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?

Business Owners – Your business will benefit from time spent on the sales floor and in your office

I recently spoke to a group of independent toy store owners at the NETS (Neighbourhood Toys Stores of Canada) annual conference in Toronto. During the Q&A part of the presentation, one of the attendees asked about my guideline for time spent working in the office and on your business, versus the amount of time spent working on the floor and in your business.

The best way to answer that is that there really is no set rule that you should be striving for. You don’t need to strive for a 50:50 ratio of time spent in the office to on the floor. In order to run and grow a business property, you need time in both areas, and it can really fluctuate, depending on the season, time of week, etc.

It should be the goal of any business owner to have staffing, systems and processes in place so that they can be (almost) completely independent from having to work on the floor. I suggest that your goal should be to have it so that you actually never really have to work the floor. You should do it regularly to stay connected to your customers, your community and your front line staff. However, you should always have the freedom to walk away from the floor at any time you feel it’s beneficial for you to step back, and work on your business instead of being forced to be on the floor working in your business. (more…)

Demonstrate the value of your customers and get rid of all negative comments

Do you and all your staff love all your customers? Do your customers feel as though they are being hugged every time they come into your business? As John DiJulius would say “If you told your customers that they can pay your company what ever they felt the service was worth, what would happen?” Would you get paid for the services delivered? Would you get paid more? If this thought makes you cringe, then maybe your company needs an attitude adjustment. Maybe you are the one who needs the attitude adjustment. (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.

360-Degree Feedback

Knowing what kind of boss you are and how employees rate you can be a touchy subject. A great tool for improving your management style and skills is to ask your team to perform a 360-degree review on you.

Twice a year, our company does performance evaluations on every employee, once in February and once in August.

During our winter reviews, we also have all of our senior managers reviewed by their direct reports, using 360-degree reviews.
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