Madison Performance Group

Performance Perspectives is an executive briefing dedicated to sharing new ideas, insight and "perspectives" governing the use of recognition as a strategic solution to a host of emerging business concerns.

Why have training investments underperformed? Ask anyone associated with them and you will hear a litany of reasons. Two of the more common excuses include: participants don’t prepare before the training sessions as much as they should, or they aren’t fully engaged during delivery. And while these conditions can always be improved upon, the main reason training does not have the desired long-term effect is because the lessons learned—and the behaviors they are designed to change—are simply not reinforced enough in the real world.

In this edition of Performance Perspectives will examine how smart companies are putting the business strategy behind the learning into a personal context, how they are aligning incentives with the desired behaviors and how they are leveraging available feedback loops to transform the company—one person at a time.

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Overemployed workers have been trying to keep pace with the increasing and often shifting demands placed upon them. The impact has been hard on all workers, but it’s been especially difficult for those, who up until recently, have been the most engaged. These employees struggle to complete—even prioritize—all the work that they are being asked to accomplish. In some organizations the accumulating pressure to “get it all done” combined with an absence of support, encouragement, and appreciation has paid a toll. Its compromised relationships with managers and coworkers alike and it has diminished employee loyalty. In simple terms it’s eating away at engagement scores within those businesses.

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Is it time to reassess the strategies we use to motivate employees towards higher levels of discretionary effort and increased employer loyalty?  Disappointing data, along with fresh opinions on why engagement scores are on the decline, would suggest so.

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It is not uncommon for companies to have multiple non-cash award offerings in place operating across the enterprise. They may be the remnants of legacy recognition programs that have survived a merger, an acquisition or a series of organizational realignments. Or they may simply be regional efforts; conceived by a local facility manager and administered from the desktop of local support staff. In fact, a recent audit conducted by Madison suggests that for every reward program known to headquarters, another four to five are operating under the radar. And while all this activity may reflect a growing confidence in the power of sales incentives and employee recognition programs to motivate people, they also represent a missed opportunity for businesses that, in the end, rely on them to propel performance and ignite engagement.

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Today more than ever, businesses worldwide need to get people to collaborate. This edition of Performance Perspective will examine some of the biggest barriers to employee collaboration, explain why today’s managers are really “talent motivators” and outline why recognition should be part of their process.

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