Here's a quick suggestion that is effective, genuine and 100% free:

Thank your employees for the last year of service!

Take the opportunity to look back at the positive role each employee has made in your business. Set aside time to do this individually with each employee. Make it specific so it seems genuine.

We all know that the first quarter of the year is the beginning of hiring season. While the shot of recognition may not change the mind of a disgruntled employee who has already checked out, it is worth doing for those who may have been on the fence or who may feel less appreciated as more work has pilled up. There is zero risk and zero cost, just the time that the manager should already be spending on recognizing and communicating with their employees.

Is this a substitute for regular feedback? Of course not. But the timing couldn't be better to do it if you have been dropping the ball the past couple of months.

A bonus is nice, sure. Even a small token of gratitude isn't bad. But the part that's most important? The genuine recognition that they are making a difference today.

Make it count this year. And we at MeritBuilder are looking forward to working with more of you this next year to make your company culture a top priority.

From Chad Kreutz:

Many years ago I interviewed a veteran, Dick Perkins of Richland, WA, about his WWII service. Barely out of high school he enlisted in the Navy and was soon on a battleship in the Pacific. He recalled how he felt the burden of safeguarding the freedoms of others. He felt privileged to carry his portion of that burden. I was and still am amazed at the level of selflessness he and his fellow servicemen and servicewomen demonstrated.

My father, grandfather-in-law, father-in-law, stepfather-in-law and uncle are veterans. They've established a legacy of selfless service for our family for generations to come. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.

From Karla Porter:

I'm grateful for the qualities that lead individuals to work and sacrifice for the greater good of their country. I'm thankful to those who served when it wasn't their choice and to those who do so voluntarily. I'm hopeful that as a nation we will continue to develop programs for their return that will be as dignified as their Service.

From Steve Boese:

Thanks to all the brave men and women who have served, continue to serve, and their families that also make incredible sacrifices to protect and ensure our freedoms. Thanks especially to my Dad, Capt. Fred Boese - US Army (Ret.), Vietnam veteran and my hero.

From Tammy Colson:

Thank you to all the members of the armed forces who have shown courage, honor and commitment to a job that few volunteer for and fewer understand. To my fellow Marines, Semper Fidelis - to those who came before, and those who give the greatest sacrifice now. I honor your memory, past and present.

And finally from China Gorman:

My gratitude to our veterans is unspeakable. I live the life I have because of the sacrifices, commitments and actions of the men and women of the United States military. I drove by the Arlington cemetary just yesterday and said a special prayer of thanks for the ultimate sacrifice our incredible warriors have made so that I can live in the land of the free and home of the brave.

We appreciate everyone who chose to participate and express their gratitude. Enjoy your Thanksgiving!

We're making it easier to say thank you.

We are always looking at new ways to be able to capture thank yous. After all, that is the primary purpose of our product.

Right on your profile page, you'll see a box right at the top that asks people visiting to say thank you. You can see an example on my profile page.

We hope that this help emphasizes that the only thing people need to say thanks to you is an e-mail address. We believe that even if people do have an account, if we can make it easier for them to give thanks, we will. 

Speaking of feedback...

Voting Up Skills.

One of the more social features we've added revolves around skills profiles. Now I know when I was in HR, it was always hard to get people to do these skills inventories. They've sometimes involved hundreds of scantron bubbles categorizing and ranking each skill. And some of these skills? Why was I ranking them? Who can't file something? Who can't answer a phone?

So we added skills in our last release. It was a hit. Then we thought about how we could improve it. What if people could vote up a skill? So if I am actually very good at blogging, someone could come in and vote that higher so that not only do I have skills that I say I have, I have skills that others have said I am good at as well. And if I missed a skill, other people can suggest a skill too.

The cool thing is that this is right on the front page of your profile. If you haven't added skills, I encourage you to do so!

Job History

One of the things we got asked about early on is a way for people to display their job history easily. It was one of those things that was in the back of our minds so we finally decided to add it in this release.

The cool thing that happened here is that you can truly use MeritBuilder as a catchall online profile. And not only that, we allow you to capture side projects (or large projects for you independent contractors out there) and give them the context of your thank yous and accomplishments.

Celebrate Wins

We've completely revamped the dashboard (login and take a look) but the big thing that has been brought to prominence are wins.

What are wins? Wins are the merits and achievements of those whom you are a fan of. It is a nice snapshot to stay in the know about what people are being thanked for and what they are achieving.

What's next?

We don't want to give away too much but we are working on a couple of things that will continue to help you use MeritBuilder easier and promote your profile as well.

“Many companies partner with charities or run special Veterans day sales,” said Dustin Henderson, co-founder and CEO of MeritBuilder. “As a company that knows a thing or two about the simple power of saying thank you in the workplace, we believe this website can be a powerful message to our troops and those who served.”

Some of the powerful notes from last year include:

“You folks do for us more than most Americans can possibly even grasp.”

“Nothing I know or love would be possible without the blood, sweat and tears shed from our armed forces.”

