successfully rebuild a workplace culture that fosters productive engagement. He shares secrets of his award-winning, industry-changing innovation in his two books, “Building A Magnetic Culture” and “The Virtual Manager”.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to chat with Kevin Sheridan recently about the challenges and rewards of engaging a distributed workforce.
(more…)

In a recent post we discussed Clif Bar‘s exceptional employee benefits that attract and retain great employees. Enterprise management software Palantir does this as well. Like Clif Bar, the company strives to improve quality of life with workforce perks that enhance employees’ lives. As its website says,

“From protecting privacy and civil liberties to promoting open software to pursuing philanthropic engagements to a host of other initiatives, we put our values to work in the service of making the world a better place, every day.”

Life at Palantir means choosing your own adventure, and the company strives to make life “fun and easy” for its employees. Read on to learn how their employee benefits accomplish that!

(more…)