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Date posted: 09th November 2020

09th November 2020

Inspiring your people in a changing world – The “knowing-doing” gap

Inspiring your people in a changing world – The “knowing-doing” gap

Most employees don’t feel valued where they work. Only about 12 percent of workers feel recognized in a timely, specific and meaningful way for the work they’ve done even though some 80 percent of managers think they do a pretty good job at recognizing their employees. I call this gap between what we know is the right thing to do (value our employees) and the actual practice of doing it (thanking them in some way) as the “knowing-doing” gap.

This gap has gotten larger as the speed of business and the use of technology have both increased over the years whereby a greater number of employees work on a screen and face-to-face interactions have diminished. It has gotten larger still since the coronavirus pandemic as an increasing number of employees are now working virtually from home and are essentially “out of sight, out of mind” to their managers.

To counteract these work trends, managers need to be more proactive in closing this gap by systematically taking time to reach out to their employees to see how they are doing, to acknowledge and thank them when they’ve done good work, and to see if they need anything to continue producing desired results. This is not hard to do, but it doesn’t happen by magic.

Managers have to be more intentional by having strategies to hold themselves to their best intentions. They need tools to make it easier to “catch people doing things right.” And they need discipline to keep at it, day after day, month after month and year after year. It’s work, but if your employees truly are the greatest asset of your company, they will only excel by providing asset appreciation.

This blog is a part of the IW Official Guide: World Mental Health Day Supporting the workplace during the pandemic & beyond. Download the full guide here.

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Bob Nelson, Ph.D. is president of Nelson Motivation Inc. (www.drbobnelson.com), author of 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees and Recognizing & Engaging Employees For Dummies, and Creator of Employee Appreciation Day, the 1st Friday in March annually. You can reach him at [email protected] or via phone at (858) 673-0690.