Career Executive

To express one’s satisfaction, to thank or praise, is not necessarily a natural aptitude among managers. Yet recognition and the subtle mix of material and emotional compensation, has a real effect on productivity and employee motivation.

The wandering management consultant or career executive in Switzerland will often overhear things like ‘impossible to work under these conditions! I have status, high salary, and social advantages but the sense of my work not being recognized is just unbearable !’ Thus do companies lose many of their best people, who end up leaving in search of jobs that carry a greater level of recognition.

Managers shoud not overlook the need among staff for recognition. According to a survey conducted by TNS Sofres, the lack of recognition figures among the most tenacious workplace problems, cited by more than 45% of respondents. Swiss managers and executive staff should take note.

In his book, ‘La Stress au travail,’ psychiatrist Patrick Légeron looks at why and how companies are reluctant to express their satisfaction or gratitude toward staff. The answer lies, according to the author, in our ‘negative culture.’ He argues that our culture tends to focus on errors to be corrected and rarely on what has been done well. Légeron claims that the current system perversely is one in which managerial and customer relations are based on the complaint.

Recognition, praise and congratulation have strong beneficial physiological effects and augment productivity, whereas when employees achievements are not recognized, unproductive stress mounts. Légeron writes that human beings nourish themselves from social recognition – the need to be valued, recognized by one’s colleagues is visceral and basic. Because of this, the absence of recognition and social reinforcement of workers be their management is a major source of unproductive stress.

What, then, is the proper mix of recognition that managers should employ to optimize productivity? A subtle alchemy of material and emotional elements –from the simple handshake to salary increases, with liberal use of verbal or written thanks, confidence visibly accorded in meetings or conferences – in summary: multiple signs which indicated that the person is appreciated for his work.

Experienced management consultants are quick to note that there is an important difference between recognition and compensation. The first is social and the second is financial. Both are important but only the first allows the employee to know and feel and what others think of his work. And that is what gives most people the sense of purpose in their work. Academic studies have long debated the issue of the relationship between recognition and compensation to productivity.

According to one Swiss management consultancy, effective compliments should respond to 5 criteria:
1) they should be sincere – insincere compliments are perceived as a manipulation and destroy trust
2) they should be based on concrete facts – avoid phrases such as ‘I heard that…’
3) they should be based on recent facts – there is nothing worse than recognition in December for work well done last February
4) be disinterested – the compliment should not be linked to anything
5) the compliment should correspond to the perception of work well done by the person to whom it is directed