At one of my presentations a while back, the president of a trucking firm shared this great story that illustrates my point about employee recognition.
It seems his company had just held a retirement dinner for a driver who had been with the firm for over 20 years. When the president and the retiring driver had a chance to chat after the ceremony, the driver took out his wallet, pulled out an old, frayed piece of folded paper and asked the president if he recognized it.
When the president indicated that he didn’t have any idea what it might be, the driver handed the paper to him and told him to go ahead and open it up.
It turned out to be a 1981 paycheck stub. The driver had saved it all those years because the president had taken a moment to write on it, “Thanks for a great job.”
When’s the last time you did something positive that an employee will proudly hang on to or remember?
This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.