The Recipe for Recognition
When an employee leaves a company of their own volition, they are pushed, pulled, or some combination of the two.
Sometimes, when an employee is “pulled” by another role, there might not be anything the previous company can do. If a worker has a change of heart about the industry they work in or they have new ambitions, there’s not much you can do about that.
But as Harvard Business Review’s Why Employees QuitOpens in a new tab finds, much of what pushes and pulls employees to leave their current role are addressable issues their former organization is simply not addressing.
At the heart of why an employee chooses to leave an organization, to leave colleagues they’ve built relationships with, can be boiled down to feeling undervalued and overlooked. These factors are the pain points that Social Recognition® takes direct aim at.
Employees feel pushed out of their current role when they:
- Don’t feel respected or trust the people they work with.
- Feel the work they’re doing has little or no impact on the company
- Feel the way they’re managed day-to-day wears them down.
- Feel unchallenged or bored in their current work.
- Can’t see where to go or how to grow in their current organization (or progress will be too onerous).
- Feel they've been on their own, ignored, and unsupported at work for a long time.
Employees feel pulled from their current role when they:
- Can be acknowledged, respected, and trusted to do great work.
- Can find an employer who values my experience and credentials.
- See their job as a step forward.
- Have the freedom and flexibility to do their best work.
- Can be recognized for the impact of their work on other people and the business.
- Have a supportive boss who guides them and provides constructive feedback.
An environment that puts a premium on expressing gratitude often has the best shot at removing these common barriers to engagement, productivity, and retention. This is not simply a matter of saying “good job.” It’s deeper than that.
The Recipe for Recognition
For this recipe, we turn to Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, the science director of the Greater Good Science Center where she studies the science of happiness at work and the connection of health and happiness to social affiliation and collaborative relationships.
In an interview with Workhuman, she describes the litany of benefits people experience from the practice of gratitude.
“People who are more grateful are happier," says Dr. Simon-Thomas They feel better more often than a person who scores lower on a measure of gratitude. They have lower blood pressure. Those who score higher on gratitude are more likely to follow advice from a healthcare provider and thus less likely to suffer worse outcomes from any kind of disease or illness prognosis.”
“If you practice gratitude in advance of a difficult experience, you have a more growth and recovery-oriented response to that difficult experience. You're able to manage difficulties, and setbacks, and failures, and challenges more gracefully, and in a way that allows you to learn and grow if you are more grateful.”
“People often think like, ‘Do gratitude at home with your family or do it with your friends, but work is just about getting things done, crossing all the tasks off your list, making sure you don't leave anything unfinished. There's no time in our personal dynamics.’ __Well, that's just false__.”
For those new to practicing gratitude at work, Dr. Simon-Thomas lists the ingredients you’ll need to deliver an effective expression of appreciation or recognition message as well as the “cooking” process that starts well before you type a word of thanks. Grab your metaphorical apron and let’s get cooking.
Ingredients
1. The highlights of what the person did that you want to recognize.
2. An acknowledgement of the effort they made.
3. An explanation of how it helped you and the business.
Directions
1. Observation. We need to first get our own ingredients. Be attentive to the efforts and accomplishments of your colleagues or, if you’re a people manager, of your direct reports. Take note of project updates, challenges overcome, or progress milestones in team meetings and 1:1 check-ins.
Who are the key players?
Who made invaluable contributions?
Who helped achieve success?
The answers to these questions can help you properly convey gratitude to the recipient.
2. Express your gratitude. This is where we will incorporate our ingredients. After you have observed the efforts or achievements of the person or people you want to recognize, spell out what it is that made you feel appreciative, the effort it took to achieve it, and how those efforts and achievements helped you and ultimately, the business.
At every stage, the more specific you can be, the better. This specificity is what will help them remember this recognition moment and motivate them to replicate similar efforts on new projects.
3. Repeat. Gratitude is a dish best served repeatedly. For recognition to land in the long-term, it can’t be a one-time event, or even remotely resemble an item on a checklist. It needs to be a habit or, as we found in our research with Gallup, embedded in the culture of the organization. Without frequent expressions of gratitude, the act is likely to ring hollow looking back.
4. Voila. We don’t mean to cheapen the process, but that really is it. It can be that easy, it can be that repeatable, and the long-term benefits for employees can be achieved. But the entire organization needs to be in the kitchen cooking. No such thing as too many cooks here.
Wrapping up
The positive effects of expressing appreciation and gratitude in a setting like the workplace are undeniable. It’s not just about preventing employees from quitting but helping them feel more connected and engaged.
These unique explanations form the foundation for recognition in the workplace. They tie effort to outcome. And they improve the employee and organizational experience for everyone.
You want employees to be engaged in the work they do?
Show them how what they did translated to business success.
You want them to be productive?
Explain how the work they're doing serves ties to a business goal and how they helped achieve that result.
About the author
Mike Lovett
Mike is a senior content marketing specialist at Workhuman where he writes about the next era of the workplace. Outside the workplace, he’s an avid gardener, a frequent biker, a steadily improving chef, and a fantasy sports fanatic.