The Power of Appreciation
Expressing appreciation in a workplace can benefit you, your co-workers and the company performance, leading to things like greater employee satisfaction and decreased turnover. As we enter the holiday season, it can be challenging to keep gratitude at the forefront of our work activities within the holiday stress and the challenge of coordinating everyone’s requests for time off. On the other hand, there’s not a more natural or appropriate time to make it a company priority to cultivate a culture of appreciation.
Feeling appreciated is critical to employee satisfaction
Almost half of U.S. workers (46%) have left a job because they felt unappreciated, according to an employee appreciation poll by Bonusly. Even more striking, 65% of respondents said they would work harder if they felt their contributions were acknowledged and appreciated – and not just by management but by coworkers as well.
Employee recognition leads to more engagement and better performance, as well. Organizations with employee recognition programs perform 14% higher in “employee engagement, productivity, and performance” than those without, according to an article in Forbes titled Why Employee Recognition Is More Crucial Than Ever. “In research conducted by Quantum Workplace, when employees believe management will recognize them, they are 2.7 times more likely to be highly engaged. And when O.C. Tanner studied employee engagement, 37% of those surveyed said that more appreciation would motivate them to produce better work more often,” the article said.
“Organizations that make employee appreciation a priority have workers who are 56% less likely to look for a new job,” the Forbes article said. In a period of unprecedented labor shortages and high turnover, improving employee retention through efforts at employee appreciation is both logical and cost-effective. And enjoyable for all involved!
Feeling appreciative is good for your well-being
There’s a growing body of evidence that gratitude is beneficial for mental health and well-being – of the person expressing gratitude. “Physiologically, when people are experiencing gratitude or when they tend to be more grateful overall, they have lower blood pressure,” said Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley in an article by American Heart Association News.
Psychology Today reports that: “A 2010 systematic review found that “an attitude of gratitude” may reduce your risk of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, and has been shown to help people adjust to traumatic life events and their aftermaths, while a more recent review found strong evidence that a grateful outlook is tied to emotional and socia
l well-being.”
Appreciation is contagious – but it’s not automatic
Have you ever noticed how being complimented makes you more inclined to compliment others? When we feel appreciated, we’re also more likely to feel – and even more importantly – to express appreciation to others. However, it’s not always an automatic or consistent response for individuals to focus on gratitude. It can take a conscious effort to train our brains to focus on appreciation.
Tips to create a culture of appreciation in your workplace
Create a Gratitude Board where employees can jot down their appreciation for others to read.
Make gratitudes part of your holiday decorations. Provide a supply of blank, construction paper stars, stockings or Christmas ornaments. Employees can write down the things they appreciate and hang them up.
Express your appreciation – for big and little things. Don’t keep your gratitude inside. Make a point to let your employees know that you appreciate them, whether it’s for closing a major sale or simply making you laugh.
Launch a company-wide appreciation program. It can acknowledge length of time at work, special contributions or rely on performance benchmarks. But make sure you acknowledge all employees at some point.
“Everyone wants to be part of something greater than themselves and know that at the end of a long workday, what they did mattered—that they mattered,” writes Forbes Business Council Member Hao Lam in his article Embrace The Season Of Gratitude By Creating Meaningful Actions In The Workplace. How can you help your employees see how their contributions matter to the success of your company?