We're all tired of the recession; however, according to the latest Towers Perrin Workplace Watch, employees especially are falling into recession fatigue. The study concludes that employees have the most negativity around potential career development opportunities.

Only fifty-seven percent of employees agree that their company offers opportunities for long-term professional development, a 16 percent drop since the beginning of 2009. Towers Perrin concludes that this drop is due to employees feeling less connected to the company they work for and also having less faith in leadership as a result of recessionary actions like layoffs and budget cuts.

Are the levels of engagement in your company falling as a result of this negative economic environment? Below are some ways leaders can combat fatigue:

• Let employees know when they are doing things that impact business results. Doing so helps them understand how their actions make a difference and, of course, makes them feel good. Consistently recognizing employees and sharing successes company-wide builds morale as well as spreads best practices.
• Openly communicate what your company thinks about professional development. Set expectations with employees in regards to how much growth they can look forward to and when. Even if it's not a reality right now, generating awareness will help ease employee's perspective about lack of growth opportunities.
• If your company has had to reduce or cut investments in continuing professional education or industry seminars and conferences at this time, communicating the why behind these actions will help employees see the reasoning and be more forgiving.

Focusing on managing employee expectations through communication and consistent acknowledgment will ease negativity and help rebuild trust as we work our way out of these trying times.

Well maybe not Pizza Hut exactly, but it's true that the lifetime value of a customer for a regular pizza place is around $8,000.

Lifetime value is a common phrase for describing how much a customer is worth to a company if the person remains loyal over the course of their life. Disney is one company that understands the importance of lifetime value. They estimate that customers, from the first walk through the entry gate, are worth up to $50,000 in lifetime value. Knowing this, Disney pays close attention to creating customers for life. They know that the greater the connection a customer feels to a company, the greater the loyalty and the greater probability for maximizing lifetime value. Disney creates connections with customers by orchestrating experiences at different points of interaction, which I’ve written about before (remember the white jumpsuit man?) because their experiences are simply amazing.

But you don't have to be Disney to care about lifetime value and deliver experiences that earn you customers for life. Think of a company you love doing business with. Now think about why you love it so much. Are they responsive to your inquiries? Do they treat you with respect and urgency every time you interact with them? These things may seem basic, but that's just the point. Being responsive and treating you with respect makes you feel valued. These are simple behaviors that if done consistently by a company’s employees, can create experiences the keep customers coming back and referring the company to others.

On the other hand, you could just learn to say goodbye to customers' potential lifetime value, as Seth Godin jokes about in his blog post.

What experiences does your company stage to ensure repeat business and a strong unpaid marketing department? Have you defined the behaviors employees can deliver to build relationships with customers? How are you building lifetime value?

The winter is upon us, the days are shorter, and the holidays are quickly approaching. This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also be a time of stress as people are busy both professionally and personally.

Consequently, it's a great time for leaders to make sure their people feel valued for the work that they are doing. Especially during this hectic time of year, letting employees know the impact they are having on company success helps them see the importance of their work and eases feelings of being overwhelmed by tasks.

A strategic recognition program that ties employee behaviors to the company strategy is a great way to show appreciation and also share success/best practices across the organization. Unfortunately, many companies resort to reward and recognition programs that simply don’t work. Note that I reference these programs as reward first. These programs have a fundamentally flawed view of human behavior that focuses on the carrot and the stick. Well, what happens when the carrot is removed? The truth is every person in the company should be recognized, even if only a few are actually rewarded. To truly achieve both short- and long-term performance successes, companies should implement recognition (first) and reward (second) programs that make it easy for all employees to participate.

So why do reward programs fail? Most fail for at least one of three reasons:

1. They are too exclusive, leading to limited participation
2. They are difficult to manage (beyond sales incentive programs)
3. Too much focus is placed on financial targets at the exclusion of the right behaviors required to hit targets

Reward programs can work if they are driven by the spirit of recognition and are less focused on the reward. Here are some solutions to rejuvenate your recognition efforts, or to help guide a new initiative:

1. Make the recognition program about the company strategy and key objectives and provide detailed behaviors that employees should be doing. Don’t make it just about company or individual financial goals. Make sure employees understand the strategy, objectives, and behaviors; are committed to achieving them (true belief, not just lip service); and know how to take action to achieve results.
2. Ensure both employees and leaders focus on finding successes and sharing them with others. Individual successes that lead to company results are critical input for any recognition program.
3. Determine a reward that fits well with your culture. Money is the not the number one motivator for the majority of employees. While both cash and non-cash awards have a place in the employee compensation mix, it’s important to stress that cash can be an ineffective motivator. In most cases, it simply will not energize people to reach beyond their basic job requirements to achieve good results.
   

