It’s an employee’s mar­ket out there. In the midst of a big work/life shake­up, employ­ees are start­ing to won­der if the grass is per­haps a lit­tle green­er else­where. To beat the great res­ig­na­tion, organ­i­sa­tions need to be mak­ing a big effort to keep their tal­ent at the cen­tre of every­thing that they do.

Per­haps one of the eas­i­est and most impact­ful ways to show your employ­ees you care and boost employ­ee engage­ment is to give them some appre­ci­a­tion and recog­ni­tion. It’s not rock­et sci­ence, but many organ­i­sa­tions strug­gle to get this right, espe­cial­ly in the new hybrid world where much of our inter­ac­tion hap­pens through a screen.

It’s not inter­net con­nec­tion that helps peo­ple real­ly show up for work, it’s human con­nec­tion. We need that con­nec­tion for busi­ness­es to run smooth­ly, and to ensure that every­one feels like they are val­ued for who they are and what they do ver­sus just the out­put from their work. Recent research from Gallup and Workhu­man shows exact­ly that. Bring­ing the human con­nec­tion to work in the right way can mutu­al­ly ben­e­fit every­one.

Bringing back meaningful connections

In hybrid and remote work­ing envi­ron­ments, small, mean­ing­ful encoun­ters are scarcer and, for many organ­i­sa­tions, work has become more trans­ac­tion­al. Dr Meisha-Ann Mar­tin, senior direc­tor, peo­ple ana­lyt­ics and research at Workhu­man, explains: “Things that we used to do, just as a mat­ter of us inter­act­ing with each oth­er, don’t hap­pen as organ­i­cal­ly any­more. We need to be more thought­ful about how peo­ple expe­ri­ence work and to care­ful­ly curate some of these things that used to just hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly.”

One exam­ple is birth­days. When every­one was in the office each day, birth­days were nat­u­ral­ly and casu­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed, bring­ing a sim­ple but impor­tant ele­ment of human con­nec­tion to work. Now, they often go unno­ticed if employ­ees are large­ly work­ing remote­ly or don’t all con­gre­gate in the office – and peo­ple miss it. Mar­tin explains: “Now, we need to use tech­nol­o­gy to curate those expe­ri­ences because they’re not hap­pen­ing by chance.”

The same, she says, is true of appre­ci­a­tion. “There are less thank yous in our lives right now. As such, we need to care­ful­ly and thought­ful­ly infuse more appre­ci­a­tion into people’s lives. Our research keeps telling us over and over that it mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly when times are tough, and times are still tough two years lat­er.”

Getting employee recognition right

Recog­ni­tion not only makes peo­ple feel good, but it builds affin­i­ty and helps boost the employ­er brand. Mar­tin says: “What we see over and over again is that peo­ple who are recog­nised are more engaged, and they’re more like­ly to stay with­in with an organ­i­sa­tion.” In fact, new Gallup research shows that employ­ees who strong­ly agree that their recog­ni­tion needs are ful­filled are three times as loy­al to their organ­i­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, it’s not enough to just throw out a few gener­ic thank yous here and there. Get­ting employ­ee recog­ni­tion right mat­ters. “Employ­ees need to feel like the appre­ci­a­tion they’re receiv­ing is authen­tic, that they’re get­ting the right amount of recog­ni­tion for what they’re con­tribut­ing, and that they’re not being over­looked,” explains Mar­tin. “They need to feel that grat­i­tude is embed­ded into their work­place cul­ture – where they’re being recog­nised, where they’re see­ing oth­er peo­ple being recog­nised, and where they’re empow­ered to recog­nise oth­er peo­ple as well. And last­ly, that the recog­ni­tion is per­son­alised, so it’s about them and what they specif­i­cal­ly bring to the table.” That last point is cru­cial, because if praise feels imper­son­al and insin­cere, you may actu­al­ly be doing more harm than good.

Clear, spe­cif­ic praise also helps boost per­for­mance, Mar­tin adds. “When you’re appre­ci­at­ing some­body, be very spe­cif­ic about what it is that you’re appre­ci­at­ing, as it can oper­ate like pos­i­tive rein­force­ment. When you do that, peo­ple know exact­ly the behav­iour that you want repeat­ed. And so, in that way, it func­tions as a per­for­mance-enhanc­ing tool.”

