How Employee Recognition Supports High-Performing Teams

Pushing employees harder might result in high performance in the short term, but it inevitably leads to burn out. Healthy, sustainable high-performance cultures pair clear expectations with meaningful support, so team members feel connected, encouraged, and equipped to succeed.  

Employee recognition is one of the most visible ways organisations provide the kind of support that fuels high performance. When leaders and peers acknowledge specific contributions, they strengthen employees’ connection to the organisation and show people that their effort and impact matter.

What is a healthy high-performance culture?

According to research from the O.C. Tanner Institute, a healthy performance culture exists when organisations pair high expectations with equally high levels of support to complete the work.

Healthy performance cultures challenge employees to achieve meaningful goals while also giving them the resources, connections, and encouragement they need to succeed. They create the workplace conditions for high performance without the burnout, disengagement, and turnover that often accompany traditional performance-driven cultures.  

What does healthy performance look like in practice? It’s built on:

• Clear expectations and realistic goals
• Ongoing support from leaders
• Strong connections with coworkers
• Opportunities for growth and development
• Recognition that reinforces contributions and progress, not just the end goal
• A sense of belonging and community

Together, these elements help employees feel capable and motivated to contribute at a high level.

Dive into the research on healthy performance cultures from the O.C. Tanner Institute.

The role of employee recognition in healthy high-performance

Employee recognition is one of the clearest ways organisations can strengthen relationships between peers and leaders and reinforce the behaviours that move the organisation forward.

And when it comes to innovation and performance, the best recognition isn’t reserved for the finish line. It is given along the way to reward progress and encourage employees, especially when they face heightened demands or stumbling blocks.  

When recognition becomes an integrated part of everyday work, it creates the trust and motivation employees need to sustain high performance over time.  

Employees are 18x more likely to produce great work if they are recognised.
—O.C. Tanner Institute

Employee recognition drives the conditions for healthy performance in four distinct ways by:

• Creating connection
• Reinforcing expectations
• Increasing trust
• Sustaining motivation

Recognition makes performance culture actionable. Instead of relying solely on annual reviews, engagement surveys, or top-down messages about values, organisations can use recognition to reinforce the behaviours and moments that make healthy performance visible in everyday work.

Get our guide for leaders on how to give meaningful, timely recognition.

Recognition creates connection

High performance depends on people working well together.

As organisations become more dispersed, employees can struggle to see how their work connects to other teams and the organisation’s goals. Recognition helps close that gap by making contributions visible in the moment: who helped, what they did, why it mattered, and how it supported shared goals. Those details turn appreciation into a relationship-building practice that encourages collaboration, knowledge sharing, and mutual support.

In healthy performance cultures, employees don't just work alongside each other. They feel connected to each other.

Recognition reinforces expectations

Employees are more likely to repeat behaviours that are recognised and celebrated.

When leaders and peers recognise specific contributions, they show what success looks like in practice. A recognition moment can connect a behavi​our to a value, a goal, a customer outcome, or a team priority, helping employees understand which actions are worth repeating and why they matter.

This is especially important in healthy performance cultures. Employees need more than performance metrics and annual reviews. They need ongoing feedback that helps them understand how their daily actions contribute to larger business objectives. Recognition provides reinforcement in a positive and timely way.

Recognition increases trust

Trust is a foundational element of healthy performance.

Employees who trust their leaders, coworkers, and organisation are more willing to collaborate, share ideas, navigate challenges, and contribute discretionary effort. Recognition that is specific, timely, and genuine helps build that trust. It shows employees that their effort is noticed and their contributions matter beyond the final outcome.

Recognition sustains motivation

Short-term performance can be driven by pressure. Sustainable performance requires motivation.

Recognition helps employees maintain momentum by reinforcing progress, celebrating achievements, and showing how their efforts make a difference. This is particularly important during periods of change or increased demands. Recognition provides encouragement that helps employees stay resilient while maintaining both wellbeing and performance.  

Rather than exhausting employees in pursuit of results, healthy performance cultures use recognition to fuel energy, commitment, and long-term success.

How O.C. Tanner’s Culture Cloud helps create healthy performance cultures

Creating a healthy performance culture takes more than setting goals and measuring outcomes. Organisations also need a consistent way to recognise the behaviours, progress, and contributions that help employees perform well without burning out.

That's where Culture Cloud® comes in.

Culture Cloud helps organisations move recognition from a good intention to a consistent, measurable practice. Built on decades of workplace culture research, it embeds appreciation into the employee experience so leaders and peers can recognise great work in ways that are visible, meaningful, and scalable.

With Culture Cloud, organisations can:

• Recognise great work consistently
• Enable peer-to-peer recognition
• Equip leaders to reinforce desired behaviours
• Create meaningful recognition experiences
• Measure recognition adoption and impact
• Scale culture-building across large global workforces

This gives leaders a clearer view of where recognition is happening, where it may be missing, and how appreciation is supporting broader culture and performance goals.

Learn how top organisations use Culture Cloud to power healthy performance cultures.

Healthy performance cultures in action

CIBC, a leading North American financial institution, already had recognition embedded in its culture, but leaders wanted a more modern, purpose-aligned way to recognise employees and reinforce great work across the organisation.

Partnering with O.C. Tanner, CIBC created the MomentMakers programme through Culture Cloud. With better tracking and the ability to notify leaders when recognition is given, employees can more easily see their own progress and others’ contributions. That visibility helps reinforce what great work looks like, while giving leaders a more consistent way to support the behaviours that drive healthy performance.

After launching their recognition programme (powered by Culture Cloud) to 51,000 associates across 145 business units, Capital One created more opportunities for great work to be noticed and shared across the enterprise.

As recognition became more visible, employees connected appreciation with their own motivation to contribute. By helping associates see how individual effort supports broader organisational success, Capital One uses recognition to strengthen the connection, encouragement, and sustained effort healthy performance requires.

ICF, a global advisory and technology service provider, uses recognition to ensure its 9,000 employees feel supported. The company’s recognition platform, powered by Culture Cloud, combines frequent recognition with wellness resources to support employees.  

Recognition data integrated into ICF’s Workday HRIS help leaders draw the connection between expectations and achievements in performance reviews. It also allows ICF to celebrate team efforts in a way that ties back to the company’s core values.

The result? Significantly higher retention and both leaders and employees feel more supported and connected to insights that help them perform at higher levels.

Build healthier performance cultures with employee recognition

Recognition is not simply a reward for performance. It is a cultural practice that helps create the conditions for performance.

Healthy performance lasts when employees know what is expected of them and feel supported as they work toward it. Recognition helps make that support visible, specific, and ongoing, and this gives people the motivation to continue doing their best work.