“No words can ever express my gratitude for your sacrifice. I am proud to be called an American!”

The ability to post public notes on the wall for all to see opens up only twice a year on Veterans day and Memorial day.

“Over and over again, people have shown their generosity and support for the armed forces,” said Henderson. “During this time of conflict when thousands of troops are in harms way, MeritBuilder is proud to support Veterans day in whatever way we can.”

More information: http://www.meritbuilder.com/veterans

About MeritBuilder

Founded in 2008, Dallas, Texas based MeritBuilder (http://www.meritbuilder.com) is a leading personal feedback platform for individuals and culture management and employee engagement platform for corporations. MeritBuilder believes in the power of "thank you" and the ability to be able to store all of your accolades, whether professional or personal, in a single place. The company's employee engagement platform is transforming the employee incentive market from one that rewards with "things" to one that rewards with portable recognition that an employee can take with them throughout their career.

Lance Haun - VP of Outreach, MeritBuilder – 360-356-1760 - lhaun@meritbuilder.com

My first managerial experience was in a retail setting. I am grateful for that experience because it is managing people under some of the most intolerable conditions. Long hours, crappy night and weekend shifts, high turnover population... retail has it all. And it was a place where I was expected to make mistakes.

We all make mistakes. It is what makes us human and what drives us forward. That doesn't mean we should try to learn from or prevent mistakes though. I wanted to present to you six truisms of mistakes all managers must make while managing employees:

1. You won't trust your employees enough - You will be the dreaded micromanager or parent manager. One that assumes that employees need precise direction on all phases of their day. Your employees will feel insulted because even tasks they've been doing for years has to be managed by you from beginning to end.
2. You will allow your employees too much space - You will allow your employees too much space. People that need direction will falter and stop being productive. The lazy will stop doing work altogether. And your boss? He'll ask you why they need a manager if nothing is going to get done anyway?
3. You will take the employer's side when you should have sided with the employee - You may know a policy is wrong or that it was applied unevenly in this case but it doesn't matter. You're going to stick by the company and let them punish the employee anyway. If that person manages to stick around, you probably won't be getting "atta boys" for dropping your principles to toe the company line.
4. You will take the employee's side when you should have sided with the employer - After you made mistake three, you overcompensate and start defending your employees no matter what. Employee's till $50 off? It was a mistake! Let's just do a warning this time. Until the employee comes up short $50 again do you realize that this was not the right time to back the employee.
5. You will never hire the exact right person for the job - We get it. You have this gut instinct for hiring people that is unmistakable. And then you make mistake after mistake after mistake. No one is destined for the perfect role (that only happens in the movies). You will learn to make sure that your organization is flexible enough to fit imperfect people into perfect roles. Because that's every single req.
6. You will be forced to fire someone and it is your fault - Maybe you didn't provide training. Maybe you didn't support them when appropriate. Maybe you didn't talk to them about their performance when you should have. But in spite of those mistakes, you will be forced to fire someone because it is the absolute right thing to do for the organization. You will feel like dirt and you will impact the life of another person in a bad way. The good news? You will recover.

What do you think? Does this cover the broad mistakes that all managers make?

Before I get into this, here's my quick, thirty second point about disengaging from work at work:

• People aren't robots, let's not treat them like they are
• People need mental breaks from work
• People recover differently from a heavy workload
• People need to disengage on their own schedule whenever possible

Ultimately, I believe that if you live up to this, you get better long term engagement and loyalty from employees. 

Is this guy going to help you focus on work?

Now on to the pitch...

The pitch is for work time usage of a web game called Weblings. Weblings is some virtual world that will loft your employees away to a far off virtual place (because they don't have any paid vacation left?). Anyway, the pitch mentions that twice as many battles during work hours than off work hours. They then compare this to the games that Google encourages its employees to play. 

Realizing of course that people recover differently from a heavy workload, I am still a bit shocked at how brazen this comes across. Encouraging a person to escape from work in this matter seems like a tough sell to management. That's not to manage that these types of games can have some serious side effects on a person and could ultimately lower productivity as a person tries to find more time at work to spend in a virtual world. 

Escapism at its finest. And sure, you can say the same thing for vacations, group games, and long lunches but all of those have a defined physical benefit of removing you from your computer and changing your state of mind.

One has to wonder how effective this strategy is long term on employee engagement. Has your company tried something like this? Would you even consider a program like this? 

Call me a skeptic but I have a hard time believing playing a game like this does much to impact employee engagement in any meaningful way. 

As a possible venue for MeritBuilder, it seemed to have all of the focus that you'd want. One thing you'd always love to see if you're a niche vendor is more focus on those products. It seems like most of the discussions centered around the big talent suites. That's fine because that's a big fish but I talked to many attendees who were touching their talent suites and looking for more specialized solutions.

As Mark Stelzner said, the panels definitely captivated more interest for me than most of the individual sessions. The advantage to most of them is very little is scripted so it feels like a group of people just talking about technology and talent in authentic ways. You saw personalities come out and things said that probably wouldn't have happened in a scripted presentation. That means you get closer to the unfiltered thoughts of people who are in the know. 

