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What would your organisation be without your staff?

In business, your people are far and away your greatest asset. Ensuring they get recognition benefits not only them, but you. In fact, it literally pays to be good at employee recognition.

Businesses with a solid strategy to recognise team members enjoy stronger engagement, increased employee morale, better customer service, and lower turnover.

Acknowledging achievement can have a serious return on investment, resulting in higher productivity and better business outcomes.

So, what is employee recognition and how do you show it? Let’s explore the concept now.

Staff Recognition: Recognising Your Greatest Asset

What Is Employee Recognition?

Employee recognition is all about acknowledging the hard work and accomplishments of the individuals and teams in your business. It’s about creating an emotional connection between your employees and your business and supporting the work your people do.

Well-thought-out recognition can make your people feel valued, respected – even loved. Obviously, that is not only great for your team as a whole, but great for your business too.

Effective Recognition Can Benefit You Too

If you can manage to get your employee recognition right, it can contribute toward your business being seen as an employer of choice. This is great for a number of reasons as it puts you in the driver’s seat for recruiting, hiring, and retaining the best people.

While the job market is as competitive as it is, having potential employees seek you out is the ideal position to be in. But getting there requires a thoughtful and strategic approach that begins with understanding what people value most at work. Research (and evidence!) shows effective employee recognition is something employees truly value.

A New Way Of Working Needs A New Kind Of Recognition

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been a greater sense of urgency around showing employees they’re valued. Many of us have moved work into our homes for at least some of our work week, creating a major lifestyle change.

Whilst working from home has introduced greater flexibility and autonomy for the employee, it also means juggling home life with their online work persona. This can lead to employees feeling like they’re living at work. It can be tricky to get a true definition between work and home, so it can be helpful for managers and team members to modify traditional working habits.

To make remote work function well, a shift in mindset from hours on the keyboard to an output focus can help. Boost that concept with recognition strategies that are effective at appreciating both those who are off-site and those who are in the office, and you’ll be onto a winner!

Employee Recognition, 2022-Style

Employee recognition in 2022, might look a little different to your usual strategies. This is especially true if you have some team members working from home for some of their work week. So, what can recognition and reward look like for those not based in the office?

You guessed it: it looks kind of screen-based! In addition to traditional means of recognition, rewards and gifts, here are some new trends to consider in the employee recognition space:

• Digital recognition platforms like Bucketlist can make it easy and fun for fellow employees and managers to recognise and reward one another for milestones, achievements, and a job well done.
• Gamification: make things competitive! Use point scoring, competitions, and leader boards to recognise your true stars.
• Try ways to apply peer-to-peer recognition between your staff – instead of just managers handing out rewards.
• Go old school by picking up the phone to chat and connect with your people to say a personal ‘thank you’ from time to time. Also, make sure you catch up with each team member face to face when they are actually in the office to recognise their contributions.

Balancing Digital And In-Person Recognition

For many of us, it feels like we’ve spent the last few years staring at various screens both in work and personal life. So, it is important to get a good balance between your digital and in-person employee recognition strategies.

As working environments continue to evolve, we need to make sure our strategies evolve with them. In-person recognition can be trickier with the popularity of remote working, but it isn’t impossible to achieve. When setting your recognition strategies, ensure you are mindful of this balance.

Rewarding your workforce creates a constructive company culture of engaged employees, which is the key to business success and profitability. If you’d like to know more about the many different ways to effectively recognise your well-deserving staff, talk to one of the Spice Gals today.

It takes all types to make the world go around.

This statement couldn’t be more true. And it is especially important to embrace “all types” and diversity in your workplace – if your team members were all the same, there would be no such thing as innovation or progress!

By embracing diversity, you can build an agile and effective business.

But, when you have a diverse team, you need to ensure that you have built an equally diverse workplace environment and have effective management practices in place.

Let’s look at how you can do that.

The Benefits of Cultural Diversity In The Workplace

New Zealand is one of the luckiest countries in the world. Our little Aotearoa attracts people from all over the globe for a wide range of reasons. And these people from every corner of the world contribute to our workforce. It gives NZ businesses the opportunity to be incredibly culturally diverse.

