Recognition that lands: specific, within a week, and in the way they prefer.
People who strongly agree they get the right amount of recognition are around four times as likely to be engaged, and only one in ten has ever been asked how they like to receive it (Gallup and Workhuman, 2022). Both of those are a manager’s to change.
On this page
Specific, within seven days, in their preferred form; ask how they like it; recognise effort that did not pay off; open meetings with an act of help.
“Well done, team” is not recognition. It is noise, and people hear it as noise. Recognition that lands names a person, a thing they did, and what it made possible, arrives within a week of the thing, and comes in the form that person actually wants.
Every week, each person, one specific thanks
- Find one thing per person. If nothing comes to mind, ask the people they work with; they will have seen something you did not.
- Say what they did and what it made possible. The second half is what makes it land.
- Within seven days. Gallup’s marker for recognition is “in the last week”; a month later it is history.
Ask how they like it
One person a month, in a one-to-one: public or private, written or spoken, from you or from the team? Write the answer down and use it from then on. Some people want the team to hear it. Some would rather die. You cannot know which unless you ask, and almost nobody has.
Recognise the effort that did not pay off
Once a quarter, find the piece of work that went nowhere through no fault of the person. Say what you saw in it: the judgement, the care, the thing they tried. Say that you want them to keep attempting hard things. If only results get recognised, people stop attempting anything that might not work.
In team meetings: one act of help
Open the team meeting with one thing someone did for someone else this week: who helped, who was helped, what it made possible. Ten seconds. After a month, hand the nomination round the team. What you notice out loud, you get more of, and helping is the thing most worth getting more of.
Write it down
A tick per person per week, and each person’s preference. If someone goes a fortnight without a tick, that is the finding.
The clearest thirty minutes in your week.
Send us your last engagement survey and we’ll show you what it’s missing – no charge, no deck, no obligation. Or start with a pilot or a 30-minute conversation.