3 façons dont la reconnaissance des employés renforce la résilience et soutient la santé mentale

In difficult times, whether it’s company layoffs, economic uncertainty, or stressful workplace situations, employee wellbeing can suffer.

Our research finds ⅓ of employees are merely surviving at work. Other research finds employees could only perform at 71% of their full capacity due to mental health challenges.

How can organizations strengthen employee mental health and help their people build the nimble resilience required to navigate challenging situations? By creating a culture of care with recognition.

The impact of recognition on mental health and building resilience

Recognition is an easy way to help alleviate employee mental health struggles and build nimble resilience. Nimble resilience goes beyond “pushing through” or “grinning and bearing it.” It means a shift from viewing change and challenges as setbacks or crises to overcome, to seeing them as opportunities to innovate, evolve, and improve.

It means organizations must have a workplace culture filled with purpose, opportunity, appreciation, and strong leadership so the odds of anxiety, burnout, and depression decrease.

Recognition helps organizations and teams do both of these in 3 ways:

1. Giving and receiving recognition bolsters mental health

Just as gratitude journaling can improve mental health in a clinical setting, giving recognition can help with anxiety and depression at work. Employees who gave recognition in the past 30 days report significant decreases in the odds of burnout (57%), probable diagnosis of anxiety (24%), and probable diagnosis of depression (28%).

When organizations have a robust employee recognition program, like Culture Cloud®, with a variety of tools employees can use to thank one another, gratitude can become a tangible part of your workplace culture—helping to ease mental health struggles for everyone.

In fact, research shows that organizations with integrated recognition can see absenteeism cost savings of over $8,000 annually for employees with probable depression. This translates into similar savings in presenteeism, workplace accidents, and formal complaints.

“On average, we spend 90,000 hours of our lifetimes at work. We cannot underestimate the positive impact we can have when we align our workplace policies and practices with people’s psychological health.”
—Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, CEO, American Psychological Association

2. Recognition highlights and reinforces nimble resilience practices

When employees are recognized for practicing nimble resilient behaviors (adaptability, proactivity, and perseverance), it calls out those behaviors and reinforces their importance.

Giving meaningful recognition to employees when they collaborate, adopt new ways of thinking, innovate, or persevere through challenges by finding new ways of doing things shows others what nimble resilience looks like and helps make those practices a part of your culture.

When employees are recognized for being nimbly resilient, and see others recognized for being nimbly resilient, they are more likely to be engaged, do great work, and want to stay.

3. Recognition demonstrates the company cares about employees

In the modern workplace, employees want to know their organization cares about them as people and not just as a mode of production. 

When employees were asked to rate the elements of Total Rewards offerings that enable them to thrive at work, they ranked recognition and development as the most important. Why? Because recognition communicates that employees are a crucial part of your organization and its success. It shows employees they are seen and valued as people. Recognition communicates care.

In fact, when recognition is an integrated part of the workplace, outcomes soar.

5 recognition best practices to promote wellbeing

1. Recognize holistically 

Recognize employees for a variety of reasons in a variety of ways. Integrate recognition into your employees’ flow of work and every aspect of their experience to infuse recognition and gratitude into your workplace culture.

Ideally, employees should be recognized every other week. Recognize team members:

• During onboarding
• For extra effort and above-and-beyond work
• When they achieve team goals
• To celebrate company milestones and achievements
• To mark career anniversaries

Doing so will provide ample opportunities to recognize nimble resilience behaviors and surround employees with the positive impact of recognition on a regular basis.

See how Navy Federal Credit Union builds recognition into all aspects of the employee experience.

2. Recognize life events

To truly build a sense of care, recognize employees for more than just their work. Celebrate their personal life events that might occur outside of work as well: new babies, new homes, running a marathon, learning a new skill, or a major accomplishment in their life. Recognizing the important events that happen outside of work shows the company cares about employees and their mental health.

Southwest Airlines’ recognition platform reflects their culture of heartfelt care by recognizing employee life events.

3. Focus on expressing genuine gratitude 

Recognition is only effective when it’s genuine. Get to know employees and how they want to be recognized. Create a meaningful recognition moment with their teams and peers. Invite others to add their comments. Doing so will create an unforgettable experience that feels sincere.

Treasury Wine Estates' recognition solutions reinforce their cultural vision of genuine care.

4. Be specific when giving recognition

Nearly three-fourths (70%) of employees say recognition is most meaningful to them when it’s personalized. When giving recognition, outline the specific ways the employee has contributed and made a difference. No general statements of “thank you for everything you do” here. Link recognition to your company values to connect employees to something bigger.

Onity’s recognition categories highlight specific achievements to ensure consistent, meaningful recognition.

5. Combine recognition with other wellbeing initiatives

Encourage and reward healthy habits at the same time. Create connected wellbeing solutions with integrations like Culture Cloud and Personify Health, and show employees you care about their entire wellbeing—physical, mental, and social.

CIBC directly links their wellbeing initiatives with their recognition platform to ensure all employees feel cared for and appreciated.

Watch our webinar with Personify Health and CIBC for more ways to create a workplace culture that supports mental health and wellbeing.