Does Recognition Really Affect Motivation? Get the Real Numbers!

Recognition is a powerful motivator. Coaches, teachers, and parents have used the recognition of achievements to encourage specific behaviors. Rewarding desirable behaviors ensures future achievements and accomplishments.

There’s real psychology behind this type of thinking. You’ve probably heard the term for it, positive reinforcement. It’s the process of changing behaviors to achieve a positive result.

Business leaders may not realize the importance of recognition and its motivational impact on employees. Celebrating success and positively reinforcing achievements offer organizations and teams a lot of benefits.

Recognizing employees’ accomplishments, whether actions or words, has a huge impact on employees.

How does recognition influence employee motivation? There’s a simple answer. When hard work, successes, and achievements are celebrated, it communicates that the employee’s work is valued and makes an impact. Recognition boosts team morale, builds trust, and increases employee retention and loyalty, while improving performance.

Let’s look at ways recognition impacts employee motivation and how to use recognition as a motivational tool.

Role of Motivation in the Work Environment

Employee motivation is crucial when it comes to performance and achieving goals. When employees are motivated, they are more engaged, committed, and productive. Feeling appreciated helps improve job satisfaction and tends to be more loyal.

Generally, employees who are motivated are more likely to take on new challenges and learn new skills. They are usually willing to take reasonable risks and do better work overall, from customer service to innovation. Motivation helps employees develop commitment and a positive attitude about their jobs, and tends to add to a more positive workplace for other team members.

How does recognition affect employee motivation?

There are some real numbers behind the positive effects of employee motivation. Researchers indicate that almost 70% of employees surveyed said they would work harder if their work was recognized by superiors.

Another survey indicated that 80% of employees reported being more productive and motivated when their work is rewarded and recognized.

Recognition helps employees see how their work has an impact. It helps them draw a connection between their daily job duties and the organization’s vision, mission, and goals. They understand that they are a part of their organization’s long-term success.

Employee recognition helps employees understand how they contribute to company success. This creates a ripple effect and encourages employees to celebrate others’ contributions and successes. It’s understood that success breeds success, and failure breeds failure. But if successes in organizations are not celebrated, it’s the same as encouraging failure. If you want to build on successes, create more success. You’ll want to recognize and enjoy successes that are achieved before moving on to the next thing.

Tips for Boosting Motivation with Recognition

Organizations have many ways to recognize their top employees. It’s a unique part of each one’s culture and environment. Some ways to recognize employees include:

• Raises
• Extra PTO
• Performance-based bonuses
• Non-monetary acknowledgments like awards

Most people are motivated by incentives. It’s important to know what incentives are best for each employee. Let’s look at a few tips on how to use motivation to boost employee motivation.

Be Genuine

When providing employee feedback, it’s important to be authentic. It’s the same with employee recognition. You’ll want to find aspects of an employee’s performance that you feel deserves recognition. It can be anything job-related, from top sales to remaining calm under pressure. An authentic compliment will be felt more deeply by employees. Being genuine is more effective at motivating employees to perform at higher levels. When true authenticity is lacking, it can have the opposite effect and potentially lead to a toxic work environment.

Be Specific

There are numerous ways to offer recognition, but it’s helpful to focus it on a specific behavior or action. It’s more effective than making generalizations like “great job.” You want to find specific aspects of employee performance to recognize.

Some ideas for specific recognition include:

• Client Relations
• Project Management
• Problem-Solving

Recognition should focus on an employee’s area of expertise. This means you want to become familiar with the skills each one brings to their team. When you provide specific details, it shows your employees you are paying attention and you value the work they do. You can boost both motivation and their confidence, which encourages them to continue to apply their skills in other aspects of work.

Single Out Efforts

When an employee achieves something big for your organization, it gives you an opportunity to recognize them. Choose moments that are big and worth praise to make it effective. For example, be specific about a presentation, a deal, meeting a client’s needs, or other individual contributions that help bring about the results.

Big results don’t just happen. They are the result of several smaller efforts and baby steps leading the way. Recognize efforts, whether they were accomplished by one employee or a team. This communicates that you understand the importance of the contributions they made to overall success.

Recognize Employee Impact on Each Other and Organization

Another way to recognize employees is to express how their work impacted the team, you, or the organization. Recognizing seemingly small things like when an employee covers for a co-worker who had a family emergency or who goes above and beyond to meet a client’s deadline. These types of actions can have a huge impact on co-worker well-being and affect the company’s reputation and bottom line.

Nothing is too small as long as it has an impact on the whole. For instance, reward employees who consistently models the core values of the company. Acknowledge employee actions that have a positive impact.

Encourage Employees to Recognize One Another’s Accomplishments

Gallup research shows a clear link between recognition from a company’s top leadership and improved loyalty and performance. When employees recognize co-workers, it helps reinforce the overall strategy of the organization. It inspires commitment and helps employees to feel better about their work.

When team members recognize each other’s contributions, it helps build trust between team members. This helps create a pleasant, unified work environment, improves collaboration, reinforces core values, and maintains cultural alignment.

Partner with Suburban Custom Awards to Recognize Employee Efforts

Let Suburban Custom Awards put our decades of experience and expertise to work for you. We carry a wide variety of recognition awards, including trophies and plaques. You can trust us to help you award and recognize top employees who continue to contribute to the success of your organization.