Recognition is a key to high employee performance and engagement. And, peer recognition is one of the most significant driving factors toward team unity, employee loyalty, and optimal performance. But, peer recognition rarely happens without great managers building a culture of recognition and leading through example.
How can managers inspire a culture of recognition so that employees feel appreciated and valued?
Managers Should Set The Example In Recognizing Others
Employee recognition can either feel contrived and forced or sincere and authentic. A culture of recognition impacts employee performance, job satisfaction, and retention. Peer recognition is critical for employee engagement, but creating a culture of peer recognition is difficult without a manager example.
As a manager, it’s crucial that you value employee recognition and make it a part of your management style. Otherwise, lip service to recognition programs will only backfire or fall flat as employees will tell that recognition is not a significant value.
Use Polls to Learn Team Perceptions
Too often, a manager thinks that they provide great recognition to their employees and that the culture exists they strive to create. However, perceptions can be wide and varied. It’s better to take the temperature with your team and make sure they feel appreciated.
Use the Polls feature to find out if your team feels valued. Some questions that you may consider asking are questions also used by Gallup include:
- Someone at work cares about me as a person.
- In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
- My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person
- There is someone at work that encourages my development
- At work, my opinions seem to count
- In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress
- This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow
Other questions may include:
- I prefer to be recognized in front of my peers
- I prefer the following type of recognition best
- Private thanks for a great job
- Public recognition
- Team celebrations
- Awards and prizes
- I prefer praise:
- Daily
- Weekly
- A big party quarterly
Customize the questions for your team. Make sure that you understand what their preferences are. When you thank them for their hard work, do they recognize that as gratitude, or do they think you are only paying lip service to recognition? Understanding how your team perceives recognition makes it easier for you to give the types of recognition that communicate best with them.
Recognize Employees In A Way That Speaks The Most to Them
Every person speaks a different language. Gary Chapman revolutionized our understanding of human connection by breaking apart five love languages and stating that each person speaks and “hears” in their love language. Employees are much the same. Not every form of recognition “speaks” to all of your employees.
The key to effective recognition is to speak in each employee’s “love language.” Find out what forms of recognition says best. Some employees feel much more appreciated through a sincerely written note, while others prefer to be recognized in front of peers. Some may like an award as a token of their hard work, and others may prefer a little time spent mentoring and coaching them.
See this article for more in-depth information on speaking employees’ work love languages for more effective recognition.
Be Authentic and Genuine in Employee Praise
It’s more important than ever to be authentic when thanking and recognizing employees. They can tell if you do not appreciate them or don’t have time for their career development goals. Employees cite management most frequently as the reason they leave their jobs. A lot of that may differ in how the manager perceives themselves versus how the employee perceives the same situation.
All managers make mistakes, just like employees, but being genuine and authentic can make up for most errors or communication differences. If you are very stressed over an upcoming deadline, communicating that to your team can help them understand that you aren’t angry.
Practice Gratitude As a Habit
If you are having a more challenging time finding things that your employees do right, then take a step back and practice feeling gratitude in all aspects of your life. Gratitude begets gratitude, and practicing it as a habit can help you start seeing the many things your employees do good.
Even spending 10 minutes a day to list out all the big or small things you’re grateful for can have a significant impact. If you must, start small and appreciate employees for effort, even in a failed attempt, or for staying a few minutes late, getting a report in on time, and so forth.
The more you express genuine gratitude, the more you will notice other ways your team performs. Look for some of the following methods to recognize your team:
- Look for core strengths: the positive employee, the one that remembers important events, the hard worker, the human calculator, and so on.
- Recognize effort: the employee who never gives up or who makes the extra effort for the customer.
- Appreciate end results: winning a big account, calming an angry customer, finishing a big project.
Conclusion
Manager-led recognition is critical for the success of any recognition program. Without manager support and example, company culture will not be a culture of employee appreciation. For more information on unique ways to recognize your employees, check out the following related articles.
200 Funny Award Names For Employee Recognition
18 Team Building Activities That Recognize Teams
Peer Recognition: The Fuel For An Employee Engagement Explosion
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.