Consider Thanksgiving a Year Round Event – The Power of “Thank You”

Alright…so you may have noticed that Thanksgiving is way over and you think this a dated post….but really it’s not! The content of this post can go a long way in contributing to employee motivation and employee retention.

Several years ago, there was a survey done among a certain segment of the healthcare population and one of the questions that was posed in the survey was this:  If you could get anything from your boss, what would it be? 

The number one most popular answer was this, “a handwritten thank you note from my boss.”  Wow!  We think handwritten thank you notes are somewhat a thing of the past.  But you know what?  I think they probably should come back. 

I recently encountered a manager at a workshop that I conducted that did exactly that.  But she added one other element to it that I think is worth your consideration.  This manager had 150 employees and in an effort to express to her employees how much she appreciated them, she did write a handwritten thank you note to every member of her staff. 

However, rather than distributing them at work, she thought it would be much more effective and have much more impact to actually send the notes to their homes.  You know, I thought, “How brilliant.  What a great idea!” 

You know the place of recognition in every home that is tried and true?…the refrigerator! I would suspect that even for the shyest employees, to have that handwritten thank you note posted on that refrigerator would be a great source of pride.  They would get to see it in the privacy of their own space every day and also, to be able to display it to their other family members.

That constant reminder of their manager’s gratitude,   I’m thinking that would go a long way in motivating an employee on an ongoing basis.  Talk about making lots of deposits in their emotional, psychological, and spiritual fuel cells.

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