Recog­ni­tion not only pre­vents future loss, but it actu­al­ly pays for itself and then some

One thing to bear in mind is that not every­one will want to receive recog­ni­tion in the same way. “Some peo­ple are more pri­vate and some peo­ple are okay with pub­lic [recog­ni­tion]. It is inter­est­ing to con­sid­er what peo­ple want and need, but our data shows that peo­ple are not asked how they pre­fer to receive recog­ni­tion near­ly enough,” says Mar­tin. She adds that tech­nol­o­gy can help with this. “If you’re using tech­nol­o­gy to enable these expe­ri­ences, peo­ple can indi­cate their pref­er­ences there. And all of a sud­den, you don’t have to remem­ber, you don’t stum­ble, because you can’t remem­ber who likes what.”

Mar­tin also notes that social recog­ni­tion, recog­ni­tion in a social media-like feed, in par­tic­u­lar, can be a great way to cel­e­brate employ­ees as peo­ple are used to them being tools for recog­ni­tion and they don’t feel as pub­lic or intense as in-per­son praise.

Embracing the ripple effect

Mar­tin recalls how she took this pos­i­tive tech­nique and applied it to her own life. “What real­ly sur­prised me is the impact it had on my per­son­al life and my per­son­al rela­tion­ships because it becomes a habit. I start­ed telling peo­ple, friends and loved ones exact­ly what I appre­ci­at­ed about them. This habit trans­forms your space and your rela­tion­ships wher­ev­er they occur, at work or your per­son­al life.”

If we can’t escape the lines between our work and home lives becom­ing blurred, why not let some of the pos­i­tive things bleed through? “We told our­selves this lie. We said ‘pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al,’” says Mar­tin. “The pan­dem­ic taught us that those two dis­tinc­tions don’t real­ly exist. In fact, the more I can just be myself at work, the bet­ter I am at my job and the bet­ter I am in real life.” The Gallup research states that when recog­ni­tion hits the mark, 44% of employ­ees are more like­ly to be thriv­ing in life.

Mar­tin adds: “It also makes a dif­fer­ence par­tic­u­lar­ly for Black and His­pan­ic peo­ple who may not nec­es­sar­i­ly feel like they belong. When those aspects are present in an organ­i­sa­tion, they’re more like­ly to see a path to grow in that organ­i­sa­tion, they’re more like­ly to feel like the organ­i­sa­tion cares about their well­be­ing, and they’re more like­ly to be thriv­ing as well. So it’s a great way to make a dif­fer­ence to work cul­ture but also in the lives of peo­ple as well.”

Embedding a culture of recognition

It can be tough for organ­i­sa­tions to rebuild and improve their cul­tures in a post-covid world and pri­ori­tise employ­ee expe­ri­ence and well­be­ing. “The real­i­ty is, man­agers are peo­ple and they’re going through a tough time just like the rest of us,” says Mar­tin. “Nobody antic­i­pat­ed that all of this was going to hap­pen, so we’re try­ing to react to this and make sure every­body else is okay while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mak­ing sure we’re okay. It’s hard.”

So how can organ­i­sa­tions embed a cul­ture of recog­ni­tion? “The first and one of the most impor­tant things is sig­nalling that it’s impor­tant, which means from a prac­ti­cal per­spec­tive, invest­ing in it, hav­ing a set bud­get, and an offi­cial recog­ni­tion pro­gram,” says Mar­tin. “One of the biggest mis­takes I see peo­ple make in this space is con­sid­er­ing this type of invest­ment a sunk cost, when it is real­ly an invest­ment to pre­vent a future loss.” Accord­ing to the research, cre­at­ing a cul­ture of recog­ni­tion can save a 10,000-employee com­pa­ny up to $16.1m in turnover costs annu­al­ly.

