Are Employee "Random Acts of Kindness" Always Random?

Social media recently celebrated a remarkable “random act of kindness” of a McDonald’s employee in Chicago who closed his register at a busy time to help a man with a disability eat his meal. 

Another McDonald’s customer,Destiny Carreno, posted this photo of the McDonald’s employee, Kenny Soriano-Garcia, on her Facebook page.  To date, her post has been shared over 400,000 times. I recommend you take a few minutes to read her post in its entirety.

A similar kind act occurred about two years ago at a Dairy Queen in Hopkins, Minnesota. In this instance an employee saw a customer, who was blind, being taken advantage of by a woman who stole his money. The employee, Joey Prusak, refused service to the woman, asked her to leave and then took money from his own pocket to reimburse the man. 

Joey’s efforts also went viral on social media, and were recognized by Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, the owner of Dairy Queen.

We need to pay attention to these acts of kindness and care. But are they really random?

Through our research, we’ve identified twelve elements that engage employees. We call these factors The New Rules of Engagement℠:

One rule that drives engagement is called “Don’t Kill the Meaning”. In his book Widgets: The 12 New Rules For Managing Your Employees As If They're Real People, best-selling author Rodd Wagner describes the importance of creating a work environment where employees can embrace meaning in their work:

“Whether someone finds purpose in his or her work is largely a consequence of how that employee is treated, how he or she is made to feel important, how genuinely the enterprise’s leadership talks about the mission of the company, and whether leaders do anything to cheapen that meaning. Working at the Department of Motor Vehicles can be either full of meaning, taking license photos of 16-year-olds on one of the biggest days of their lives, or an endless slog of forms and angry people and a slow computer system. Meaning grows or gets stomped on depending on the quality of the leadership and managing.”

The environment we nurture actually creates the conditions for more of the behaviors we so very much desire.

To emphasize the point, here are the recent results of a study of retail employees we conducted:

The data clearly show that employees who feel strongly about the mission of their company were far more likely to work hard for customers. In an earlier post, I made a call to action to recognize employees who go about doing their work, creating remarkable customer experiences, but are often not recognized. We need to continue seeking out the Kenny’s and Joey’s and celebrate the love and care they provide for our customers.

One thing I often hear, certain jobs don’t have “meaning”-- they’re just “jobs”.

Baloney.

You won’t convince Kenny or Joey that their jobs didn’t have meaning when they reached out and helped those customers.

I had the pleasure of interviewing a fast food manager who was widely recognized as one of the most consistently productive, successful managers in this national chain. Here’s his response to what he sees as the mission of his work:

“In my line of work I hire lots of young people, and it is often their first job. If I can help them to take pride in what they do and learn how to be responsible and how to treat customers and their co-workers with dignity, I think I can influence how they think about work for the rest of their lives. Many employees are with me for a short time before they head off to school. My proudest moments are when they come back and tell me I made a big difference in their life, now that they are a teacher or accountant or whatever.”

When we lead in a way where employees feel more meaning in their work, we take a bit of the randomness out of the equation.

Congratulations to Kenny and Joey, who show us that in all kinds of work there is the opportunity to make a difference. We celebrate their acts of kindness.  And with the right leadership these “random” acts of kindness won’t be so random after all.

By celebrating Kenny and Joey, we bring more meaning into a world that desperately needs it. And our employees and businesses thrive.