Think of employees like your kids.
I know that might sound funny, but stay with me.
You’re working in HR to see people grow, right?
So, just like parents who want to reinforce good behaviour in children, HR should take pride in helping employees grow professionally through rewarding behaviour that will lead to long-term value for your organisation.
Okay, but how?
Find out what areas they’re strong in. Catch employees doing the right thing and reinforce positive behaviour through recognition. Even better, talk to managers and suggest changes to incentive structures to get the right behaviour from employees so managers get long-term initiative rather than sporadic success.
I saw this play out first-hand as an HR lead at a FinTech company earlier in my career. The company sold SaaS products to supermarkets and food stores.
One year, a big pitch came through before Christmas and the presentation was scheduled for sometime in January. Senior sales managers and the director usually managed new business pitches, but the sales team had nicked off to their summer barbeques up and down the coast. So the office was empty except for skeleton staff, a couple of juniors and myself.
Just before the holiday period kicked off, the manager instructed the juniors to “prepare the war room”.
Which essentially means print and hang the research in a conference room. The juniors did that in an hour or so and were left twiddling their thumbs, wondering what to do next. And what came next was impressive.
Walls plastered with research, laptops humming and a whiteboard crammed with messy text, the two juniors decided to prepare the whole pitch themselves. They combed through the research, came up with an insight and prepared the deck. When the sales team returned to the office the juniors showed them the work. The work was good, so the sales team used it for the deck for the big pitch.
Unfortunately, they didn’t win the pitch.
But what happened next was brilliant. The manager gave both juniors a considerable promotion. Because they weren’t rewarding the outcome, they were rewarding their initiative.
And guess what the sales team got because of it?
More initiative!
So, as an HR manager, you should focus on recognising and rewarding the right behaviour rather than solely focusing on outcomes because it motivates employees to engage in desirable behaviours that come more naturally and ultimately contribute to the organisation's success.
Feedback System
One simple way to do this is to implement an immediate and specific feedback system. When a colleague or manager notices an employee show initiative, make sure they call out the behaviour and let them know why it was valuable. This kind of instant recognition helps employees understand the link between their initiative and the feedback, making it more likely they'll repeat the behaviour.
Behaviour Rewards
Another approach is to create a behaviour-based reward system. Host a workshop or create a digital survey where employees indicate and decide on behaviours that should be rewarded. This gives them ownership of the process and ensures the rewards are meaningful and aligned with what motivates them.
For example, if employees value initiative and keeping a strong NPS score, offer incentives to employees who demonstrate teamwork, innovation, or customer-focused actions. This will help create a culture where the right actions are valued and encouraged.
By focusing on these strategies, HR managers can cultivate a workplace environment where positive behaviours are consistently recognised and rewarded, leading to sustained employee engagement and organisational success.
Don’t just take my word for it. I recently read a story about the leadership reaction course the Australian Army implemented last year in the outback.
Soldiers are divided into teams and instructed to complete challenges, like assembling provisions and getting to a checkpoint. Soldiers are assessed across all the typical metrics like time, cognitive understanding, decision making and precision.
But nowhere on the grading list is it stated whether or not they made it to the checkpoint. Which sounds slightly wrong, right?
It’s because the army isn’t interested in whether or not soldiers succeed or fail. They know good soldiers can suffer failure and bad soldiers can enjoy success. So if they succeed or fail, it doesn’t tell them what kind of soldier they will be.
However, the army is interested in identifying if the soldiers exhibit initiative. Because they know over time, the net effect of their contributions to missions will be more significant because of their initiative, even if they fail once.
So, if you can reward the behaviours you want, good employees will use their initiative and contribute to the organisation more over time. And that’s the key point.
Because if you can reward initiative and positive behaviours, you empower employees to take ownership of their growth and contributions.
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