1. Recognize the Value and Work of Your Small Enterprise IT Team
INFO-TECH EXPRESS
Recognize the Value and Work of Your Small Enterprise IT Team
Say thank you to your team who may often feel that they are working a thankless job.
Info-Tech's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.© Info-Tech Research Group
Info-Tech Research Group, Inc. is a global leader in providing IT research and advice. Info-Tech’s products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns. © Info-Tech Research Group Inc.

2. Use this research to guide you in recognizing staff achievements and creating a culture that supports engagement
IT management is about more than just technology
Strong management of people enables a business to more effectively manage its IT assets and services.
Intended Audience
IT leaders looking to improve the engagement of their IT department and reduce staff turnover.
Expected Benefits
Improved engagement of the IT team.
A more motivated, productive, and proactive IT team.
Reduced employee turnover.
Outcomes
Development of recognition techniques.
Plans for staff engagement events.
This Research Includes:
Guidance in how to understand employee motivations and engagement drivers.
Quick and cost-effective techniques for recognizing and motivating staff.
Examples of larger team initiatives to support staff engagement and collaboration.

3. Rewarding and recognizing your team is important, no matter how busy you are
Small changes to behavior and taking the time to acknowledge staff can lead to tremendous gains for IT’s operations and the business as a whole.
Benefits of having a staff that feel like they are appreciated and their work is recognized:
Reduced employee turnover.
Improved team productivity.
A more innovative, collaborative, and proactive work environment.
Staff are incentivized to repeat and replicate actions that benefit the company.
Company gains a reputation as a “good place to work” and an improved ability to attract good talent.
Recognizing employee successes and hard work makes them more engaged…
which in turn makes them more…
Productive, Innovative, and Committed.
For every 10% increase in recognition:
Recognition is a significant employee engagement driver.
The engagement score increases by 3.6%.
The performance commitment score increases by 4.7%.
The intent to stay score increases by 10%.
Source: McLean & Company

4. Not properly rewarding and recognizing your team might be costing you more than you think
Consider
69%
Staff disengagement and turnover is costly to the business, disruptive to operations, and undermines throughput and productivity goals.
of IT employees surveyed, felt they were not adequately praised and rewarded for superior work.
Source: McLean & Company
79%
of employees who quit their jobs cited a lack of recognition as a key reason for leaving.
Source: Jackson Organization
The Cost of Turnover
The Cost of Disengagement
33%
50-60%
$2,246
of tech employees are actively looking for a new position. In the next year, 45% of them plan on leaving your business.
Source: Mortimer Spinks & Computer Weekly
of an employee’s annual salary is the average cost of turnover – more for highly specialized or senior employees.
Source: SHRM
is the estimated annual cost from each disengaged employee
Source: ADP

5. Use these steps to guide you in better understanding, recognizing, motivating, and ultimately retaining your employees
Steps 1
Tie recognition to the behaviors you want to encourage. 2
Understand what motivates your team. 3
Consider environmental factors as you develop recognition tactics for your team. 4
Create plans for recognizing the efforts and achievements of your team:
Incorporate recognition tactics into pre-existing department practices.
Find small acts that go a long way in recognizing individuals.
Promote a culture of peer to peer recognition.
Expand your recognition and engagement practices to include larger initiatives.

6. Use these eight guiding principles to guide you in planning recognition tactics for your staff1
Personalized
The form and delivery of recognition is to be adjusted to the recipient based on an understanding of their motivations and preferences. 2
Aligned
Behaviors recognized are consistent with the company’s values and/or goals. 3
Specific
Encouraged and recognized behaviors are consistently outlined. 4
Timely
Acts of recognition closely follow demonstration of the desired behavior or outcome. 5
Genuine
Recognition must be a genuine expression of appreciation. 6
Inclusive
Recognition tactics operate with the aim of enabling broad employee participation. 7
Visible
Decisions behind acts of rewards and recognition acts are transparent and are understood by the staff. 8
Fair
Recognition must be consistently applied when desired behaviors are demonstrated.

7. Identify behaviors you want to recognize and encourage in your team
Step 1
In order to derive the most benefit from your recognition program, you need to clearly articulate what values you want to see displayed, as well as what behaviors are in support of those goals.
Overview
Use this exercise to align recognition plans with your organization’s values.
Instructions
Brainstorm and document the key values that you wish to see in your team.
Identify what that value looks like in practice. Identify the desired behaviors you would like to see in relation to these values.
Its use in practice: As you present and begin more departmental acts and programming, such as an “IT Person of the Month,” be sure to map the award of these to a clear value and behavior.
Info-Tech Insight
Chosen behaviors should have broad applicability. After all, you’re liable to alienate employees that are left out and undermine your efforts to create a culture of recognition.
Use these common values as a starting point as you brainstorm
(If documented, leverage your organization’s core values)
Teamwork
Innovation
Respect
Collaboration
Customer service excellence
Driving for results
Going above and beyond the call of duty

