Culture of Recognition in the Workplace

What is a culture of recognition? How do you know whether to recognize a behavior? A first step is to think about whether you’d like your employees to replicate that behavior or not.

I was in a job recently where everyone got aligned to this culture of recognition, then management created an artificial scarcity of recognition where if you didn't do what they wanted, you didn't get your public individual recognition. It was used as a tool to control people.

— Peter K (@pskim_) December 22, 2020

In this article about creating a culture of recognition on your team, Olivia Jepson highlights three ways to get the ball rolling:

Create opportunities for your team to share their own work: Empower your team to communicate the work they do to leadership and larger groups on a regular basis.

Share recognition beyond small groups: Use larger Slack channels and meetings to share how one of your team members goes above and beyond every day or how they had a large impact on a specific project or campaign. Talk about your team members who have made an impact, even when they aren’t in the room.

Learn how your team likes to be recognized.