Diversity covers several different aspects. In the workplace, diversity can include “race, ethnicity, age, ability, language, nationality, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.” As you can imagine, such a huge range of people can have different ideas, perspectives and viewpoints that your workplace can capitalise on to do things better.

Having a culturally diverse workforce helps you to maximise skillsets, recruit and retain amazing talent, boost your team creativity and engagement, all while improving your organisation’s reputation as a great place to work.

Avoiding Unconscious Bias

Despite all the benefits a culturally diverse workforce brings, unconscious bias still exists. Very closely related to stereotyping, unconscious bias is where we hold a perceived idea about a group of people that is reflected in our attitude, behaviour, decisions or treatment of them.

Basically, people have underlying beliefs that a person will behave or act in a way that is specific to the “group” we have assigned them to. For example, the belief that mothers will take a lot of time away from the workplace due to their children.

This sweeping generalisation is unconscious bias. It is a snap judgement made without considering the individual attributes of the team member. The thing about unconscious bias is that these ideas are so ingrained in society that often we aren’t even aware that we are using them!

Avoiding unconscious bias is all about checking perceptions at the door and embracing the different backgrounds, thought patterns and innovations that cultural diversity can bring to your workplace. You can do this by focusing on the individuals, rather than the group you might think they belong to.

Tips For Managing A Culturally Diverse Team

Having a culturally diverse team gives you lots of opportunities for thinking outside the box. Why? Well, if you have a varied number of backgrounds in your team, it creates a broad knowledge base to pull ideas from. This could be a huge competitive advantage for your business!

However, the ability to tap into those ideas relies on the effective management of multicultural teams. Here are some tips to allow you to do that:

Don’t Aim For Equality

Take a look at the below image. When you strive for equality, you assume that everyone benefits from the same support. In practicality, everyone has different needs, so different levels of support are necessary in a well-functioning business.

But rather than simply providing tailored support for each team member in a quest for Equity, look at how you can remove barriers in general. If the cause of the inequity is addressed and removed, then reactionary support is not required.

Create Awareness

One of the best ways to tap into the power of the cultural diversity in your workforce is to create awareness around it. When people are aware of cultural differences, they can problem solve ways to manage these differences and improve the cohesion of the team.

It’s also helpful to emphasise the strengths that different cultures and members bring to the team, so that everyone can capitalise on them! By setting ground rules around team interactions and expectations, everyone can benefit from individual and cultural strengths.

Integrate Diversity

When people bring their differences together, real magic can happen. So, managers should create teams that have a mixture of cultures, age groups, expertise and status to allow everyone to learn from each other. Each member of a diverse team will have different knowledge and skills that can contribute to overall progress and growth.

Build Effective Communication

When multiple cultures converge, communication is a key aspect to get right. It requires empathy and compassion for those who are still learning English. And you will also need awareness around the nuances of NZ business – globally, things might be done in a different way.

Here are some ideas for building culturally diverse communication channels:

• Be aware that English may be a second language for some people – they may still be learning how to understand Kiwi accents and non-verbal cues.
• Adjust your management styles to accommodate different cultural dialogues to minimise the potential for conflict arising from communication. Understand that some cultures can be very direct whereas others are more subtle and implied. Everyone should have a chance to be heard regardless of their communication style.
• Provide meeting topics ahead of time so that all team members can have time to prepare their contributions and ideas.
• Issue clear instructions around tasks including what is involved and when they are due. Delegate these out accordingly with clear expectations on how the task should be completed.

Hire Without Bias

Obviously, you want the best talent for your team regardless of their age, culture or background. A great way to allow hiring to occur without any bias is to remove any identifying factors from the recruitment process. Let your hiring team look at an anonymous CV with an identification number, rather than one that contains personal information. That way, they can assess skills and experience without any form of unconscious bias creeping in.

Embracing Cultural Diversity

Navigating cultural diversity in the workplace is not something that you want to get wrong. So, it can be helpful to have expert assistance to call on.

Here at Spice HR we specialise in building strong teams no matter how diverse they are! Get in touch with the Spice Gals today and we can help you build a powerful and diverse team.

One of the most daunting parts of people management is having difficult conversations. Even with preparation, diplomacy, and an ideal setting, things don’t always go as smoothly as we would like.

But what happens when these difficult conversations need to happen remotely?

How do managers handle disputes, disciplinaries, or even redundancies with someone who isn’t physically present?

Social distancing and a move to remote work have created an entirely new HR climate, and managers must adapt their communication methods to suit different set-ups.

Let’s explore some of the best ways of having difficult conversations remotely.

How To Handle Having Difficult Conversations Remotely

Choose An Appropriate Communication Channel

Visual contact plays a crucial role in communication. Without it, we lose the nuances of body language and facial expressions that we have been taught to subconsciously react to from a young age.

Even though video calling can still provide those visual cues, they are less clear virtually than they would be if the person were in the same room as you. There may be delays or technical issues, and interaction doesn’t flow quite the same way as it does when we are physically face to face.

Effective communication is even more critical when conducting emotionally challenging conversations. Without it, things can easily be misconstrued, sending the interaction in the wrong direction.

Chatting over video is still preferable to a phone conversation – especially when the subject matter is charged. A definite no-no for a difficult conversation is to try and hold it using written communications – it’s all too easy for people to interpret the tone or message differently than intended, and there’s no chance for immediate clarification if there’s a misunderstanding.

However, it is appropriate to follow up a video or voice call with an email or letter to confirm what has been discussed and what will happen next.

If the conversation is part of a formal disciplinary investigation or meeting, then it’s also really important to make sure that you’re following the correct process, based on the ‘offence’ that is being discussed.  As a minimum, for any ‘formal’ discussion there’s a requirement to allow the person involved the opportunity to bring a support person or representative with them.  If you don’t have a formal disciplinary process in place, we’d recommend you get in touch with us – this area is a potential minefield!  But back to the  conversation at hand…

Remove Potential Distractions

The beauty of technology is that you can have meetings from almost anywhere – a café, a beach, or in your kitchen. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. A tough conversation requires all your attention, so ensure you are making the call from a quiet spot where you won’t be interrupted.

Your employee deserves your undivided attention, so turn off any notifications, silence your phone, and don’t be tempted to multitask by reading emails or ticking off other tasks during the call.

Take Your Time

While any issues with your employees should be handled promptly, that doesn’t mean you should jump into a confrontation without adequate preparation. You need time to assess the situation and develop a plan of how to approach the interaction.

You may also need time to gather evidence, check procedures, and ensure you are handling everything appropriately.  Your disciplinary process should serve to guide you here.

Regardless of the formality of the meeting, make sure you prepare appropriately, by outlining for yourself what you want to talk about and the outcome you would like to reach. Remember, your intention is not to blindside your employee and catch them out. Give them some information on what you need to talk about in advance so they can also prepare (this will also form part of your formal process).

Encourage Two-Way Tough Conversations

Regardless of the nature of your tough conversation, your employee must be given the opportunity to respond. Often these discussions can pave the way for a coaching experience rather than be a one-sided “telling-off.”

Leave time and space to hear their side of the story. Remember, these meetings are challenging for both parties, so encourage them to share their thoughts and feelings about what is going on. You may gain insight that can help provide a resolution.

Consider Their Needs

Choose a time and communication method that suits you both. Bear in mind that remote workers may be in different time zones or have commitments in the home to work around. Some may use their communal living spaces as an office, so will need to choose a time where they can be alone and focus on your meeting.

Everyone has different comfort levels when it comes to communication and technology so you do need to be aware of this and take that into account when arranging for these conversations.

Adjust Your Communication Style

Managing tough conversations is never easy, particularly if you are overseeing a remote team. But there are ways to make the process easier and increase your chances of a positive outcome.

One of the best ways to approach any conversation, be it unpleasant or otherwise, is by understanding other people’s communication styles and adapting yours accordingly. Extended DISC gives you insight into the way people act, how they communicate, and what drives them, empowering you to nurture and build relationships effectively – even virtual ones.

If you would like to know more about Extended DISC profiling in the workplace, need help with a formal performance management process, or want to create a plan for having difficult conversations remotely, then connect with us at Spice HR today.