Who We Are

JOHN SCHAEFER - FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT

John Schaefer is America's Employee Recognition Expert. He and his team of top experts help organizations succeed by optimizing their most valuable asset – people. When engaged supervisors convince your employees that they truly care, and genuinely mean it, your firm begins to see significant results. The goal, he tells managers, is to “Make it Real!”

After graduating from Arizona State University with an Industrial Engineering degree in 1980, John worked for a large manufacturing firm, then a small family business before beginning his career as an Employee Recognition Consultant. Based on the variety of negative, wasteful habit patterns he witnessed in the work place, John was motivated to write the book The Vocational Shrink - An Analysis of The Ten Levels of Workplace Disillusionment, create his own recognition company and launch a new, more cost effective approach to how managers and employees communicate. He is now completing his new book called Get More Productivity for Less Money . . . Your Employees will Love You for It! that addresses the total recognition challenge; What are Your Employees Doing, Why are They Doing It, and How do You Fix It?

After more than 20 years of working with major corporations, Schaefer knows what makes employees tick. His manager training program Why Should Supervisors Care? Getting to the bottom of what they're really thinking, What's in it For Me?" shows how subtle changes in the way they communicate can help managers and their employees greatly improve their work life. I’m convinced that everyone has the capacity to become far more effective and fulfilled than they think they can be, shares Schaefer. All of the resources required are freely available, if they simply choose to use them enthusiastically and in the right sequence.

Today John Schaefer and his team at Schaefer Recognition Group help companies realize and react to what he calls the Employer/Employee Disconnect. He is sought out for his straight talk and loved for his humor and dedication to helping people in all work environments and on all management levels have more fun, be more productive and save their companies tons of money.

John has written several articles (see Articles Link) that have appeared in over 50 trade magazines including Incentive, Corporate & Incentive Travel, Leadership Excellence, SuperVision, The American Salesman, Advertising Specialty Institute, and more.

Employee Morale

Businesses with a high employee morale have all figured out ways to build an uplifting company culture. The attitudes that make up a successful, motivating culture start at the top. Cultivating positive employee moral can be accomplished by demonstrating sincerity, genuine respect, and implementing a visible, creative employee recognition solution.

Showing real sincerity is potentially the easiest and most effective way to build loyalty within a company. People tend to respond well to sincere communication. It sends the message that they aren’t being manipulated. Sincerity is absolutely essential in gaining trust.

Respect the people that make the business possible! It can sometimes be difficult for those in power to genuinely respect their general workforce. Soldiers are more inclined to take personal initiative in company goals when the field generals give them the flexibility and the freedom to act more as equals rather than followers of a blind faith. Real respect means trusting the competency of the soldier to make more independent decisions. The field general’s job is not to micromanage, but to confidently provide direction in achieving the goals of a mission.

An effective employee recognition program will compliment the respect and sincerity of supervisors and increase employee engagement.
Businesses with a high employee moral have all figured out ways to build an uplifting company culture. The attitudes that make up a successful, motivating culture start at the top. Cultivating positive employee moral can be accomplished by demonstrating sincerity, genuine respect, and implementing a visible, creative employee recognition solution.

An effective employee recognition program will compliment the respect and sincerity of supervisors and increase employee engagement.

Employee Recognition Expert

One of an organization’s greatest challenges in today’s economy is getting the most for their money, and employee optimization is a key part of that goal. Employee productivity, retention and performance continue to be one of the best areas to save cost and improve the morale of the workplace. An employee recognition expert can help to assess employee engagement, determine the best ways to improve performance, and most importantly, to get supervisors and managers excited about using recognition and incentive solutions to improve employee safety, training completion, teamwork and creativity. The tools of the employee recognition expert include both emotional – right brain recognition, and logical – left brain compensation. The secret is in using recognition to first let employees know you truly care, then offer compensation opportunities where top achievement can share in a percentage of the money the company saves from better efficiency or earns from improved performance. The more organized your strategy and the better engaged your management team, the better results you will achieve and the more lasting the results. The manager is the key figure in the eyes of an employee and therefore holds a major role in how the employee views the company and its goals.

Click Here to download John Schaefer's complete bio story.