There are a couple of posts I wanted to highlight while I am at it too:

• Kris Dunn has a great summary of the show. He has a couple more but I think he captures the essence of his experience at HR Tech.
• Steve Boese does a fantastic job of pointing out the risk of integration of any technology solution. I'd say it has less to do with luck and more to do with how the vendor approaches the integration.
• Michael Krupa has the networking effect social media brings to the table. I've had this happen too. We can skip the small talk and go straight to the conversation.
• Jason Seiden had a great take on the HR Happy Hour program I was a part of. 

For next year, I would definitely want to be able to meet up with more people and talk more about niche technology. Several panels talked about innovation coming from the edges but very few went into where these technologies could actually come to assist organizations. 

Great conference and you have to hand it to the team at HR Executive and especially the great Bill Kutik for executing well.

It is kind of hard to tell. Is it a barren hill on a dreary winter day? Is it a part of an animal? Is it just a random blotch of color on canvas?

With no context and with no other perspective, we have no idea what to make of the scene to the right. We don't know if it is a masterpiece or something I just cooked up for this post. It looks simple and unimpressive. 

If you saw this in an art gallery, how much would you pay for it? Oh sure, if it matches my couch and rug, the value increases a little bit. But there is nothing special about it.

That's the thing. Without the context of the rest of the picture, you'll never know if it is actually part of something special or just a bunch of boring brown and tan blotches.

If you think of your business as a work of art, your employees are the artists. And while each one may be working on something simple and incomplete, the beauty of your business comes out when all of those pieces fit together.

Of course, the amazing part is how knowing the bigger picture makes all the difference.

The piece above came from the part in the hair of the famous Mona Lisa. Now look at it again and how much more you understand its place in this masterpiece. 

If your employee was working on that part of your masterpiece, they now know the pieces they have to blend and work with. They have to make sure the transition between the sky and her hairline is smooth and in sync with the rest. That the part in her hair transitions nicely into her face. 

You could have a masterpiece and no one at your company would ever know if they didn't have that perspective. 

Not only that, they would never have the ability to see what they are doing right or wrong so they lose a lot of natural feedback.

What do you think? How important is perspective in context as it relates to employees?

Image courtesy of llawliet

They are your employees. Well, technically not. This is a stock photo of some people pretending to be employees. Just imagine that they are your employees though. 

These people to the right are your new marketing campaign. 

Don't believe me? Check out Gautam Ghosh's post on the subject.

All of your employees can have a voice. They can build up or tear down your business in a fell swoop. All because one of them has a webpage, Facebook page or a Twitter account. They have groups of friends they interact with online (who each have groups of friends online).

As Gautam points out, smart money is on companies that actually use their employee's voices to shine a bright light on the great things they are doing as a company. For one, they aren't going away (and trying to stomp it out is a short term strategy filled with problems). Utilization of social networking is going up, not down. Consumers have a bigger voice, not a smaller one. 

And your employees? They haven't had a bigger voice than right now. What are you doing with it? How are companies helping their employees become a bright voice out there as brand ambassadors? 

If we admit that company culture is inseparable from the employees you keep, what's to prevent your company's brand from being significantly impacted? 

All of the careful constructs marketing has used to create a meaningful and purposeful brand can either be enhanced through the organic feedback of your employees own personal brands or be damaged by one that isn't so flattering. 

What are your thoughts on this? Is this the next big step in rethinking HR and Marketing?

"When a job seeker puts their MeritBuilder profile address on their resume, it stands out from the crowd," said Dustin Henderson, Co-Founder and CEO of MeritBuilder. Henderson also notes, "Job seekers can integrate their profile into other online sites they already participate in such as Facebook, Twitter or a blog where people will find and connect with them."

MeritBuilder profiles allow a person to display recognition from business associates, personal contacts and customers hassle free without the person submitting the feedback having to go through a registration process. In the newest software released this week, the innovative startup has added tighter integration with social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and is now enabling users to enhance their profiles by including third-party verified job history.

For some employers, background checks have been replaced with online reputation checks. "Googling" or using web searches to examine the background of applicants have become more popular with 25-75% of recruiters using them at some point during the hiring process according to surveys by CareerBuilder and ExecuNet. A job candidate's online presence and more importantly, what others are saying about them, has become as important as what is written on a resume.

"Hiring managers are getting hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of resumes for a single job opening," said Lance Haun, VP of Outreach for MeritBuilder and a former Human Resources Manager. Haun added, "Job seekers have asked me how they can possibly compete with such odds. I tell them 'You need to stand out' and MeritBuilder can help a candidate do just that."

MeritBuilder offers both a basic free version and paid premium solution for individuals looking to increase their online presence and more easily share their personal accolades with others. 

"We know it is tough to be without a job so we'd rather have people use the free version than not use anything at all," said Henderson. He adds, "The feeling you get when you read all of the 'thank yous' displayed on your MeritBuilder profile is priceless though."