A Successful Workplace: Creating a Culture of Recognition
Every leader’s goal is to ensure a clear path to success and identify all the factors involved. While it may be clear that a business cannot operate without its employees, how can you ensure that employee productivity and engagement are at their full potential? What could you, as a leader, do to ensure you are setting up your team and business for success?
The answer is undoubtedly complex, but one element remains easy to implement: recognizing your employees as people, not just workers.
Though this may be straightforward, a self-reflective question would be, “what am I doing to demonstrate that I value my team beyond the tasks they are completing?”. Actions speak louder than words. It is not enough to know that your employees are an essential key element for your business’ success; you need to implement actions that demonstrate they are seen, recognized for their efforts, and valued.
Employee Appreciation Leads To A Positive Workplace
Now that the objective is clear, it’s essential to understand the importance. How much can recognizing your employees as people impact your business? What consequences could your business face if you don’t corroborate your employees feeling valued and appreciated?
NO SENSE OF BELONGING
The lack of acknowledgement of employees as an asset to your team can directly impact their sense of belonging, and negatively impact the business by creating a sense of detachment from peer-to-peer and the business objectives. The result: your employees will feel easily replaceable.
Developing a sense of belonging is vital for employee retention and ensuring they are aware of how every task they perform contributes to the organization’s overall success. In other words, they need to know that their role and responsibilities positively impact the team’s performance, thus creating value in their actions.
LACK OF PRODUCTIVITY
Engaging in actions that show you don’t consider your employees as significant enough will diminish their desire to want to do their tasks effectively and efficiently, ultimately causing a drop in productivity and quality of work. If employees don’t see how their performance impacts the organization’s growth, they will stop caring and settle for doing the bare minimum.
The consequences of not treating your employees with regard will affect their engagement and quality of life and, at length, lead to career dissatisfaction.
And what would someone experiencing all those things do? Seek other employment opportunities.
MENTAL HEALTH
Treating employees as just workers rather than acknowledging they are human can have serious adverse effects on their mental health. Not feeling valued as a human being will often cause people to lose their sense of belonging. A CCOHS study on Psychosocial Risk Factors in the Workplace showed that a “lack of recognition and reward undermines employee confidence” and can lead to:
- Social isolation
- Decrease in social engagement
- Decrease in motivation
- Job dissatisfaction
- Depression
- Absenteeism
Employee Recognition Tactics
As a leader, you want to create a working culture that recognizes employees as people first. To achieve a positive work environment, you will need to craft a plan to target all the concerns identified so far. First, here’s a list of things you can start doing right away to go the extra mile for your employees.
ACTIONS YOU CAN START TODAY
The first and most important step to beginning an action plan is to listen to your employees actively. Employees need to be heard loud and clear before executing measures that align with their needs, so begin the critical conversations with your team members! Collecting their feedback will be a great way to create a smooth and clear pathway.
After implementing active listening, the next step is to:
Invest in employee training and development. A Harvard Business Review article mentions a LinkedIn study reporting that “94% of employees said they would stay with their employer if it invested in their career development”, thus reinforcing the value employees see in having the opportunity to grow professionally.
Employee surveys and regular check-ins can promote active listening. When paired up with investing in your team members’ professional development, it will result in a company culture that nurtures employee engagement, and most importantly, it will create top performers.
We encourage you to perceive this blog as a toolkit to build a strong structure that shapes your organization for success. A conclusive message to take home would be the following: rather than seeing your employees as just workers, instead, recognize them as collaborators.
If you need help building a positive workplace culture that features employee recognition as a priority, book a call with us!
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