The Psychology of Gratitude

I speak almost every day with company managers who feel pressured to validate their employee recognition and incentive programs.  Or if they don’t have such programs, they’re afraid they won’t be able to justify them.  They feel they’ll need recognition metrics that track their program’s impact on business goals and return on investment.  They know they’ll require tools that provide them real-time visibility into the performance of their programs.  They desire the ability to make informed decisions based on best practices.  They realize that there is a real science to good management of their employee recognition programs – increased recognition delivers higher employee engagement scores.

I started thinking about this as I sat with my family on Thanksgiving Day.  As we went around the table saying what we were grateful for, it occurred to me that sometimes the simplest things in life are the most important.  This got me thinking about my chosen vocation in life…helping organizations transform the potential of their employees and members into the highest levels of performance.  And yes, recognition metrics are a critical part of the programs we provide the organizations we serve.  But these programs and metrics are only one aspect of the entire transformation process.  There is another dimension to this transformation process and it may be the most profound yet simple aspect of the entire undertaking.

I’m talking about the ability to say a simple thank you; the human quality of being grateful.   UC Davis psychologist Robert Emmons once gave a talk entitled, “Gratitude is an Approach to Life.”  In it, he pointed out that, “The evidence that cultivating gratefulness is good for you is overwhelming.  Gratitude is a quality that we should aspire to as a part and parcel of personal growth.  Specifically, we have shown that gratitude is positively related to such critical outcomes as life satisfaction, vitality, happiness, self-esteem, optimism, hope, empathy, and willingness to provide emotional and tangible support for other people, whereas being ungrateful is related to anxiety, depression, envy, materialism, and loneliness.”

If being grateful in our personal lives can have such a positive impact on us, just imagine how a culture of gratitude could impact the behaviors, emotions, and attitudes of an entire organization.  Food for thought. . .

 

Social Media and Employee Recognition - Start the Conversation. . .

We all know the phrase “going viral”.  It may relate to a YouTube video or a late show comedy clip that everyone is suddenly talking about.  And that’s the point…everybody is talking about it.  It has somehow entered into the collective consciousness and grabbed people’s attention.  And through the power of social media, the conversation is replicated exponentially…reaching millions of people simultaneously.

Now there’s a lesson here for those of us involved in the employee recognition business.  Too many times, we recognize our employees for good performance and only a few people know about it.  What if that recognition was to go viral within your company so that not only everyone knew about it but they could congratulate the individuals being recognized or be congratulated themselves?   It would definitely get the conversation going… but more than that, it would begin to engender within your organization a culture of gratitude and congratulations for a job well done; a realization among your employees that their hard work and extra efforts won’t go unrecognized.

Success breeds success and when employees see each other being given a shout out, they can’t help but be motivated to desire the same recognition for themselves.  So it’s not just the recognition that goes viral, but the behaviors and attitudes that spell success for your company will be replicated over and over.

I believe the easiest way for a company to get the conversation started is to take advantage of the social media platform you already have (or will have).

Some ideas for going viral internally include,

- Use of Company Facebook and LinkedIn pages to recognize employees

- Social media integration: - let your employees opt in to having their recognition posted on their personal Facebook and twitter accounts.

- An internal “bulletin board” where employee recognitions are posted, employees can post congratulations and comments. 

- Incentra’s recognition platforms include social recognition modules that can scroll real-time intra-company recognition occasions  throughout each day.

- “Peer-to Peer” recognition - encourage employees to post recognition of others’ actions and efforts if you are not running a recognition software platform.

- Concerned about privacy?  Look into an internal social network designed specifically for business, such as Yammer, a password-protected site that provides a Facebook-like networking forum and a great space to recognize employees.

- The company blog is a perfect place to recognize the accomplishments of an individual employee or an incredible team.  Blogs can accommodate detailed descriptions, highlights, videos and photos.  Anyone can comment on the blog post and add to the conversation.

Integrating social media into your employee recognition program is a fast and economical way to create that collective consciousness of positive employee engagement we all hope to achieve.  Get the conversation started. . .