How to Address Employee Entitlement

Happy New Year!! 

For the rest of the year, each week, I will answer one of your most pressing questions related to employee and customer experience. I got ten questions to start with as a result of last week's newsletter. Forty-two more to go! If you want to add your question, please click the link below. 

This week's question is this: We do regular events for staff and they treat it like an entitlement, so employees don't consider those events as "thank you'". Our owners provide activities year-round and employees either will not participate or find something to gripe about if they do.

She goes on to say that whole departments have refused to attend parties and someone even threw a cash gift into the trash.

If you would like to hear my response, please watch the video above. However, let me summarize my main points below. 

1. My gut reaction is that there is a sense of discontentment (or even anger) among employees that isn't being addressed. With full recognition that I don't know the company and have never worked with them, I'm sensing that there may be some real employee concerns. Instead of listening and dealing with those, leaders often think that the parties, plaques, pins, and pizza are going to create a big culture. Those are fun culture-building activities - but only act as a bandaid if there is discontentment brewing. 

2. The first step I would recommend is to intentionally listen more to employees. Ask the questions you're afraid to ask. I'll talk more about this in next week's video. 

3. Also, we often mistake the tools of recognition and culture-building with what actually makes people feel valued. Your daily interactions with people matter so much more than the parties. Again - the parties have their place, but they are not a substitute for building positive relationships. More on that in week three's video. 

Give me your most pressing questions about employee and customer experience here and I'll be sure to create a video for you sometime in 2024.