Employee recognition glossary
The words recognition has picked up from HR, from vendors and from research, each defined in a sentence here and explained properly on its own page.
Appreciation versus recognition
Recognition acknowledges what somebody did; appreciation acknowledges who somebody is. The first is tied to a contribution and can be earned; the second is about a person’s value to the group and is owed regardless of output.
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Culture of recognition
A culture of recognition is a workplace in which noticing and acknowledging colleagues’ contributions is a normal, frequent, unprompted behaviour at every level, rather than something that happens through a scheme or on a schedule.
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Employee Appreciation Day
Employee Appreciation Day is an unofficial observance on the first Friday of March, created in 1995, on which employers are encouraged to thank their staff; it is widely marked in the United States and increasingly elsewhere.
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Employee of the month
Employee of the month is a recurring award in which one employee per month is singled out for exceptional performance, traditionally announced publicly and marked with a photograph, a certificate or a small prize.
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Employee recognition
Employee recognition is the act of acknowledging a specific contribution or behaviour at work, in a way the person can see, whether it comes from a manager, a colleague or the organisation as a whole.
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Formal recognition
Formal recognition is recognition delivered through a defined process, such as an award scheme, a service milestone or a nomination programme, with rules about who is eligible, who decides and what is given.
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Informal recognition
Informal recognition is acknowledgement given without a process behind it: a thank you in a channel, a word after a meeting or a note on somebody’s desk, sent when the giver noticed something rather than when a scheme required it.
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Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is the drive to do something because the activity itself is satisfying; extrinsic motivation is the drive to do it for a separate outcome such as pay, praise or avoiding a penalty. Recognition can feed either, depending on how it is given.
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Kudos
Kudos is informal praise or credit given for a specific achievement, and in workplace software the word has come to mean a short public message of thanks sent to a colleague, often through a dedicated channel or tool.
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Monetary recognition
Monetary recognition is recognition with a cash value attached, such as a bonus, a gift card or redeemable points, given in response to a specific contribution rather than as part of salary.
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Non-cash incentives
Non-cash incentives are rewards for performance or contribution that have no direct monetary form, such as time off, experiences, development opportunities, symbolic gifts or public acknowledgement, used in place of or alongside cash bonuses.
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Non-monetary recognition
Non-monetary recognition is acknowledgement of work that carries no cash value: public thanks, a handwritten note, time off, a more interesting assignment, or a symbolic reward such as a tree planted in the recipient’s name.
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Participation rate
Participation rate is the percentage of eligible employees who gave at least one recognition within a set period, usually a month, and is the standard measure of whether a recognition program is being used across the organisation rather than by a few.
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Peer-to-peer recognition
Peer-to-peer recognition is recognition given by a colleague rather than a manager, usually in public and usually for something the manager was not in the room to see.
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Points-based recognition
Points-based recognition is a program design in which each act of recognition carries a number of points that the recipient accumulates and later redeems for goods, gift cards or experiences from a catalogue.
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Public versus private recognition
Public recognition is delivered where colleagues can see it, such as a channel or a meeting; private recognition is delivered to the recipient alone. Each has effects the other lacks, and the right choice depends on the person and the message.
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Recognition bias
Recognition bias is the systematic tendency for recognition to go disproportionately to certain people, such as those who are more visible, closer to the manager, in customer-facing roles or from majority groups, regardless of the distribution of good work.
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Recognition budget
A recognition budget is the amount an organisation allocates each year to recognising employees, covering rewards, any platform or tooling, awards and events, and typically expressed as a figure per employee or as a share of payroll.
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Recognition fatigue
Recognition fatigue is the point at which recognition has become so frequent, generic or ritualised that recipients and observers stop registering it, and each new acknowledgement carries no information and produces no response.
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Recognition frequency
Recognition frequency is how often an individual employee receives recognition, measured in the interval between acknowledgements, and it is the variable most strongly associated with whether recognition changes anything.
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Recognition platform
A recognition platform is software that lets employees give, receive and view recognition, typically inside a chat tool or intranet, and that records the activity so the organisation can see who is being recognised and how often.
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Recognition program
A recognition program is a deliberate, organisation-wide structure for recognising employees, defining who can recognise whom, for what, through which channels, with what rewards, and how the results are measured.
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Recognition reach
Recognition reach is the percentage of employees who received at least one recognition within a set period, usually a month, and it measures how widely recognition is distributed rather than how much of it there is.
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Service award
A service award is recognition given at a fixed tenure milestone, such as one, five or ten years with an employer, traditionally in the form of a gift, certificate or ceremony marking the length of service itself.
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Shoutout
A shoutout is a brief public acknowledgement of a colleague, usually posted in a team channel or said aloud in a meeting, that names the person and something specific they did.
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Social recognition
Social recognition is recognition delivered in a shared space, such as a team channel or a company feed, so that colleagues beyond the giver and the recipient can see it and react.
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Spot award
A spot award is a one-off reward, usually cash or a gift card, given by a manager soon after a specific and unusual contribution, outside any scheduled bonus or review cycle.
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Top-down recognition
Top-down recognition is recognition given by somebody with authority over the recipient, typically a line manager or senior leader, and it carries weight because it comes from the person who sets expectations.
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Total rewards
Total rewards is the complete set of things an employer provides in return for work, encompassing pay, benefits, wellbeing, development, and recognition, treated as one package rather than as unrelated line items.
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Values-based recognition
Values-based recognition is recognition that explicitly connects a colleague’s action to one of the organisation’s stated values, so that each acknowledgement also says which principle the behaviour was an example of.
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Looking for the practice rather than the vocabulary?
Employee recognition: the complete guide
What recognition is, why it works, the types, how to build a program, what to say and how to measure it.
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Recognition messages for every occasion
Example messages you can send, grouped by occasion, each with a note on why it works.
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