Richard Branson recently blogged about the Virgin Stars of the Year Awards – and I gotta say it looks like a fun affair :o)
Sir Richard sums up his philosophy in this way:
I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish if they’re praised.
These are people who have gone above and beyond in their everyday jobs to make a real difference. I was delighted to meet so many interesting and outstanding individuals and reward them for their hard work.
The event is always one of the highlights in the Virgin Group calendar and a chance to highlight what we are doing right and also learn how we can improve in the future.
This is exactly what businesses need more of and it’s a consistent practice of happy workplaces that they celebrate the people who do something extra. We’ve seen this at workplaces like Disney, Souhtwest Airlines, Zappos, Google and many others.
Unfortunately, many workplaces simply don’t notice when people do stellar work. In other words, if you do great work you won’t hear a word but the moment you screw up or don’t perform adequately, you may be punished.
Of course we should fix mistakes and help people who are underperforming in the workplace, but we can learn as much (or more) from our successes victories.
And that’s why celebrating great performance and great people is one of the hallmarks of happy workplaces.
Your take
How does you workplace celebrate great performance or great people? Do you do it at all? What would you say is the ratio between fixing the bad and celebrating the good? What ratio would you prefer?
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