Cleaning Toilets, Mopping Floors, and Wiping Windows: Best Practices in Employee Recognition
I talk all the time about the importance of making sure your team members get the recognition they deserve. Recognition gives your people tangible career benefits, as well as intangible benefits like improved working relationships, greater loyalty, and an increased sense of self-worth.
But no matter how often I preach this, I know not every IT leader buys into it. Some leaders believe giving recognition makes no difference, while others think it takes too much time and effort to be a worthwhile endeavor. So for you skeptics, I present the following story. My colleague told this to me the other day at lunch:
“When I was 15 I worked a summer job as a janitor. Not the most glamorous job, but, well, I was a 15 year-old in Upstate NY so there weren’t a lot of interesting job opportunities available to me. Cleaning toilets was basically it. Turns out it ended up being one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had—mostly because of my boss.
I worked under the building manager, this guy named Butch. He was a real salt-of-the-earth kinda guy and he taught me that every job had dignity as long as you worked hard at it and did it well. He also made sure I felt personally valued for my effort. Every day, as I mopped the floors, he told me I was doing a great job.
Towards the end of the summer Butch even nominated me as one of our summer youth employment program’s best workers. To be bluntly honest I didn’t care about this award. I was 15 years old, I just wanted to play video games all day, and I’ve never been one to put much stock in getting a flimsy certificate from city hall. But it felt great that Butch thought I should get it. It meant something to him, so I figured I’d go along with it.
On the day they handed out the awards I went to the ceremony and stood up there feeling like a dork and picked up my flimsy certificate. I brought it to work the next day and Butch thought it was great. By the end of the day his enthusiasm made me feel it was a little great too.
That job ended up meaning a lot to me. I even worked there again the next summer instead of taking a cushier office job. Obviously it meant a lot to me—it still comes up casually in conversation 14 years later.
I’ve worked a lot of more prestigious jobs and had a lot of higher-titled bosses since that summer, but cleaning toilets with Butch was one of the few work experiences that has really stuck with me in a positive way.”
Daily praise for good work, and a nominal external award…that’s all it took.
Giving your team members the recognition they deserve doesn’t have to be some big ordeal. Even small actions can transform how your people feel about you—and themselves.
So what will you do today to emulate Butch’s “best practices?”
