Before your employees or you get too intoxicated from all the appreciation, I think we should ask ourselves why we need a day called Employee Appreciation Day.
Having an Employee Appreciation Day is almost as silly as having a customer appreciation day.
Human Resource and learning professionals know that enabling employees day by day is much more important than having one day called Employee Appreciation Day.
If you are only focused on appreciating and enabling employees for one day, you would be better suited for Human Remains than Human Resources.
How do we treat them the other 364 days a year?
The best Learning Officers and Human Resource professionals focus on appreciating their employees everyday, every hour, every minute, every interaction.
Let me take this a step further.
If there is a need for a thing called Employee Appreciation Day then why don’t we have a day called Budget Appreciation Day?
I’ve never seen banners, ball caps or coffee mugs celebrating “Budget Appreciation Day.”
Why?
I think it is safe to assume we don’t need these promotional items to promote the budget because it is already baked into our organization’s operating DNA.
Think about how silly it is to have only one day that promotes appreciating your people.
If you want your employees to be connected to the organization and give you their discretionary energy, then the more important question is; What are you and the organization doing all year long to enable your employees and to show your appreciation for their efforts and contributions.
Many organizations and the human remains professionals in them run around one day a year trying to make their employees “feel good.”
The best organizations know that employee enablement and employee appreciation is not a one time event.
The best learning officers and HR professionals know that it takes vision, skills, support, involvement, praise, flexibility, feedback and accountability to enable, engage and appreciate employees. How do you and your organization stack up in providing your team the following throughout the year?
Vision
Skills
Support
Involvement
Praise
Flexibility
Feedback
Accountability
Now that we have had our fun making people “feel good” today, how are you going to help them produce good results the rest of the year?
If you are in human remains, don’t worry about it. You have 364 more days to figure out how to appreciate your employees next year.
But, for the rest of you HR officers and OD professionals know that enabling and appreciating your employees takes a day by day, moment by moment focus.
In fact, if you really want to appreciate your employees, go ask them; What is one obstacles that I can remove for you that will allow you to create better internal or external experiences?
That is the highest form of appreciation. Ensuring people have the skills to excel and clear line of sight of how to create a differentiated service experience.
That is the type of appreciation your employees want and your customers expect.
Republished with author’s permission from original post.
