The Truth About Recognition

The Truth About Recognition

We all want and need recognition. From a very early age we crave it from parents, teachers, and friends. Our whole lives are modeled around constant social feedback and acknowledgement. So strong is our desire for positive affirmation, particularly during developmental periods, that even a neutral reaction can be perceived as a negative one. When we move to the workplace, this orientation is no different. It is key that employers focus on how they can make authentic and meaningful recognition part of their management philosophy in order to retain top talent and encourage high performance.

A whitepaper commissioned by Fortune 100 Best Company to Work For and Great Place to Work-Certified company, O.C. Tanner, investigates the root cause of great employee performance and how managers can tailor their workplaces to promote it. The paper gathers its conclusions from an open-ended survey where respondents were asked the question, "What is the most important thing that your manager or company currently does that would cause you to produce great work?" Respondents answered in their own words, providing a variety of responses, but some clear patterns did emerge. Overall, 37% of respondents stated that more personal recognition would encourage them to produce better work more often. While other themes like autonomy and inspiration did surface, recognition was the most dominant, illustrating the importance of affirmation, feedback and reward for motivating employees to do their best work.