Who doesn’t like to be appreciated?
At home and at work, many of us are struggling now with burnout, low morale and feelings of disconnection – perhaps more than ever before. But for leaders and managers, recognition could be at least a part of the solution. Fulfilling that need at work could have a huge impact on your organisation and some of the contributors to your bottom line, like employee engagement and retention.
When people know that they’re appreciated, it shows in their work.
They’re engaged, productive and motivated to put in more effort to help achieve the organisation’s goals.
Productivity is boosted even further when they’re recognised for specific actions that they know are contributing to the organisation’s overall success.
They’re happier and more satisfied with their job – and a happy workforce leads to happy customers too.
It’s definitely not all about monetary reward, either.
Making gestures of appreciation more personal and specifically tailored to the recipient’s preferences becomes all the more meaningful, and even just acknowledging an employee’s results or efforts with a public thank you can often go a long way towards boosting morale.
And what about the impact of frequency and timing?
Employees are much more likely to repeat behaviours that they’ve been recognised for and recognition in the moment makes it much easier to establish a direct link to the actions that are appreciated and that their managers want to see more of.
Even giving recognition to others, rather than receiving it, can boost feelings of happiness and that extends to colleagues as well as managers. Strengthening your team’s relationships with each other in this way can help to develop the culture that you’d like within your organisation and having a strong culture of recognition will most likely make employees want to continue working there. They’ll also be more inclined to retain that feeling even in times when things might not be going quite so well – certainly something to bear in mind.