8. Understand what motivates your team and its members
Step 2
Instructions
Before proceeding to identify recognition techniques for your team take a step back and consider the motivations and characteristics of your team.
Consider what methods of acknowledgement staff prefer:
Public versus private
Monetary, small gifts, or verbal acknowledgements
Tips
Consider the personality of the employee:
Are they quiet and more introverted? Would a public acknowledgement embarrass them or carry less meaning than an alternative tactic?
Are they more extroverted and prefer a more public or social reward (for example, lunch or a shout-out at a company meeting)?
Don’t be afraid to go directly to staff to ask what they or their peers prefer. It will enable you to best follow Info-Tech’s first Guiding Principle for Recognition, Personalized.
Attributes
Profile
Employee
Susan
Personality
Introverted
Recognized as a quiet individual who is uncomfortable being recognized or asked to speak in department meetings.
Motivational preferences
Private and personalized messages or conversations where their work is acknowledged.
Being able to leave early on occasion in order to attend their child’s programming.
Example
Benefits of a Personalized Approach:
Staff feel like you actually know and understand them.
Staff feel like they are truly appreciated.
People are different and they will respond differently to recognition tactics. To make recognition truly impactful to each member, personalize your tactics to suit the audience. Example: Don’t just buy any gift cards – buy THE gift cards they want.

9. Thoughtful Acts of Recognition
Myth busting – Contrary to popular misconceptions, thoughtful acts of recognition engage employees more than money
Use this information to help you find the most meaningful recognition techniques for your team
>
Thoughtful Acts of Recognition
Monetary Rewards
Research Implications
Employees prefer appreciation over rewards twice as much.
Changing behavior is twice as effective and twice as cheap as adding additional incentives.
When asked to indicate recognition type they preferred employees overwhelmingly chose appreciation over awards.
Consider
Even if employees express a preference for cash rewards it has been proven to not motivate them or improve their recognition.
Cash rewards cannot offset larger issues about general compensation. Compensation has been proven to be engagement detractor, not driver (meaning issues will only decrease engagement, while a lack of issues will not inversely increase engagement levels).

10. Consider environmental factors and business behavior as you develop recognition tactics for your team
Step 3
Instructions
As you brainstorm engagement and recognition techniques for your team, consider environmental factors that you might have to take into account.
As a manager, consider the factors that may affect the engagement and feelings of your own team and methods you can use to mitigate or eliminate the potential barriers or negatives of these factors.
CASE STUDY
Context
Info-Tech Research Group has a business analyst team that is responsible for requirements gathering, stakeholder management, prototyping, etc. for IT initiatives. One manager is responsible for managing not only the different individuals and projects of the team, but also had to address the barriers of co-location (three offices).
Responsible for earlier stages of a large project, the team’s analysts found that their work had already been long completed before the project’s completion, causing a disconnect between their hard work and accomplishments and the project’s final outcome and celebration.
Team-Based Recognition Plans
Understanding the barriers to co-location, the manager leveraged the team’s specialized collaboration tool and forum to share team and member achievements.
Results
Strong team engagement
Collaborative and open culture
Environmental Factors
Role type and co-location
Examples
Co-location: IT staff are either spread across multiple locations or have to travel to service the user base and infrastructure.
Business Recognition of IT: Business has a low level of satisfaction with IT and often does not thank or show appreciation for the work of IT employees.
Role type: Where an employee’s contribution to a project or service is not directly seen in the final solution (therefore potentially making it less visible or recognized).

11. Create plans for recognizing the efforts and achievements of your team and its members
Step 4
Instructions
Use the following slides to guide you in identifying and applying a variety of techniques to recognize your full team and its individual members.
Specifically look for techniques for the following use cases:
Manager to peer
Manager to employee
Manager to team
Remember Info-Tech’s Eight Guiding Principles as you select and deploy your recognition methods.
Many of these tactics will be minor behavior modifications or actions that will go a long way in recognizing employees.
By putting these small recognition tactics into practice, they will soon become habit and help to not only create more frequent incidents of recognition, but also help change culture and potentially have a much larger, positive impact on employee engagement.

12. Info-Tech Research Group Helps IT Professionals To:
Quickly get up to speed with new technologies
Make the right technology purchasing decisions – fast
Deliver critical IT projects, on time and within budget
Manage business expectations
Justify IT spending and prove the value of IT
Train IT staff and effectively manage an IT department
Sign up for free trial membership to get practical
solutions for your IT challenges
“Info-Tech helps me to be proactive instead of reactive – a cardinal rule in a stable and leading edge IT environment.
- ARCS Commercial Mortgage Co., LP
Toll Free: