Give Them a Fedex Day - Week 11 of the 52 Week Employee Recognition Plan

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan . This is the 11th week of that plan. The lesson this week is:

Give them a FedEx Day where they can brainstorm and ‘deliver’ something new overnight. Tip of the hat to Robert Brand for his column Google's Magic Motivation Juice

Google allows their folks to spend up to 20% of their time on a personal project. That’s one-day per week assuming those at Google devote 40 hours per week.

Where’s the ROI for that benevolence? Here's a few sources:

• Google’s stock price
• Their hiring costs
• Their  low employee turnover
• Their minimal losses from employee sick days.
• And a few good ideas that drive their revenue and their stock price.

Ok, you say and rightly you say, Google’s culture is unique. And they have engineers and super-smart people working there.

Right again. And you know what? A day like this is a key reason that Google’s culture stays unique. And that their super-smart people are allowed to perform as super-smart people.

What’s different about your culture? Three things come to mind.

• Your culture is different than Google’s.

• You don’t allow your employees to pursue their ideas, even for a moment.

• You may or may not have super-smart people. You don’t know do you?

The results of that are:

• Your stock price is a bit lower than Google's

• Your hiring costs are higher

• Your employee turnover is higher

• You have more losses from employee sick days, particularly on Fridays and Mondays.

• You haven't had any good ideas that helped drive revenues and stock prices in...a long time.

Why not find out? Give everyone a FedEx day. Let them work on a project, work-related or not, and deliver their ‘package’ absolutely, positively overnight. Give them the chance to tell the story of their package and how they made it and why it’s important. For them.

There are so many elements of recognition in this simple step. There are so many sources of delight and fun, engagement and creativity, innovation and serendipitous discovery in this step.

At the very least, you’ll soon discover (recognize) you do have super-smart people around you. And you’ll see why they’re super-smart. And they’ll know you recognize them now as super-smart. And so will their peers. And their managers.

Think that will translate into a stock price equal to Google's? No. Not today, tomorrow or even next year.

Now you’re on your way, together, to create an engaged culture, a culture of learning, a culture of fun.

Think that will translate into customers who want to share their experience of your culture? Yes.

Think that will translate into more super-smart people wanting to join your organization of other super-smart people? Yes.

Think that will translate into more ideas for more products in more markets to drive more revenue? ...Yes.

There's the ROI for this simple step of recognizing your employees as the super-smart people they can be...if you let them.

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You can start with any week of the 52-Week Employee Recognition Plan and make that your first week.

You can take one of those weeks and turn it into a month or commit to an accelerated pace and complete 6 of the weeks in one month.

You can create your own week of employee recognition. Share that journey here. Share it in your blog or Twitter or Facebook.

But do something to recognize your employees! They set your brand apart as your ultimate competitive edge. And the more you recognize their achievements, the more achievements you'll see and they'll enjoy, along with your customers and and shareholders, partners and vendors.