Your Source For All Things Employee Engagement

ReCOGnition: Now That’s Engaging!

We’re always curious to know how our clients use Kudos to increase employee engagement in their organization. Kudos is a simple yet comprehensive recognition platform that allows users to create their own programs to engage and reward their colleagues. We encourage all our clients to get creative and Thank Different!

A great way to get employees excited about Kudos, is to start off the program with a bang! Organize a fun team activity to explain the purpose of the program, and any rewards associated with it. This will get the team excited and help them understand how sending kudos helps build a culture or appreciation. Kicking it off with the right foot is key to a successful recognition program! Columbia Orthopaedic Group did just that! They implemented the Kudos program in their organization with a fun activity that involved all their employees!

Employee Motivation is Essential for Success

 Employee motivation is the elusive Holy Grail for most businesses. The truth of the matter is most organizations and leaders do not know how to motivate their teams in a consistent fashion. They try to ply people with rewards if they achieve goals, they offer sage advice to try and inspire team members and they try to lead by example. They may see short burst of productivity only to have the team fall right back into their normal routines and level of efforts.

We all think we want to create employee motivation but what we are really talking about is the desire to create employee engagement. You motivate people to excel in short bursts, to overcome challenges or to reach a specific goal but we engage to create a culture that transcends extrinsic motivations. When you nurture and develop trust and passion for the company’s vision and goals, you engage team members based on their intrinsic motivation.

First, Break All the Rules – What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently

One of the books that has fundamentally inspired the Kudos team is First, Break All the Rules – What the World’s Greatest Managers do Differently [1999, Simon & Schuster], by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman from the Gallup Organization. The authors conducted an in-depth research study involving +80K managers across NA in various industries, trying to determine how the best managers find, keep and nurture the best talent? They also wanted to formulate a measure for employee satisfaction/engagement – and they began with this question:

“Wouldn’t it be great, if at work at least, we didn’t have to confront our insecurities on a daily basis?”

The Kudos Happiness Project

I’m not sure if everyone is aware how much the idea (and the pursuit) of happiness is most definitely in the air as part of the zeitgeist of the moment, and how exactly Kudos fits so seamlessly into this narrative: