How writing “love letters” inspires employee recognition

Everyone needs a pat on the back and recognition for a job well done – even you!

A letter I wrote

Every week, I solicit from our managers the names of a couple of individuals who deserve a letter of recognition. I take the names and the details about why they deserve recognition  and write them a hand written note thanking them in detail for what they did and why they are being recognized.

Over the years, these hand-written notes to staff have become known as Andy’s Love Letters. I do this every week, writing notes to anywhere from two to six staff members each week.

Just last week, I had quite a surprise after our managers meeting when I had three envelopes sitting on my desk. Inside each envelope was a motivational card with a hand-written thank you message from each one of my three managers in our Fredericton store. For the past three weeks, I’ve been extremely busy behind the scenes working on a major initiative for the company, and that week, when asked who deserved recognition, they all agreed that it would be me. So upon returning to the office after a meeting, I found three Love Letters addressed to me for a change.

It was a great surprise for me and an action that I truly appreciated. What I found incredible was that they realize that I too would truly appreciate some recognition from time to time. I have to say that I have an amazing team!

Recognition by way of a hand-written note is an extremely powerful tool. I was reminded of just how powerful it is, when I received my hand written thank you notes just last week. Check out the one I attached to this blog post. Its got an amazing feeling of personalization – something email can’t convey.

What do you do to recognize your team when they do something right?

My good friend John had the great fortune to win the lottery for the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic games. He’s been keeping me updated on the events going on in Vancouver – I think he’s trying to make me jealous. What makes me even more envious is the influx of consumers that has descended upon the Vancouver area. According to John, retailers are busy trying to keep up with the demands of tourists. And it’s not just those red mittens that are flying off the shelves! Here’s a first hand account of the Olympics from a consumer perspective.

Hi Andy!

Take a look at the view we had for the opening ceremonies!

My daughter was fortunate enough to buy tickets online for the entire family to attend the Opening Ceremonies – that’s all seven of us! I was thrilled. Vancouver has been in such a buzz recently and just in the few days leading up to the start of the games I saw all the retailers busy servicing the needs of customers. And people weren’t just buying those red mittens, they were buying anything Canadian. I bet it makes you wish Green Village had a location in Vancouver! (more…)

My Story – Part 2

I already talked about what we decided to do as a result of our strategy session regarding our new organizational chart and the shifts in responsibilities. Now here is how we implemented the change.

Over a period of three weeks we did the following four steps:

1. We finalized the new plan. It came after much debate and discussion, but we did come up with a plan that all our key managers were in favor of.
2. We rewrote the job descriptions to reflect the new org chart. We wanted to be fully prepared and able to head off any objection and concern.
3. We executed on our plan. One by one, we talked to all our staff about the changes, presented the new job descriptions and the fact that they were going to be effective by the end of that week.
4. We then instilled confidence in the new team. Once the band-aid was ripped off quickly (we did it all in one day), we assembled the teams the fist of the following week to instill confidence and move on.
5. Finally we finished executing on our plan. We filled the new empty positions from existing staff mostly, we moved to lean scheduling and project based scheduling and we fulfilled all our objectives that we set out to do.

There were some hiccups and twists, and we did lose one person unexpectedly, but in the end, the results were pretty much as we had planned.

The proof is really in the pudding. By pinpointing our inventories of time, changing our org chart, becoming more efficient and having a structure that gave us more flexibility, we were able to save enough to create a new position inside the store while saving approximately 6-8% off our total wage costs (depending on the store), so far year to date.

There’s nothing quite like the power of community involvement to build a close team. If you and your staff can volunteer together and do good in your community, it will not only help your community, but your staff’s satisfaction as well. 

Earlier this fall, our Fredericton staff entered in a team into the McInness Cooper Dragon Boat Festival, which helps to raise money for Kids Sports New Brunswick and New Brunswick Amateur Athletes.

Our team had to raise over $1,000 to enter a team, which we did through different fundraising events at the store this past summer. Then our team of 20 rowers participated in two training sessions, and then race day. This event was ideal for us because it showed the importance of working in unison to achieve the maximum results.

It was an amazing event and loads of fun for everyone involved. Take time to empower your team by giving back to your community.  It’s a win-win situation.

Image Courtesy of Flickr

There’s another kind of Inventory you NEED to track – and it won’t be easy

I’ve recently been thinking about some of our operations and a mentor of mine one said; “Your company has inventory of time. Where is your company’s inventory of time”, meaning where are our time wasters and inefficient processes.

When you really look at what activities your company needs to do on a daily basis, what activities it actually does on a daily basis, and how many employees you have doing those activities, inventories of time can easily become apparent.

As an example, over the past year, we recognized that in our stores, we had a forklift certified labourer working full time who would be there to unload trucks, do regular facility maintenance as well as odd jobs around the stores. However there were times when that person was doing other more mundane work because they had some inventory of time available to them.

On the other hand, we had receivers at each store who would receive all the shipments into our computerized inventory system, help tag and label the products and help merchandise these products on the retail floor. When she was not busy doing these jobs, she would help out at the checkouts, or do other more mundane jobs around the store, again because she also had some inventory of time.

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