Just Say THANK YOU.

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Sometimes you can do a lot more damage to employee morale with the wrong incentive than with no incentive at all.

Like everyone, I have had some good bosses, and some bad bosses.

The good ones, I still quote and reference. The things they taught me have influenced my work and thousands of others I have trained or led over the years.

The couple of bad ones were real stinkers but at this point are nothing more a few funny stories and a point of bonding with former coworkers as we have a pint and a laugh about some of their antics.

But the things that still get under my skin didn’t necessarily come from “bad” bosses.

They came from a thoughtless lack of sincerity.

They came from things that were meant to be incentives, bonuses, or “fun”.

The person who obligated his whole team to fly across the country on their own dime for a “fun” event as a reward.

The CFO who acknowledged a project I had thought of, designed, and implemented saving the company almost $2M per year – with a gift certificate to Applebees.

The CEO who made up for forgetting to include the tech support team in the Christmas party gift drawing with a separate drawing. Instead of the car, trip to Hawaii, and $1000 prizes; they got $5 Starbucks cards and a 12” TV.

One supervisor used to reward the weekly top performer with the “What’s in Sarah’s purse award”.

25+ years later a former colleague still uses the online name “Bandaid” because that was his reward for stellar performance one week. That was what he was told he was worth.

Now as a supervisor you want to reward your people, and we have all had the experience of trying to do that only to have someone look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth – Heck, sometimes they put on a wetsuit and go looking for fillings.

But before you think you are about to do something fun or cute – stop and think how it will be received.

What are you communicating about that person’s value or the value of the contribution that you are rewarding them for?

As a new nursing home administrator I worked crazy hours trying to right the ship in a failing nursing home I had taken on. It was a VERY results driven company and so when I got paged for a call from the CEO, I walked into the nearest office and braced myself for what I thought would be the call where I got fired.

Instead, Christopher Christensen, the CEO of the Ensign Group, let me know that he saw how hard I was working and that I was doing all the right things and the results would eventually come but in the meantime he wanted to give me a bonus to thank me for my work.

I would have run through walls for that man.

It wasn’t the money. It was the genuine appreciation. He saw my work and recognized it.

I felt seen and felt valued.

Let people know you see them. Let people know that you genuinely appreciate them and what they did (regardless of result if they are doing the right things)

Assuming that you are already paying people a fair market value for their contributions, a thank you can mean more than any gimmick or bonus.

But you have to mean it.

#culture?#leadership?#operations?#nha?#seniorcare?#IDD?#kindness?#incentives #sincerity Christopher Christensen #ensigngroup #IDD #thankyou

?? I am Dave

??Building financially sustainable cultures to care for vulnerable populations

??Developing leaders to work with seniors and people with IDD

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