We are often encouraged to practise gratitude at home, but what about in the workplace? There is research that shows practising gratitude is a powerful way to improve relationships at work, as well as health and wellness. Gratitude at work decreases the likelihood of team members being mistreated and helps employees feel psychologically engaged and safe.
Individuals need more from employee incentives than just recognition – they need to feel that they are appreciated. It is quick and simple to encourage gratitude at work and it can improve employee retention and performance. But how do you bridge that gap between the benefits of gratitude at work and the absence of a ‘gratitude culture’?
The foundation is intent and deliberate intervention. This may sound a little intimidating, but it is simply about being proactive in cultivating a culture of gratitude by introducing methods for people to give thanks. Over time, this will translate into normalising gratitude in the workplace to help everyone appreciate and feel appreciated in the office.
By staging a gratitude intervention, you could:
- Foster healthy interpersonal relationships
- Strengthen motivation to be social
- Build feelings of support
- Enhance self-control
The intervention doesn’t need to be severe – there are things you can introduce subtly that will not intrude on your employee’s daily activities. Let’s look at what it takes to cultivate gratitude at work.
Simple ways to demonstrate gratitude at work
1. Peer-to-peer gratitude
Making people feel appreciated at work can feel a little awkward when it is a new initiative. A good place to start is your leadership team because when employees see top management offering their gratitude, it can make them feel safer to do the same themselves.
That said, you must not limit your team to top-down gratitude. There are many important contributions made every day, and bottom-up gratitude is a great culture to build. Find ways to encourage peer-to-peer gratitude.
2. Sincerity
A ‘thank you’ only works when it is sincere. Anyone can decipher artificial gratitude from the real thing, so avoid giving out compliments in order to tee up more difficult feedback. Similarly, don’t only use your gratitude to cheer someone up in the wake of a tough meeting. Constant, insincere thanks could lead to gratitude fatigue, so only give it out when it feels sincere.
3. Consider different ways to show gratitude
Your employees are all individuals, and they will each have their own preferences when it comes to how they give and receive thanks. When introducing this gratitude culture, it’s wise to offer various ways people can say thanks, such as:
- A special channel in Teams or Slack: Chat tools provide the opportunity to create a channel dedicated to enabling people to express gratitude to one another. These visible acts of gratitude can open the flood gates for consistent thank yous, helping people find more and more things to be grateful for.
- An office gratitude journal: Some people have personal gratitude journals on their bedside table, and the principle can be applied to office gratitude. Supply notebooks for employees to write in and encourage them to write 5 things they are grateful for in the office each week.
4. Gifts
Gifts can be a great way to express gratitude, both in our personal lives and in the office. They can really make the person on the receiving end feel appreciated. Digital or physical gift cards can be a great way to do this, and there are organisations that offer structured employee reward schemes that include them.
5. Encourage gratitude even when things go wrong
Giving gratitude when everything is well will come quite naturally, but it is more difficult when a challenge arises. You can treat it as an opportunity to turn an obstacle into an asset by reframing errors as potential benefits.
Do this by bringing employees together to discuss what has happened and identify areas for improvements alongside areas of success. Where weaknesses are identified, take the opportunity to discuss how things could have been done differently. The positives could include:
- The lessons learnt from the mistakes
- Identification of opportunities to work smarter and more efficiently
- How facing the challenge has helped individuals grow
6. Fair compensation
The giving and receiving of thanks at work should be a daily occurrence. Employees also need to feel valued by receiving fair compensation for the work they do. We are all human beings and we need effective incentives to work hard and do our best.
Fair compensation is one of the most powerful ways a business can demonstrate its appreciation of the contribution employees make to the mission. You can enhance this with staff rewards and corporate incentives as a component of the wider puzzle of employee satisfaction and productivity.
7. Recognition tools
For an ‘outside the box’ idea, you could use a recognition tool to make it fun and easy for coworkers to thank one another. The idea is simple: teams are given a monthly allowance for users to provide bonuses for other members of the team.
These bonuses can be handed out in real-time and on a public platform to enable everyone to join in the occasion. It’s a great way for everyone to celebrate together and acknowledge the great work their teammates are doing.
Gratitude at work: the bottom line
A little gratitude can go a long way for a business. It can improve the engagement of employees, make them more satisfied with their job, and even improve staff retention. If gratitude is in short supply in your organisation, it may be time to move it to the forefront of your to-do list.
Take the time to identify ways to make giving thanks feel authentic and helpful in improving the workplace culture. Encourage other leaders to join in and let that filter down to their teams whilst providing ways for them to be thankful to one another. It won’t be long before you start to see measurable differences in workplace morale.
At iGo, find out how we have organised reward programs for businesses to help increase employee satisfaction and engagement, both inside and outside of the company.