Employee appreciation is still limping along, although it is needed as never before.
Most companies have made spectacular changes to the way they organise work: they have opted for digitalisation and optimisation of many processes and moved employees to the home office. What is certain is that social contact at work has been significantly reduced and will not return to the old ways for a long time (if ever). Management is a major challenge, especially for the youngest managers. They have never experienced a crisis, and today they have to keep the team in such a state that they are meeting targets and working at the right level of commitment. This engagement is precisely one of the most important outcomes of feeling valued at work.
What is appreciation at work?
The trouble arises already at the definition stage. Nais was a partner in a study carried out by SWPS University and Thanks Factor. Respondents pointed in their first reaction to salary, bonuses and benefits. However, all of these, as elements of the remuneration grid, are expected at the recruitment stage, so once you start work it is difficult to say that they build a sense of appreciation. They should simply be in the job offer of a ‘decent company’.
It is only in a deeper conversation that they acknowledge that, in fact, for a sense of appreciation, the daily attentiveness of the boss towards them and their small achievements, the positive feedback given on an ongoing basis, plays a very important role. Mutual appreciation between employees is also very important.
The study identified 5 important functions of appreciation at work.
Firstly: it provides the employee with feedback on the quality of the work he/she does. It strengthens him or her to continue on the chosen path. This is very important in the era of remote working, when the boss has very few opportunities to correct the employee’s actions on the fly: with words, eyes, gestures. Most often, he or she can already see the effect of the work.
Secondly: it positively influences the atmosphere in the team, which is more cooperative and simply more effective.
Thirdly: it relieves stress and helps to act effectively in crisis situations. It is a remedy for the present time, when we worry about our place in the company especially.
Fourth: it builds a person’s sense of self-worth, a sense of competence and agency, a step that is absolutely essential for engagement.
Fifth: it builds a sense of fairness in social exchange. In short: I give something of myself, someone recognises and acknowledges it. It develops the rule of reciprocity and beautifully reinforces a culture of appreciation within the team and the company.
If appreciation brings so much to corporate life, why do we still not do it?
Good question, right? Often without realising what it is, we don’t feel responsible for it at all. This applies to both bosses and employees. By identifying it with the salary and benefit scale, we attribute responsibility for it to the company, most often to the HR department and management. The survey also shows that we also have trouble giving and receiving positive feedback. Bosses admit that it is much easier for them to give critical information and point out what needs to be improved than to express appreciation for everyday, not necessarily spectacular, achievements. These older ones believe that the absence of criticism is in itself already a sufficient form of appreciation.
They also do not appreciate because they lack the knowledge of how to do it concretely and the tools and system solutions in the company, which is important especially for bosses working in large companies.
Finally, because it is not part of their set of habits, they consider the whole process artificial, they are afraid of “exaggeration” and they are not prepared for personalisation, which for the effect of feeling appreciated is crucial. This personalisation is likely to occur in a direct social relationship, when the boss knows the employee well, not just by name, and the colleague knows the colleague a little more than from the company corridor. For it, empathy is also needed, which today has taken on great importance in team management.
At the beginning of the adventure into appreciative culture, it is worth answering the question: can we afford not to appreciate at work? Today, when companies especially need talent to get back into shape. Today, when engaged teams increase the likelihood of stability and survival.