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As a business leader, creating a culture of appreciation at work can make the work environment positive and motivating for your employees. When your people are appreciated and valued, they will feel happy and safe, which will help reinforce a positive sense of self-worth. Consequently, they will do their best to work optimally.
Building a culture of employee appreciation isn’t an overnight job. You need to work at it continuously. With planned ongoing efforts, you can start putting the building blocks in and then work to maintain the culture thus created where your employees feel seen, valued, and excited about working for your company.
Here are seven ways to build an appreciation-based culture at work.
1. Leading by Example to Foster a Culture of Appreciation
As a leader, it’s your responsibility to walk the talk. Make sure to openly and regularly recognise the work of your employees and even their efforts. Appreciation shouldn’t just be tied to the results delivered.
Even when a task is given all the efforts possible but doesn’t bring the desired results, appreciating the effort and showing gratitude can go a long way in setting the standard for your team. Together, these seemingly small but vital steps will help foster a culture of appreciation.
2. Celebrating Every Small and Big Win
Acknowledging and celebrating both the small and big wins regularly can help keep your employees’ morale and motivation high. To build an appreciation culture, celebrating big wins is essential. But acknowledging those small victories is as crucial as commemorating those big wins.
From something as simple as a few words of praise or a pat on the back to recognising a team member in front of everyone, you should ensure these little and big celebrations are inclusive and neutral. Doing this the right way can boost your employees’ job satisfaction in the long run and bring down the chances of turnover.
3. Starting an Employee Recognition Program
By starting an employee recognition program, you can let supervisors, managers, and coworkers recognise the contributions of employees easily. Such a program could be performance-based incentives, peer-to-peer recognition, or “Employee of the Month” awards.
You could either use employee recognition software to manage such programs or have forms for employees to nominate someone where all nominees are recognised at month-end with certificates, a public shoutout, a private note, or rewards like a gift card or free lunch.
4. Celebrating Milestones
Since milestones are a vital element of an employee’s professional life, celebrating them gives your employees a sense of purpose and makes them feel appreciated enough to visualise a future with your company. Be it completing specific years of service for your company or successfully finishing a difficult client project, milestones can be varied.
There are different ways to celebrate milestones at work, from celebrations tailored to an individual employee’s interests and preferences to public recognition, team celebration, an expression of sincere gratitude by the management, or other forms of recognition like paid time-off or vacation, bonus, or special experiences (say, sponsoring employees to attend a workshop or bootcamp).
5. Enabling Peer-to-Peer Recognition
Appreciation at work doesn’t necessarily need to be top-down recognition. Peer-to-peer recognition can work wonders by getting the employees engaged and giving them the power to appreciate each other.
Being recognised by your immediate coworkers can create a more positive, empathetic, and collaborative work environment. From strengthening connections among teammates and empowering them to appreciate their peers to reducing conflict in the company noticeably and making employees feel more confident and appreciated, peer-to-peer recognition can do them all.
6. Introducing Employee Wellness Programs
Taking an interest in your employees’ health is crucial to helping them maintain work-life balance. With the introduction of employee wellness programs, which encourage and support both physical and mental well-being of employees through various methods like mindfulness sessions, fitness classes, guided meditation, and access to useful resources, you can show that you care.
As a business leader, you could even remind your employees periodically to use their paid time off to prioritise self-care. The idea is to show your concern for your employees’ overall health and promote a supportive workplace culture. It’s important to drive home the point that your company cares about its people’s health and not just its bottom line.
7. Seeking and Acting on Feedback
This is yet another effective way when you need answers to “How to build a culture of appreciation at work?” Building a culture of appreciation isn’t just about rewarding or recognising employees. It’s equally about taking note of the employees’ needs and pain points, seeking their feedback, and acting on it.
The key lies in empowering your employees and giving them an equal voice. You could organise Q&A sessions or distribute survey forms (or even use online surveys) to get employee feedback on various work-related things. This will let you know what works (positive feedback) and what needs to be changed or fixed (negative feedback).
Final Words
By building a culture of appreciation at work, you can attract talent looking for a collaborative and fulfilling work environment, boost productivity, and decrease turnover rates. You can use the seven ways above to create a workplace where appreciation and positivity are ingrained in the company’s culture.
If you need help finding the right people who can accelerate your efforts of building a culture of appreciation at work, reach us at InHunt World today!
This article was written by Sonali