Mar­tin con­tin­ues: “Recog­ni­tion not only pre­vents future loss, but it actu­al­ly pays for itself and then some – you can con­sid­er it a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing invest­ment. Invest­ing in recog­ni­tion upfront, mak­ing the pro­gram known through­out the organ­i­sa­tion, and then hav­ing senior lead­ers be pow­er users, shar­ing grat­i­tude and appre­ci­a­tion often, those are the sig­nals to employ­ees that appre­ci­a­tion and recog­ni­tion belong here and that it is impor­tant to us.”

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Q&A: Boosting employee experience at Version 1

Reka Fasi, HR con­sul­tant at IT ser­vices com­pa­ny Ver­sion 1, describes how a part­ner­ship with Workhu­man helped them build a con­sis­tent and per­son­alised approach to recog­ni­tion

Why was it impor­tant to you to improve employ­ee expe­ri­ence?

Empow­er­ing our peo­ple and enhanc­ing our employ­ee expe­ri­ence has always been a top pri­or­i­ty, espe­cial­ly for our senior lead­er­ship team, which is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ous­ly mak­ing the com­pa­ny a great place to work.

As an IT ser­vices com­pa­ny, it’s our peo­ple who set us apart from the com­pe­ti­tion. We’re con­stant­ly look­ing for ways to improve the employ­ee expe­ri­ence so we can attract and retain the very best tal­ent out there and ulti­mate­ly deliv­er the best ser­vice pos­si­ble to our cus­tomers.

What were some of the chal­lenges you were hav­ing bring­ing the human ele­ment to work and pri­ori­tis­ing employ­ee recog­ni­tion?

Over the last four years, we’ve grown from 1,200 peo­ple to more than 2,000 and our teams are now more spread out across the world. We’ve also acquired 13 com­pa­nies in this time. This expan­sion has been great for busi­ness, but it does present a chal­lenge from a recog­ni­tion stand­point. Dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries, busi­ness divi­sions and, of course, the pan­dem­ic – when the vast major­i­ty of us were work­ing from home – cre­at­ed a whole new set of chal­lenges.

We could see we need­ed a more con­sis­tent and per­son­alised approach; one that aligned to – and helped pro­mote and con­tin­ue to bring to life our ‘Core Val­ue’ behav­iours, and one which was tru­ly inclu­sive of all our peo­ple, wher­ev­er they were based.

As an IT ser­vices com­pa­ny, it’s our peo­ple who set us apart from the com­pe­ti­tion

What are some of the changes you’ve imple­ment­ed?

In 2020, with the help of Workhu­man, we intro­duced a new glob­al peer-to-peer recog­ni­tion pro­gramme named Call­Out. This is a dig­i­tal and mobile plat­form which any­one in the com­pa­ny – whether in the office, at home or hybrid – can use to call out the excel­lent work of their col­leagues.

Call­Out plays a strate­gic role in Ver­sion 1’s busi­ness. The plat­form empow­ers our peo­ple to recog­nise their peers when they behave in a way that is aligned with our over­all goals or for excelling in their role. Show­cas­ing these con­tri­bu­tions pro­vides inspi­ra­tion to oth­ers to behave in a sim­i­lar way. This cre­ates a cas­cade effect that is invalu­able as we con­tin­u­ous­ly look to enhance our already well-estab­lished pos­i­tive cul­ture.

How have employ­ee expe­ri­ence and engage­ment improved? What results have you seen?

In the first full year, we saw a huge amount of activ­i­ty on the Call­Out plat­form. Some 87% of peo­ple were recog­nised for their con­tri­bu­tion, so we are already ahead of Workhuman’s best prac­tice tar­get of 80%.

What’s more, more than half of our employ­ees have recog­nised their peers. When we bench­mark this against oth­er com­pa­nies in the tech sec­tor, we can see we are already out­per­form­ing the major­i­ty of busi­ness­es. Ver­sion 1 is a data-dri­ven organ­i­sa­tion. We’re con­stant­ly review­ing the rich data points that Call­Out pro­vides to iden­ti­fy exem­plary teams and indi­vid­u­als, and allows us to tap into areas that need a lit­tle more sup­port. This recog­ni­tion data is piv­otal to the con­tin­ued suc­cess of Ver­sion 1 as it is help­ing us improve the employ­ee expe­ri­ence right across the board.

Find out more at http://spr.ly/6001zRSFz

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Pro­mot­ed by Workhu­man