All in the Family

In 1968 Phyllis and Ed Hart, my Mom and Dad purchased Rideau. They took out a second mortgage on our home and had $1,000 of working capital. With four young children at home, my parents risked everything and laid the foundations for the company we have today. Read about the Rideau history here.

In 1978, my sister Rosanne, brothers Stephen, Robby, best friend Cam Ferguson and I purchased Rideau from my Mom and Dad.

At the time, most of our spouses worked in the business and we were told we needed a partnership agreement.

So the five of us went off to see our lawyer who worked for a large legal firm. He told us in no uncertain terms that our partnership would be lucky to last six months! In his opinion, we had too much family in the business!

Needless to say, his firm is long gone and when we have family gatherings we always have a chuckle at his expense!

Today, only my brother Stephen and I remain in the business. Robby who was a silent partner sold his shares in 2001 (his wife Laura is still active in the business). My sister Rosanne retired in 2003 and our best friend Cam retired last year… right now he is en route to New Zealand for four months!

The point of this post is twofold…

First, I know the economy is bleak and the outlook is dim. However, when I think back to what my folks did, they inspire me to believe that courage, creativity and hard work will see us all through better times.

Secondly, if I'm proud of one thing, it is that in good times and bad, we always put relationships first. Not only amongst our family, but with our employees, suppliers and clients. This is the essence of recognition.

I think this is why Rideau has been so successful… we preach what we have always practiced for so many years!

Start Small ~ Reach Far!

When my Mom and Dad bought the company in July of 1968 their sales for the month were $6,173! How things have grown!!!

Now, for the second time in six months Rideau has been recognized as the #1 HRO Recognition Provider in the world in a buyer opinion survey.

The Black Book of Outsourcing ranked Rideau as #1 based on a survey that was sent to the nearly 30,000 outsourcing decision makers. Click here for the details.

Needless to say, I’m very proud of this latest achievement which was made possible by all my friends and colleagues at Rideau and the Recognition Management Institute. They are the real reason we have earned such a great reputation with our clients and within the larger HRO marketplace.

When I think how far we’ve come since then, it really brings our slogan to life…

For my French friends...

Bonnes nouvelles… Grâce au département de traduction de Rideau mon blogue est maintenant disponible en français pour tous mes amis et collègues francophones. Vous trouverez mon blogue en français à l’adresse http://www.solutionsdereconnaissance.blogspot.com/

Recognition Directly Impacts Reward Value

Many companies spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get better “reward value.”

I find it sad that so many companies don’t realize how recognition directly impacts the value of their reward programs.

Say you have a $100 reward and the recognition experience surrounding it is poor. Chances are the recipient will put little or no value on the reward regardless of the price the company paid for it. Simply put, the reward value has been almost immediately depreciated!

On the other hand, a great recognition experience can “appreciate” a reward far beyond its cost price.

Remember, the easiest way of getting “better reward value” is to improve the recognition experience.

Thanks But No Thanks!

We’re lucky to have some great talent here at Rideau, particularly one of our graphic designers, Richard Lytwynuk, who is also our very own cartoonist! He helps us bring a little humour to recognition, spoofing the terrible things some managers are capable of. (So he’s heard, working at Rideau shields him from the world’s bad managers.)

A Great Engagement Tool!

Earlier this year I read a great book called “The Dream Manager” by Matthew Kelly.

The book explains how companies can achieve extraordinary results by helping their employees fulfill their dreams; this concept is a great engagement tool.

First, it helps managers better understand the hopes and aspirations of their employees. Secondly, in many cases, there’re things the company can do to realize these dreams. Third, it can build the manager-employee relationship.

After I read the book, I asked Isabelle Lavigne, Rideau’s VP of People & Culture to interview each and every one of our 250 or so employees. We call them career development interviews. The interview is about the employee and what they want… not about Rideau.

The response has been fantastic!

We found out we had people who wanted to be marketers, account managers and in certain instances, we were able to achieve their goals. We found out one person in our call center was studying finance at night… that person now works in accounting.

We’re now going to hold career development interviews annually.

Of course you can’t satisfy everyone… one person wanted to be a chef and we’re still a bit away from an executive dining room, although we’re working hard on that!

One really cool thing that came out of the interviews… we found out that many people wanted to improve their language skills or learn a second language. So we offered lessons. Guess what? Over 70 Rideau employees are taking language lessons after work!

That’s engagement…

Does Recognition Help Employee Engagement

As I’ve mentioned, a couple of weeks ago I was in Paris for the launch of Christophe Laval’s new book “Plaidoyer pour la reconnaissance au travail,” which literally translates to, “A Plea For Recognition in the Workplace.”

During the launch, Christophe and I fielded questions from the audience of senior level HR professionals.

One of the questions was, “Does recognition help employee engagement?”

Both Christophe and I gave a resounding YES!

I've said this before, engagement is a two way street. Don’t expect to have employee engagement if you don’t have employer engagement!

I’d go even further by saying that engagement must first come from the company… after all it's the company that literally and figuratively “engages” new employees. We all know that though employees join a company, they quit their manager. In my opinion, all too often managers do not live up to the company’s promise of engagement.

Every time a manager gives recognition, they are actually engaging their employees. Recognition is probably the single most powerful employer engagement tool in existence, yet all too often it lies unused in a manager’s toolkit.

Make sure your managers use recognition to engage their employees because remember, they’re your employees too!