So why don’t we recognize employees more?

As a manager, you want to keep these top performers and let them know about the great work they are doing.  Recognition motivates employees and gives them a sense of accomplishment.  They are more likely to do more and stay with the company. It’s also a way to show other employees what success looks like.

Giving recognition is easy and can be budget friendly.

3 Easy Ways to Recognize Employees:

1. Thank you cards with lapel pin

As an employee, I appreciated receiving a nice thank-you note from my manager or leader in the organization.  It was the simplest way to show appreciation and I felt great that they were noticing my work. I was making a difference and wanted to do more.

A modified version of a thank-you note is an appreciation card with a lapel pin.  The pin acts as a token of appreciation and can be worn on a lanyard with the employee’s badge, displayed at their desk, or put onto a laptop bag or backpack.  Here is one that Agile Inspirations offers on Amazon.

2. Recognition Wall (aka Big Ups or Snaps)

When my team had low-morale and felt a lack of recognition from the organization as a whole, I implemented a recognition wall, something I called ‘Big Ups’.  Big Ups was the motion of ‘raising the roof’ to show appreciation, something like ‘Snaps’ from the movie Legally Blonde.

Since the wall was highly visible, anyone who walked by the wall felt compelled to stop and read the kind words we had to thank and appreciate the good work being done.  This created more visibility into the team’s efforts and what they did day-to-day to make a difference.  Sometimes there was some humor sprinkled in for some additional fun and laughs.

Materials needed: a wall or whiteboard, sticky notes, and markers.

Have sticky notes and markers available for your team near a wall.  When someone sees another person on the team going above and beyond, increasing sales, saving an account, being proactive, etc., write a note of appreciation and post it on the wall.    For example, Anne mitigated a critical issue on a project and was proactive to fix the issue in a timely manner.  As a manager, you may not have known about this accomplishment, but Brian who sits next to Anne does and writes a sticky note and puts it on the wall.  Anne is recognized for her efforts that others may not have seen.

3. Awards for the next all-hands meeting

A higher visibility way to recognize employees is to implement certain awards such as Innovation, Leadership, Teamwork, Quality, Customer Focused, Above & Beyond, etc. or values aligned with the company.  This provides recognition to a larger audience.  For example, in one organization, teams worked in different locations and aligned with different business units.  Recognition at an all-hands was a great way to show appreciation for the teams across the organization.

An easy way is to send a survey using Survey Monkey or Google Forms and have employees nominate peers that they see demonstrating the values in each award and write a little blurb on why. After the deadline to submit nominations has passed, the results can be determined by popular vote or by management.  Carve out time in the next all-hands meeting to announce the winners.

The bonus is that there is feedback for all the other nominees and this can be shared later in a one-on-one meeting.  It’s also great to use for annual reviews.

Do you have other ways you recognized your peers or employees?  Let us know!

The post 3 easy, budget friendly ways to recognize employees appeared first on Agile Inspirations.

When a group of people gather for a large amount of time, we want to make the working session as efficient and relevant as possible.  Using concepts from Scrum, you can create a truly effective and engaging session.  Here are some guidelines and tips for running a working session in an Agile way.

Preparing for an Agile Working Session

Materials Required:

A wall, whiteboard, or easel pad

Sticky Notes Note: 4″ x 4″ pads work best

Pen

To Do:

1. Have a list of agenda items and/or topics. You can start with your own and also ask the group what they want to talk about.  Tip: Sometimes sending a survey with topics and having people vote can also help prioritize topics.
2. Prepare a few slides on the purpose of the working session and intended outcome.
3. Try to outline the agenda items and timing around them. Remember to include breaks, meals, and time to regroup or summarize.  Also, have time in the beginning for introductions, goals, and ground rules.
4. Write each topic on a sticky note and create an Agile board of ‘To Do,’ ‘In Progress,’ and ‘Done.’
5. All topics should be in the ‘To Do’ column of the Agile board.

During the Agile Working Session

1. Make sure your Agile board is ready.
2. Start the meeting with introductions and discuss ground rules and goals.
   • Ground Rules – These are guidelines for the meeting such as:
     • Be open
     • Participate
     • If a topic and/or question has been discussed for more than 5 minutes, then we’ll add it to the parking lot
     • Tip: It’s good practice to ask the group to see if they have more ground rules to add. Another way is to have the group write additional rules on post-it notes and place them on the wall.
   • Goals
     • This should be the agreed upon outcome(s) for the meeting
     • Tip: It may be a good exercise for everyone to write down on post-it notes what their goals are and post them on the wall. This way everyone can participate.
3. Running the meeting in an Agile fashion
   • With each topic on its own sticky note, pick one note and let the group know this is the topic being discussed and put it into the ‘In Progress’ column.
   • As a group, agree that the topic is ‘Done’ when everyone gives a thumbs-up which means that the topic has been discussed to satisfaction. If there is a thumbs down or thumbs sideways, then the topic still needs to be discussed or there are additional questions.  Tip: If a topic has been discussed for more than the allotted time, consider putting the topic into the parking lot.
   • Put the topic in the ‘Done’ column when you get thumbs-up from everyone.
   • Go through each topic in this manner.  Tip: Add stickies for Breaks and Meals. 
4. At the end of the working session, thank everyone for coming and for the progress made. Recap the topics and parking lot items.  Capture action items, owners, and ETA.
5. Go out and celebrate!

After the Agile Working Session

1. Send out meeting notes. Tip: Sometimes it’s good to designate someone to take notes during each topic and possibly rotate note-taking responsibility.  Usually, it is not a good idea for the facilitator to be the note-taker as well.
2. Create action items and start following up with owners.

When using Agile for a working session, it engages everyone and ensures participation.  By seeing all the topics discussed, the group will feel quite an accomplishment. You will also see a more lively meeting with a more effective outcome.

The post How to Facilitate an Agile Working Session appeared first on Agile Inspirations.

Exercise 1: Making a Fruit Salad

Your team has been tasked to make a fruit salad and these are the types of fruits that need to be cut and prepared:

• Pineapple
• Banana
• Grape
• Orange
• Strawberry

Compare these fruits and estimate the relative size of each fruit.  List from smallest size to largest size.

Talking points after the exercise:

• If the team was tasked to determine how long it would take to cut each fruit, would it have taken more time to estimate or not?
• If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?
• Would it be easy to add another piece of fruit such as Apple to the list and be able to estimate the size?

Exercise 2: Animals

Compare and estimate the relative size of each of these animals using the Fibonacci series (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55).  Guideline Dog = 2, Horse = 5.

• Lion
• Horse
• Cow
• Tiger
• Zebra
• Pig
• Elephant
• Rat
• Sheep
• Dog
• Snake

Talking points after the exercise:

• Were there disagreements on sizing and how did the team resolve them?
• Were some animals similar in sizing? Did the team use a technique to group animals of similar size together first and then determine the number in Fibonacci (size)?  If not, would this technique be useful?
• Would it be easy to add another animal such as Cat to the list and be able to estimate the size?
• If there are multiple teams doing this exercise, look at the result for each team, are they similar?

The post Agile Estimation Exercises for Your Team appeared first on Agile Inspirations.