A peer-to-peer recognition program is the best investment you can make in your people. By peer-to-peer, I am referring to any employee recognizing the good work of others (behaviors in alignment with the brand strategy) up, down, and across the company. When done right, peer-to-peer recognition will focus on behavioral outcomes and not just end results. Employee behaviors that are powered by the brand strategy of the company should be what you encourage others to achieve. Behaviors are visible. Your coworkers can see if you are doing the right things. When they do, they should have a way to recognize you. If you don’t tie your recognition program to behaviors, witnessing activities worthy of recognition can become very subjective and ineffective.

Employees who look for and recognize the right behaviors being done by others typically understand the why behind the strategy. They get the company’s philosophies, brand values, and core beliefs. In most cases, these individuals have more of a passion for action: they are focused on doing. A sound peer-to-peer recognition program encourages employees to do the behaviors that bring the brand to life and helps a company highlight the behaviors and the impact employees have on business results.

Recognizing employees will not only help them to be successful, but will help those that work with them to benefit from their success rather than be impacted by their stress, not only during the holidays, but all year round!

My recent flight home on Continental was great, like it always is... Continental consistently delivers a good experience. This got me thinking about the importance of consistency and specifically about a time when my colleague, Patrick, and I were meeting with a prospective client.

During this meeting, we asked a lot of questions about the prospect's business, the current challenges he was facing, and the solutions he was considering. He asked us a lot of questions about our company, Brand Integrity, and organizational branding. After about an hour of this back and forth, he asked "If there is one thing that I need to take away from this meeting about brand-building, what would it be?"

Patrick and I looked at him a bit perplexed. His question seemed so simple to us. We were both shocked that we had not been asked it before. He pressed on, "What is the one thing that matters most to ensure a company can build its brand to drive profits? Is there one thing?"

Patrick and I looked at each other and back at the prospect. Then we each got a piece of paper and wrote that one thing down. Both of us passed our papers to the prospect and, sure enough, we had written not only the same idea, but the exact same word: consistency.

Consistency is so important to a strong, sustainable brand that I always tell clients and leaders "consistency is king." Consistency is so important, I had it personified with an image in my book. The king is a reminder that if you want to develop a strong brand for your company, then employees must be in a position to consistently deliver results for customers. Without consistency, your company won't be able to drive the experiences employees and customers want and will end up being another one of the masses rather than a "king" ahead of all the rest.

Why do I always feel obliged to pick on the airline industry? Well, because the airlines make it so easy. However, there are a few in the airline industry that truly understand the importance and power of a strong brand. As one client leader from a large telecommunications company said to me, "It's just about sucking a little less than the competition."

As most airlines have experienced, it's actually really hard to "suck less". The airlines that "suck less" are the ones that recognize that its people and the processes and behavioral ways that they've been trained on are proprietary to the company. The behaviors are personal and it shows.

Take JetBlue for example. Are they perfect, no, but are they consistently better than the competition, no question about it. Let me share with you a recent, yet very typical, experience designed into the workforce at JetBlue. Aside from the fact that the check-in staff, gate employees, and flight attendants are almost always overtly kind and friendly, JetBlue pilots also get into the service side of the action. It is not uncommon to see a pilot help out with the cleanup inside the plane in order to speed up the turnaround time.

On one particular flight I was on, the pilot came out of the cockpit just before leaving the gate and addressed the passengers using the microphone. He said, "Thank you very much for flying with us today. I am sure you will enjoy the JetBlue experience. By show of hands, how many of you are first-time flyers with JetBlue?"

None of us raised our hands even though there were probably a few first-time JetBlue flyers. The pilot continued, "Great, we have a bunch of savvy veterans who have come back for the JetBlue experience. Then you know what to expect. Great service, a great flight, and live TV. Folks, today we have the best flight attendants in the industry. Please don't hesitate to reach out to them if there is anything we can do to make your experience with us as pleasant as possible."

In less than 15 seconds, this pilot not only mentioned the term "experience" three times, he also set a high expectation for the flight attendants to live up to. My guess is that they welcomed that high expectation because they truly enjoy servicing passengers. JetBlue does a phenomenal job hiring, training, and evaluating its employee base to ensure they buy into the strategy and deliver it at each touchpoint.

Drafting optimal behaviors requires a unique investment by your company. In return, doing so promises to maximize the strategic value of workforce performance and contribute to a sustainable competitive advantage. Bottom line: The behaviors that your employees create become proprietary and lead to differentiation in the marketplace. Behaviors are the way you do business. They drive your culture. They drive your brand from the inside out.

I wonder if United wished they sucked a little less....