Why building a culture of gratitude is good for business
Everyone loves a like! We see this every day in our personal lives - the social media landscape is set up to provide positive reinforcement and recognition to help people build social connections that feel valuable on both sides.
Each time we give or receive a like, it boosts our self-esteem, gives us an incentive to keep doing what we’re doing and makes us feel more connected to our network.
This need doesn’t go away when we enter the working world. In fact, the need for recognition has become more important than ever, following the recent remote working and social distancing mandates.
According to many researchers, getting recognition right is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to boost the engagement of your employees.
Deloitte notes a high correlation between recognition and improving employee engagement. They have found that employee engagement, productivity and performance are 14% higher in organisations with recognition programmes, than in those without.
However, employee engagement isn’t just good for your employees; it’s good for business too.
Numerous studies have shown that great recognition, and improved employee engagement can foster impressive benefits for organisations.
According to Psychology Today, investing time and resources in ongoing recognition, coaching and constructive feedback has been found to increase revenues by 26%, decrease employee turnover by 31%, improve customer satisfaction by 54%, and increase shareholder return by 22%.
A survey conducted by Gallup found that employees who receive regular recognition not only displayed increased productivity, but also boosted their engagement with colleagues, had better safety records on the job and were more likely to stay with their organisation.
Another study by SHRM found that companies that promote peer-to-peer recognition are 36% more likely to have a positive impact on financial returns, compared to those that don’t. The same study also saw respondents noting positive increases to other key business metrics within companies that use peer-to-peer recognition, including 41% that have seen an increase in customer satisfaction, and 32% seeing an increase in customer retention.
Bringing in a peer-to-peer recognition system can also prevent organisations wasting time, money and effort trying to monitor achievement, recognition and reward. Having one system, with everyone giving and receiving recognition in the same way makes it easy for organisations to monitor and report on recognition and reward across all employees.
It also makes it easy for business leaders to get a high level view of achievements across the organisation, as well as surfacing and rewarding outstanding achievements with ease.
So how do you introduce peer-to-peer recognition into your organisation?
The simple answer is make it simple: give your teams the right tools.
Most of us use social platforms everyday, we know how to post, how to like and how to interact there with our networks and connections. So your peer-to-peer recognition software should make giving social feedback at work as intuitive and fun as using those platforms in our personal lives.
There’s really very little else to it. Most research shows that the nature of peer-to-peer recognition means that it’s self-perpetuating and intrinsically motivating. Once you set up the correct tools and encourage your employees to start showing their appreciation for their teammates, organisations often find programmes like these to require next to no effort to run and support.
