Derek Irvine

Derek Irvine is Vice President, Client Strategy & Consulting Service at Globoforce, a global provider of strategic employee recognition and reward programs. In his role as a thought leader for employee recognition at Globoforce, Derek helps clients set a higher ambition for global, strategic employee recognition, leading consultative workshops and strategy setting meetings with such organizations as Avnet, Celestica, Dow Chemical, Intuit, KPMG, Logica, P&G, Symantec, and Thompson Reuters. Contact him at irvine@globoforce.com.

Articles by Derek Irvine

Rewards & Recognition

Don’t Judge Strategic Recognition Programs by Attendance Award Results

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As long-time readers of this blog know, I like to stay on top of the latest research and news in the employee recognition, rewards, engagement and motivation industries (and there is quite a good bit of it).

And I’m glad I do, because research like this out of Harvard Business School proves the point of a narrow focus being used to paint results much too broadly.

The research working paper is titled The Dirty Laundry of Employee Award Programs: Evidence from the Field. Here’s the abstract: Read more…

HR News & Trends

The Biggest Trends in Talent Management and HR

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I recently had the opportunity to participate in an Argyle Conversation by Argyle Executive Forum.

I enjoyed to give and take very much, and appreciated the chance to close out the discussion with a look into the future on major trends coming for HR and talent management.

Below is my answer, but I also encourage you to read the full conversation to understand how we arrived at this point with employee recognition and engagement: Read more…

Rewards & Recognition

Are You Encouraging Cheating With Your Incentives Program?

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All over the news in the U.S. is a story about a cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public Schools.

My understanding of the situation is that some teachers and administrators would gather for “erasure parties” to erase and re-enter correct answers on students’ standardized tests. Now, these educators are being jailed and prosecuted for fraud, and the reputation of the Atlanta Public Schools is ruined.

Why would teachers do this? Because the “No Child Left Behind” education policy rewards schools based on how students perform on these tests, especially for dramatic improvements.

From the news coverage, I understand there were great benefits to the educators making their schools appear much stronger in improving standardized test scores. Read more…

Rewards & Recognition

The 3 Keys to Effective Employee Recognition

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Employee recognition done right is easy, but it’s not simple. An article in Time magazine reminded me of this truism, inspiring me to share with you these three requirements for effective, meaningful and impactful employee recognition.

What You Say

Drive-by recognition or praise is not enough. A brief, “Hey, great job!” isn’t effective recognition. When recognizing or praising someone for their work, be sure your words are: Read more…

Culture

Learning From LEGO: Core Values Must Define Your Workplace Culture

LEGO

Harvard Business School recently issued a new business case study on The LEGO Group, makers of the famous toy plastic building blocks.

I’m sure most of us recall LEGO’s with great fondness (except, perhaps, for the parents who step on forgotten blocks in their bare feet in the middle of the night).

In its nearly century-long history, LEGO transitioned from family leadership to external leaders, and found itself in need of not one, but two turnarounds. It’s the driving reason for the second turnaround that got my attention: Read more…

Culture

Want Better Engagement? It Helps if Employees Know What It Is

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At this stage, I think we can all agree that employee engagement is critical to organizational success. We can also agree that employees are responsible for engagement just as much as management or leadership.

Yet, what if you don’t know what engagement is? Can you be held responsible for that which you don’t understand?

Gallup recently shared a case study of Nationwide, which started in 2008 with an employee engagement ratio of 2:1 (engaged to actively disengaged) before improving by 2012 to ratio of 10:1. Here’s how Nationwide CEO Steve Rasmussen explains this growth: Read more…

Rewards & Recognition

The Next Big HR Trend? Maybe It Should Be More Employee Recognition

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I was in Berlin last week, chairing day one of a HR conference on employee engagement.

The quality of presentations were truly exceptional, with a wide variety of insights as HR peers shared their projects on various engagement fronts.

We heard lots of ambitions, including:

  • Adidas – project to improve engagement scores;
  • BP – embedding a new set of corporate values; Read more…
Talent Management

The True Power of Treating Employees Right? Customers Will Benefit, Too

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“The customer’s always right” vs. “Employees first” – it’s the chicken or egg battle for the business world.

No company exists without customers. And without engaged, enthusiastic, empowered employees to make those customers happy, no company can last long.

It’s a delicate balance that only the best organizations get right 99 percent of the time.

Those organizations in the service industry likely get it right more often than those in other industries. They have to. So many more of their employees are front-and-center, interacting with customers face-to-face regularly. Read more…

HR Management, Talent Management

Praise vs. Criticism: What’s the Right Amount to Give Employees?

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We all know the compliment sandwich is a bad idea as it sends employees confusing mixed messages (“Am I doing a good job or not?”).

We also all know that constructive criticism is important, otherwise how could we improve or know what is most important for us to focus our efforts on to improve?

But what’s the right ratio of constructive criticism to praise and recognition? It’s certainly not 1:1 or even 2:1. The proper ratio is nearly 6:1 praise to criticism. Read more…

HR Management, Talent Management

“Remember – As a Manager, You Cannot Motivate Anyone”

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The quotation in the title is from one of my favorite blogs on leadership: Blanchard LeaderChat.

This particular post was on a mini case study on motivation. While I encourage you to read the entire post, it’s the final recommendation for leaders and managers that we all too often forget or don’t even realize:

Remember that as a manager you cannot motivate anyone. What you can do is create an environment where an individual is more likely to be optimally motivated. Ask (and genuinely care about) how a person is feeling, help them recognize their own sense of well-being regarding a particular issue, and provide them with rationale without trying to ‘sell’ it.” Read more…