Dear Co-Workers– As many of you probably know, today is my last day. But before I leave, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what a great and distinct pleasure it has been to type “Today is my last day.”

That’s the start of a pretty hilarious resignation letter that has been making the internet rounds for a while now. It was written a few years back by Chris Kula, a comedy writer in NYC. It goes on to say:

For nearly as long as I’ve worked here, I’ve hoped that I might one day leave this company. And now that this dream has become a reality, please know that I could not have reached this goal without your unending lack of support. Words cannot express my gratitude for the words of gratitude you did not express.

I would especially like to thank all of my managers: in an age where miscommunication is all too common, you consistently impressed and inspired me with the sheer magnitude of your misinformation. It takes a strong man to admit his mistake – it takes a stronger man to attribute his mistake to me.

Over the past three years, you have taught me more than I could ever ask for and, in most cases, ever did ask for. I have been fortunate enough to work with some absolutely interchangeable supervisors on a wide variety of seemingly identical projects – an invaluable lesson in overcoming daily tedium in overcoming daily tedium in overcoming daily tedium.

Your demands were high and your patience short, but I take great solace knowing that my work was, as stated on my annual review, “mostly satisfactory.” That is the type of praise that sends a man home happy after even a 10 hour day, smiling his way through half a bottle of mostly satisfactory scotch.

And to most of my peers: even though we barely acknowledged each other within these office walls, I hope that in the future, should we pass on the street, you will regard me the same way as I regard you: sans eye contact.

There’s a bit more, but you get the general idea. It’s funny (and sad)… because it is true. Too many of us can relate to a toxic workplace like this, and the active disengagement that kind of workplace causes. Look at some of the things that Kula is calling his company out for:

• Lack of support
• Poor communication
• No recognition from the company
• Tedious, unrewarding work with no appreciation from supervisors
• Useless annual reviews
• Lack of acknowledgement from and connection with co-workers

Those refrains are all too common in companies that aren’t paying attention. Though Kula apparently never sent it to the company he wrote it about, several others—including an employee of Ernst and Young and one from JP Morgan—have copied the letter, changed the names and actually emailed it on their way out the door.

Do you see any of yourself in what Chris Kula wrote? Would your employees? How do you avoid making this a letter one of your employees would send?

One answer is to encourage a culture of recognition, which not only makes employees feel appreciated and rewarded for hard work, but also opens up critical lines of communication between employees and their co-workers and managers. Social recognition can also be a terrific accompaniment to a lackluster performance review cycle. (Download the free report from Gartner analyst Jim Holincheck on adding social recognition to performance management.)

The lesson from this letter, I think, is that a lack of recognition is at the root of a lot of workplace toxicity. And a little more attention to building a positive culture will lead to fewer employees slamming the door behind them when they go—or even walking through it to begin with.

Recognize This! – You can get more done, more effectively, with a few kind words and good humor.

One of my colleagues is from the Southern U.S. She tells me she was raised to be Southern Belle. Now, being from Ireland, I’m not entirely sure what all the connotations of that mean, but I do understand that good manners, polite good humor, and kind words are a part of the equation. One of her favorite sayings is, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Many people live their personal lives in this way. I like to think I do, as well. It’s quite true that a kind word returns better than an angry one. Yet, why do we so often behave differently or experience far different behavior at work?

Writing in Human Resources IQ, Feras Banna outlines 3 reasons managers fail to get the most out of their employees. One critical point he makes is:

“According to research by the Corporate Leadership Council, a group that conducts research through several high profile organizations, providing positive feedback to your employees is categorized as an A-Level Driver, affecting performance with a value higher than 30 percent.  The CLC also identified that while 89 percent of employees believe positive feedback to be their biggest motivator, only 39 percent seem to get any feedback at all.”

As Feras explains, one way to do this is:

“Explain the positive effect of the behavior on the working environment. If you want a certain behavior to continue, your employees must understand the value of this particular behavior on the job.  One might say, something like: ‘By drawing our attention to the risks of this project and identifying the measures we should take to minimize this risk, you helped the company avoid a serious setback that would have affected the whole project!’”

The specificity of that positive message is critical. A general, “Thanks! Great work!” is certainly better than never giving praise or acknowledgment at all. But a very specific message, such as that illustrated by Feras, returns 1,000-fold. It takes little more effort to explain exactly what was “great” about the work, but taking a moment to do so makes your praise more personally meaningful and far more illustrative of what you want to see in the future.

If this feels too “soft” to you, let’s look at the purely financial importance of a strong organization culture. Bruna Martinuzzi cites the following in Open Forum:

“’If you do not manage culture,’ says Edgar Schein, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, ‘it manages you. And you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.’ Culture has a significant impact on a company’s long-term economic well-being: A 2000 study published in the Harvard Business Review found that company culture can account for nearly a third of financial performance. This is too high an impact to ignore.”

Far too high to ignore, indeed.

What are you doing to strengthen and improve your company culture and, consequently, drive the financial performance of your organization?

The majority of people don’t respond positively to feedback (aka criticism).

The expanding knowledge we have about how the brain works is helping us to understand why.

Even under the BEST of circumstances, many of us find ourselves recoiling in response to hearing what others think about us.  Our receptivity depends on context, relationships and circumstances – but the greatest factor is our emotional state.

We’ve all heard the term “don’t take this personally,” right?

Actually, I don’t know what that means. I think it’s a way we buffer the blow of being hurt or hurting someone else. Because the so-called “emotional” and “rational” brains are a unified system, we cannot not respond to what someone says (or does) devoid of its feeling content.

In his excellent synthesis of the latest social neuroscience, author David Rock, developed the SCARF model to understand the brain’s perception in relation to the social environment.  According to Rock, “Two themes are emerging from social neuroscience. Firstly, that much of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward. Secondly, that several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs. In other words, social needs are treated in much the same way in the brain as the need for food and water.”

This process never stops. The brain never stops trolling for input to determine threat or reward whether we’re talking to our boss, best friend, significant other or granny.

Although responses will be mitigated by cognitive strategies that can have the effect of reducing the dissonance we may experience when we encounter unwelcome response from others, if the feedback/criticism is important enough, it can trigger a limbic response in us that engages the flight or fight mechanism.

While rationalization may ease some of the anxiety experienced, the limbic system responds to threat by triggering fear or anger in milliseconds.  Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are secreted into the blood stream and accumulate in the amygdala.  Because work is often a highly charged context for experience (given basic security and self-esteem needs) the workplace is often a stress producing environment even under the best of conditions.  This can preset an atmosphere conducive to triggering limbic arousal.

The Nature of Feedback

It’s not possible, or desirable, to go through life without letting others in relationship with us know what we need and want. At some time or other, we must honestly assert to others what we think and believe, regardless of how uncomfortable these conversations may be.

When we are in positions of “authority” and we are accountable for another persons’ performance (the workplace and school come to mind) we are usually obligated to rate or rank others.

How we manage these sensitive conversations with others will have a great impact on how what we say will be perceived and received. Precisely because emotions are triggered on both sides of these exchanges, developing greater skill in preparation, approach and executing feedback is critically important to achieving positive outcomes.

Most feedback is spontaneous and opportunistic. Often we stumble unprepared into making off the cuff remarks that don’t accomplish positive results because they exacerbate the receiver’s emotional defensiveness.

The person giving feedback needs to carefully prepare what they want to say and how they say it with thoughtful consideration of the following:

• Intention/Purpose – A lot of the feedback we give to others is not only unsolicited, it’s unnecessary.  It’s important to do a sincere internal check to understand why we are telling others what we think and feel about their behavior. What is the purpose of what I am saying? This should be the guiding question we ask every step of the way. Why is this important? Is it relevant? Am I trying to change another persons’ behavior, and if so, why? Is the purpose of my feedback an attempt to elevate my position of power or esteem? Your analysis of intention and purpose should be informed by another important question – what do you want the outcome to be? Is the outcome solely for my advantage or does my purpose include consideration of the receiver? Are there others that may be affected by my feedback? If so, what might be the emotional fallout of this interaction? This is particularly important in the workplace because of emotional contagion and its multiplier effect. Often feedback is reactive and motivated (usually unconsciously) by competition, comparison, judgment and emotional projection.  Feedback can be our way of attempting to assert control over another person or situation.  Since control of anything outside of our own personal sphere is illusory,this motivation often leads to miscommunication and unnecessary hurt on the part of the receiver.

• Emotional Baggage – Unresolved emotional baggage often drives criticism of others.  It definitely shapes the tone of an interaction. Unchecked emotional issues (either personal, directed towards the receiver or spillover from cultural factors (i.e. workplace issues) will influence our behavior.  When you are anxious, angry, mistrusting, hurt, etc. you are unlikely to be able to carefully communicate your message to others.  You must put your own emotional house in order before you approach another person about their behavior.

• Words & Body Language – The latest research shows that communication is far deeper and more complex than we ever imagined. Though the activity of mirror neurons, we are activating parts of our interpersonal brains that send signals far quicker than the words we are arranging in our pre-frontal cortex. Body language matters, even in an era of virtual communication. Tone of voice is a critical carrier of our message.  Our words take on even more meaning when we are not communicating face to face. Words cue our physiology – and the physiology of the receiver.  Anyone who wants to effectively give feedback to others must become more familiar with how they look and sound when they speak – how certain feelings change their physiology – and how they use language.

• Empathy – Empathy should shape how we prepare to give feedback. If it were me, under these circumstances – how might I feel?

• Fallout – Even though there are many people who are open to what they perceive as constructive feedback, expect some residual emotional impact with most people.  Just because the receiver doesn’t let you know how they feel (and in many cases, they won’t, especially in the workplace) be assured that there can be misunderstandings and emotional residue.  Many factors prevent people from letting others know how they feel in response to criticism (i.e. workplace and institutional power arrangements, non-assertive emotional styles, fear of loss or disruption in relationships, etc.).  Resentment is not an uncommon emotional response if people feel they have been unfairly judged.

Neuroscience findings show that an area of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, generates a pain signal from emotional hurt, similar to that of physical pain. UCLA researcher Matthew Lieberman hypothesizes that “human beings evolved this link between social connection and physical discomfort within the brain because to a mammal, being socially connected to caregivers is necessary for survival.”

While the receiver may be silent or even appear to understand, if emotional reactions have been triggered that activate the brain domains highlighted in theSCARF model (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness) the receiver may displace their feelings and react at another time. The perception of unfair or inaccurate criticism can cause the receiver to withdraw or limit their involvement or participation in the future.

In the workplace, feedback that is perceived as unfairly negative can have a chilling effect on initiative and disclosure.  If the receiver is unaware of his/her emotional reaction, it’s possible they may retreat to playing it safe (this translates to emotional safety from the brain’s perspective) by avoiding the circumstances that could trigger more criticism.  An emotional reaction can be compounded if others were aware of the criticism, requiring the receiver to save “emotional face” with more than one person.

The emerging data on how our brains interact and respond to others should change the way we give and receive feedback in all circumstances. Friend, spouse, neighbor or co-worker – context and relationship matter – but criticism is still a fragile undertaking.

The stakes are much higher in the workplace.  David Rock writes, “These studies and many others now emerging have made one thing clear; the human brain is a social organ. Its physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. This presents enormous challenges to managers. Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, the brain experiences the workplace, first and foremost as a social system. Most people who work in companies learn to rationalize or temper their reactions; they “suck it up,” as the common parlance puts it. But they also limit their commitment and engagement. They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company because social context stands in the way.”

If you ask the average person to recall the times they were praised when they were at school, some will remember a few occasions. But if you ask them when they were treated unfairly or singled out for criticism – get ready for an earful.

I remember.

What about you?

As always, I appreciate your comments, shares, tweets, likes and your subscriptions.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication

by Darcy Jacobsen

What do U.S. employees think about their jobs and their corporate cultures? What motivates them? What de-motivates them? I bet you want to know, because we certainly did. We considered many methods for discovering this, (strap them into a CAT scanner, thumbscrews, scalpel and a magnifying glass) but in the end we decided it was simplest to just ask. So that’s what we did.

Twice a year, in fact, we head out to the virtual street to survey 600+ people and find out how they feel about their jobs and recognition.  We’re about to publish our third set of results in our Spring 2012 Globoforce Mood Tracker Report, and— because you’re probably no better at brain surgery than we are— we’re sharing the results with you.

We asked people what they think of their jobs. We asked what motivates them. We asked what would make them leave a job, what would make them stay, what would make them work harder. We asked how they feel about recognition, and what makes them feel recognized.  We asked about their company culture, and how important it is to them.

Some of the answers were reassuring, and some were even a little surprising.

On Thursday at 1:00pm EST, we’re going to hold a free webinar to release the results. Unless you’re really good with a scalpel, you shouldn’t miss it. Register here.

And just so you know we mean business, here’re a few little teaser charts to tide you over.
If you want the really good stuff, though, you should show up at the webinar.

John Mann, Associate Director

One of the fastest growing companies in Houston had courted an operations executive from a Fortune 10 company for months.  This entrepreneurial company had stretched to meet the candidate’s compensation requirements which was not an easy thing to do given the richer retirement plan of this energy behemoth.  Yet despite the executive having a much greater upside with the smaller company, he ultimately turned down the offer. Why?  Because his new employer planning an IPO later that year was not willing to give the executive the same six weeks of vacation he had with his current company – in part because it was more than their Chief Executive Officer received. Surprised?  Don’t be.  It happens more than you think.

The United States is the only industrialized nation without mandatory paid leave. France has 30 days and other countries, including Australia and the UK have 20 or more days of mandatory vacation. While 91 percent of America’s full-time workforce has paid vacation (though 36 percent do not use all of their allotted days), vacation is an important component of the compensation package for an incoming executive. Many executives may enjoy significantly more vacation time with their current employer than their new employer is prepared to offer. Vacation benefits are often relegated to the back burner since asking about vacation policy during an interview could be perceived as focusing on the wrong thing. Many times, the employer and the candidate will negotiate vacation after the offer, and frequently find themselves far from aligned.

We have seen a candidate and employer get to the proverbial finish line, only to have the deal almost derail because of the vacation benefit. Recently, the selected candidate for a recent Chief Financial Officer search initially declined the offer because he would lose two weeks of vacation. The Chief Executive Officer believed that granting the incoming Chief Financial Officer five weeks of vacation would be inequitable to the other members of the long tenured management team. They eventually struck a deal which required some giving on both sides.

How can the hiring company avoid this potential problem?

1. Ask before you extend an offer
Vacation policies vary significantly between industries and companies. It is important to know details of the executive’s current vacation benefits and the accrual schedule of additional weeks. Vacation, like compensation, should be discussed well before an offer is made. If a company is using a search firm, vacation benefits should be part of the search firm’s written work product assessing the candidate and providing compensation data.

2. Ask for the candidate’s preplanned vacation schedule
Like many of us, candidates have planned and paid for vacations that will take place during their first year with a new employer. Routinely, companies will honor these dates in a good faith effort to bring the executive on board. However, it is important to know these dates ahead of time and cross check to avoid scheduling conflicts with organizational requirements. We recruited a general counsel whose pre-planned and prepaid vacation coincided with his new employer’s Board meeting. The company reimbursed the executive for the amount he would be out of pocket for having to reschedule the vacation.

3. Be creative
Vacation policies tend to be grouped with under the benefits “umbrella” and vacation may vary for different levels in the organization. A client recently told me that all of his EVPs start with three weeks of vacation and, after five years of service, earn four weeks. Despite a richer compensation package and better position, it sometimes will be a deal breaker for an executive to lose two to three weeks of his or her vacation. It is not always a requirement to make the candidate whole but it is important to be flexible to find a middle ground. One HR executive we know got creative and offered a candidate credit based on her time in the industry rather than with a company to justify the maximum vacation benefit. Another company would not give an executive the time he requested but allowed him to work from his mountain cabin for several weeks during the summer.

4. Consider making policy exceptions
Factor the contribution and impact the executive will make to determine whether or not it is feasible to make an exception. We have had a few clients write in an exception without affecting the company policies for making such exceptions.  If not, is this a high enough level executive to push the envelope? Consider your internal politics….

5. Re-evaluate your own vacation policy on an ongoing basis.
Vacation policies are continually evolving.  In 2007 IBM did away with vacation days.  The company does not keep track of who takes how much time or when, does not dole out choice vacation times by seniority and does not let people carry days off from year to year. While other companies such as Netflix have followed, it is not for every company.  But nonetheless you should be open to tweaking your policies to assure your competitiveness in the market.

While vacation is often an insignificant issue until the final stages of the hiring process and is never a reason a candidate will accept an offer, it could become a reason the candidate declines an offer.

                                Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist 1803-1882 

We’d probably all like to think that those classes we have our employees attend on business ethics truly reflect our senior leadership’s commitment to ethics and doing business in an ethical, not just legal fashion. Here’s some facts…

“Forty two per cent of the employees surveyed said they felt their company had a weak ethical culture.”

Source: ‘2011 National Business Ethics Survey’, Ethics Resource Center, Washington, D.C.

....so you tell me, do you think this reality is reflected in your engagement scores?

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I imagine we’d all like to think of ourselves as people who would live and raise our children with more focus on our integrity than our self-interest and these classes in corporate ethics shouldn't even be necessary...we'd like to think!

A few years back my youngest son was employed in a popular high end restaurant in Rochester, NY. He worked part time bussing tables for a while and eventually worked up to waiting tables. He made good money and really enjoyed the people he worked with except for the two owners who seemed to him to be somewhat arbitrary in their approach to the employees. But his contact with the owners was limited so he was able to enjoy most of his experience.

After he had been there nearly two years he called one day and said he had a problem and could use my advice. A former female employee of the restaurant had filed suit against one of the owners claiming that she had been subjected to sexual harassment and wrongfully dismissed. My son had received a subpoena and was being asked to testify on behalf of the plaintiff. We talked for a while and it became apparent to me that this was one of those times in life where you got to see whether you were really serious about what you professed to be the values you live by. (I have come to believe that you truly don’t know what your values are until you are put to the test of living them when there is something to lose.) I asked my son whether he had witnessed to behavior that was alleged to have taken place. According to the aggrieved former employee, the father of one of the owners was the guilty party and his behavior was tolerated by the son. My own son said that yes, in fact he had witnessed the alleged behavior and in his view it was inappropriate.

My son went on to say that he thought that if he testified to the truth as he saw it his employer would not be at all forgiving and he wanted to know if I was prepared to back him up for a short while financially while he found a new situation. As it turned out he was going to be leaving town within a few months to attend school in a different part of the state so we were already thinking about new employment opportunities for him elsewhere. This fact, however, didn’t make the situation any easier to resolve since my son still had immediate living expenses and also had many friends at the restaurant that he wanted to be able to stay in touch with and he suspected he would be blackballed by the employer.

Neither of us has ever regretted him appearing in court and testifying to what he had witnessed. As he suspected he instantly became a pariah in his workplace. His employer referred to him as a “rat” in front of other employees and while he was not immediately dismissed he was demoted from waiting tables to the lesser paying bussing post and then his hours were cut to the point where the message was clear, he was no longer welcome in the restaurant. So what did he learn? That life can in fact be mean and not match up to the way you think things should go. In retrospect he said that he was really not surprised by the way he was treated. His suspicion all along was that the employer held the employees as expendable and sadly proved out his suspicions.

Me, I would have preferred that he was wrong and that the employer had stepped up to the responsibility for the actions that had occurred. I’d like to think that someone running a highly profitable and popular business would operate in an upstanding manner and be a model for his employees; I’ve always wanted to think that and I have learned to be surprised when it actually happens. This is not kid's stuff we are talking about. 

I also wish I didn’t find stories like this one appearing on a regular basis as it did as recently as last week…JP Morgan Chase Whistleblower: 'Essentially Suicide' To Stand Up To Bank.

I imagine we’d all like to think of ourselves as people who would live and raise our children with more focus on our integrity than our self-interest. In real life it turns out that no ideal is that easy to live by…that’s probably why they call them ideals. 

• Each of your direct reports is someone's child; do you hope they were raised to be whistle blowers?

Pinterest is one of the newest social media websites, and it is mainly used by women to save craft and decorating ideas. The site, however, has big potential for both job seekers and talent seekers. When used effectively, Pinterest can help prospective employees find jobs, and companies to determine if a candidate would be a good fit within their company.

Job seekers are using Pinterest to display their portfolio or create a visual resume. Since boards can be made of stand-alone pictures or links to a website or blog, the user can create a board with pins that link to their site, display a picture with a caption or a combination of both. Since all boards on Pinterest are public, a talent seeker can search using related keywords and find potential employees.

By browsing the person’s other boards and pins, the talent seeker can get an idea if the person would be a good fit for the company. A person’s boards say a lot about the person and their personality, so look for items that fit the ideals of the company. Some Columbia, South Carolina schools use Pinterest to provide career advice ranging from writing a good resume to job interview guidelines. A board’s followers are public, so look at the profiles of those who follow the board and read comments on pins to find prospective employees.

If you are advertising for a specific job, invite job seekers to create boards on Pinterest with ideas that relate to a subject. They can tag the business name in the comment section or email a link to the board. This allows the candidates to think outside the box and show what they can create, and it makes it easy for the talent seeker to look at submissions.

More and more students and job seekers are turning to Pinterest to look for jobs, including South University in Novi, MI students. They are familiar with the site, how it works and some even have their resumes and work already posted on the site. Professionals are using the site to showcase their work in many different fields, not just creative fields. For example, teachers can create boards with strategies and ideas they use in the classroom.

If you are looking for new talent, don’t forget to look at Pinterest. Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are, perhaps, better known for finding talent, but the visual nature of Pinterest makes it ideal for job seekers and talent seekers. You can learn about a candidates ideas, previous work and their personality by browsing their boards and pins.

This Guest Post was contributed by Sam Peters, a blogger who enjoys writing about creative ways in which job seekers use Pinterest to draw attention to themselves during the job search.

Recognize This! – Focusing on positivity at work must be based on more than just “good feelings” to be successful over the long term.

What do you think about the positivity at work movement?

I’ve written about positivity psychology at work before, noting:

“If choosing positivity for ourselves is within our power (and I believe it is – we choose our attitude every day), why are we neglecting positivity in the workplace? Is it because we work in a highly competitive culture? Is it because we believe we can only thrive in the workplace at the expense of others?”

And now I see that Lisa Zigarmi and Chris Edmonds of the Ken Blanchard companies have written a tweet book on the topic, “#POSITIVITY AT WORK tweet.” In an interview in SmartBlog on Leadership, they confirm my point about positivity being a choice:

“Creating positive well-being is a choice by any organization members. This ‘positivity revolution’ will not take hold if it is seen as a ‘program’ sponsored by HR, talent management or learning and OD [organizational development] functions. A safe, respectful, constructive work environment enables satisfied employees and leaders to deliver quality products and services that inspire customer devotion and revenue that exceeds expenses. Positivity at work makes business sense.

“Leaders that create the conditions for individual growth and positivity enjoy not only the benefits above but see lower health care costs (physical and mental health improves in these workplaces), stability of the workforce (talented staff stay), and increased application of discretionary energy from an inspired workforce.”

But how do you create those conditions for individual growth and positivity? I strongly believe you must create a culture of recognition based on your core values so it is clear to every employee (1) what behaviors and achievements are required for success and (2) they will be praised and recognized for demonstrating those behaviors.

Chris Edmonds also confirmed this approach in another SmartBlog on Leadership post in which he said:

“Organization values are the foundation of every plan, decision and action. In high-performance, values-aligned organizations, there is greater focus on values demonstration than there is on performance demonstration. There are typically many systems in place to gauge productivity, efficiency, market share and the like. Organizations must implement systems to reinforce and gauge values alignment to enjoy values alignment.”

Do you use your core values at work to help build positivity around recognition and appreciation? If not, what kind of culture does your organization have? What’s it built on?

Again, I admit… I love me some Awareness Inc. And they’ve recently put together a white paper and infographic on leveraging social influence for marketers. Please note: I do not receive incentive from Awareness Inc. for posting content or whitepapers that is produced by them. Nor have they asked me to post on their behalf. I simply believe in what they do.

As a marketer, your ultimate objective is to influence your audience to believe certain things, to behave in certain ways and ultimately to consume or buy your products and services. Sure, your performance may be judged by a very specific set of metrics, but at the end of the day your objective is to influence your audience.

Influence has many facets: It encompasses perceived status, reputation, authority and rank. It is the single most effective and most enduring marketing asset.

With 90 percent of purchases subject to social influence, it’s no surprise that savvy marketers are looking to leverage social influencers to grow a brand’s social capital – the breadth and depth of social relationships that can be used to increase brand preference, market share and sales. Growing a brand’s social capital is critical because it allows brands to gain market support and increase sales. Brands with larger social capital also have higher valuations, which ultimately delivers value to customers and partners, as well as shareholders.

Why You Should Care about Your Social Influence:

• 90 percent of all purchases are subject to social influence.
• 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.
• 67 percent of shoppers spend more money online after seeing recommendations from friends.
• Sharing and recommendation behavior is growing: 75 percent of Facebook users have “Liked” a brand, and 53 percent of Twitter users have recommended companies or products.
• Fans of brands are 51 percent more likely to buy.
• Sharing features can increase the spread of awareness by 246 percent with “Likes” and 98 percent with “Send to a friend.”

Best Practices for Leveraging Influence

• Identify and understand your external and internal influencers: Know their passions or pain points, their attraction to your industry, and how they use your product or service.
• Define influence by several factors not simply by the size of your network. Identify and measure influence based on the size of an influencer’s network, how often they share, and the reaction driven by their content (clicks on links, comments to posts, “Likes to posts, retweets, etc.) Their team then motivates influence by creating a relevant and authentic message.
• Know how your brand can add value to your influencer groups over time.
• Benchmark the state of your social capital: Be prepared to act on the feedback.
• Reward your top internal brand influencers. Recognize, reciprocate and reward the most loyal buyers and most faithful recommenders. Appropriately equip advocates with actions that will create activation. Once you’ve asked your influencers to participate, you need to tell them how to help. Clearly identify the right tool to motivate your audience to take an action, whether that’s a tangible item such as a coupon, or knowledge that’s worth sharing and communicating.
• Monitor, measure, analyze and evolve your influencer approach and campaigns.
• Avoid the popularity pitfall. Very often marketers pursue what they perceive as the highest visibility and widest reaching influencer.
• Marketers should be driven by relevance: Your influencers need to be relevant to the conversation brands are interested in having.

To help shed some light on the subject, Awareness Inc. put together a white paper, the 3 Keys to Influence: Understanding and Leveraging Social Capital that gives marketers a framework for maximizing their social influence strategy by specifically, outlining steps to leverage both internal and external brand advocates. For even more fun, check out their social influence infographic.

The Three Keys to Influence

1. Tools and techniques for measuring your brand’s relationships in the social realm
2. The differences between internal and external influence and how to take advantage of each
3. Best practices for leveraging social capital

To download your copy of the full report, please visit Awareness, Inc.

Recognize This! – Perfect attendance awards are a bad idea.

Can we talk about a dirty little secret of employee recognition?

“Perfect Attendance” awards are a really bad idea. Yes, we want our employees to come to work. But we already pay them to be here and to do their job. At their base, that’s what attendance awards are all about – show up and do your job.

In fact, attendance awards aren’t recognition. They are incentives – “do this and you’ll get that.” Show up every day without missing and you’ll get an award. And like many incentives programs, it’s easy to incent the wrong behavior. In this case, you’re often encouraging employees to come to work sick (and infect those around them).

What should you do instead? True recognition. That is, after-the-fact praise of employees who, yes, come to work and do the job, but do it exceptionally well while demonstrating your core values while they do so.

Or, as Lisa Haneberg put it in a recent post on her Management Craft blog:

“This is a portion of a real email: ‘Super! Very well done. Exactly what I requested.’

“After seeing this, and feeling its effect, it got me thinking about how some people are so much better at providing feedback and reinforcement than others. A message like the one above, sent in a timely manner so that the ‘what’ is very clear, not only reinforces expectations and provides feedback, it buoys the spirit. We all want to hear that we nailed it.”

Reinforce for employees what you want to see repeatedly in their work. Praise them for achieving big goals as well as making progress along the way. Don’t just award them for “showing up.”

Do you have “perfect attendance” awards at your workplace? Do they deliver the results management expected or wanted?

Recognize This! – Talent is indisputably fluid. So are business objectives. HR must deliver a way to align fluid talent with fluid business needs.

I’ve just finished reading a very interesting report from Knowledge Infusion CEO and Co-Founder Jason Averbook and President Heidi Sprigi. In “HR Tech Predictions & Prescriptions for 2012,” Jason and Heidi make eight distinct predictions (and associated prescriptions).

Across those eight predictions, I see four continuous themes:

1.  Global, mobile and social “just simply is.” You can’t work around them, legislate around them, or ignore them. You must find a way to incorporate global, mobile and social appropriately into the workstream.
2. Software as a Service (SaaS) is the killer app. “HR is a department, but HCM is a strategy.” And to implement that strategy, HR needs an agile “delivery platform” not just a technology. That platform is SaaS.
3. Reporting on metrics and analytics that matter is fundamental going forward. “Metrics, analytics and dashboards are the things business leaders care about because they present integrated data in a useful way.”
4. Fluidity of talent is necessary to meet ever changing business needs and priorities. I saved the best for last. This theme runs throughout all 8 predictions because it’s the new reality of the workforce today. “HR must understand where the business is going, which talent is needed to support that direction, and which decisions will need to be made get there, before thinking about HR processes and technology.”

The challenge with this reality of fluid talent – and fluid business needs – is this: How do you find the specific talent you need when you need it? You need faster, deeper, real-time talent insight – knowledge about your employees, where they reside, and what their current skills and abilities are – than you can get from a traditional performance review or skills assessment.

You need to pull in the wisdom of crowds and let your entire organization tell you, perhaps, who your most consistently innovative employees are so you can pull them together to get a new product designed and developed ahead of your competition.

How you do that is what Globoforce announced today in with its new “Talent Maps.”

Through data populated by peer-to-peer recognition across the company, HR and business leaders can see firsthand who the top performers and influencers are within teams, departments, and the company. This knowledge and data can be used to identify high potential, high performance individuals for succession planning, flight risk assessment, and leadership development. In addition, managers gain actionable data for more effective day-to-day team management and individual performance assessment.

Averbook agrees. He commented in the press release:

“HR leaders have long needed a better way to understand the true performance of individual employees and teams. Globoforce addresses this need with its latest release. Through its social DNA, intuitive reporting, and performance alignment, peer recognition can play a significant role in talent and performance management. The next couple of years will be fun to watch as social recognition fully enters the stage of must-have HR technologies.”

What are you seeing as your major challenges on the horizon? Can you find the people you need when you need them?