CiB member Carol Harris says: A colleague who used to work in television told me that she was frequently given recognition at work; she was always recognised when she was late (although seldom when she stayed late at night to complete a job).

Another colleague mentioned to me a company in Scotland that had a notice-board up in a staff-room. The board had the heading ‘Staff Mistakes’ and had three columns – one for the name of the member of staff who had made the mistake, one for the kind of mistake that had been made and one for the cost to the company of the mistake. To use current terminology - how motivating is that?

So do you get recognition for what you do – and do you give recognition to your colleagues, associates or employees?

Some kinds of recognition are very simple – saying ‘Thank you’, or ‘Well done’ is easy. And everyone can benefit from praise – you probably say: “Good dog” to your pet, so why not say something similar to your colleagues?

Sending an email or writing a note onto a card is fairly effortless. There’s lots of evidence that people who send notes to others – recognising their particular interests or circumstances - do much better in business too – so much so, in fact, that there’s at least one web-based service you can subscribe to that allows you to compose what look like hand-written notes.

Apparently you produce a specimen signature and then you can write whatever text you want, attach any photos or other elements you want and the managers of the system then post out a card with your words and illustrations, plus your signature, so it looks as if it came from you.

For example, you might include a photo of the person you’re sending to, or a news-cutting or information that relates to their own industry sector, with a note saying you thought they would like it.

You can also send birthday cards out through the system too. It’s very inexpensive and seems to generate lots more business for people who do it. (You could, of course, just do hand-written cards and post them yourself, but that may take lots more time if you have a mailing list of hundreds or thousands of people).

You can also recognise people by mentioning them to others; for example telling others in your work-team about their achievements, putting a note in your newsletter and so on. And then there are the more visible signs of recognition – from the T-shirt saying ‘Best dad in the world’ to the insignia on uniforms denoting ranks achieved.

And it’s not necessarily the intrinsic value of the ‘reward’ for achieving that’s important – an organisation I know has various ‘Clubs’ – for example the ‘100 Club’, for people achieving 100 units of sales each month. There is no financial reward for becoming a member of this club – new people achieving membership simply get a badge, but the badge is a valued as a means of recognition for the effort put in.

So…given that most people welcome recognition, are you getting the recognition you deserve? If so, that’s great; if not, there are a couple of things you can do about it. The first is to ask for it. If friends, family and colleagues don’t realise you would welcome recognition, then maybe it’s time you politely invited it. The second is to give it to yourself. And, again, there are simple ways of doing this.

Here are a few:

· A warm bath with scented oils when you’ve had a hard, but successful, day at work

· An outing to watch your local sports team play when you’ve achieved your week’s targets

· A meal out when you’ve cooked for your family for a whole month

· A walk round your local park, or half an hour sitting down listening to music, when you've spent a morning slaving over a hot computer

· And…just simply telling yourself that you’ve done a good job – because you know better than anyone else that that is what you’ve done.

Carol has been a member of CIB for many years and has run occasional training sessions and presented at Conference. She has published and edited various magazines and is the author of several books, including Producing Successful Magazines, Newsletters and E-zines. She can be contacted via: http://www.border.org.uk/ and http://www.aloevera.uk.net/

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