What is a culture of recognition?

A workplace where acknowledging colleagues’ work is normal, frequent and unprompted, at every level. The test is what happens without the program: if recognition would continue, the culture exists; if it would stop, it does not yet.

How do you build a culture of recognition?

Lower the cost of giving recognition until it takes seconds, make it visible so people learn what it looks like, have senior people do it in public every week, and measure reach so you notice who is being missed. Then keep doing it for longer than feels necessary.

How do you know if your company has a culture of recognition?

Ask a new starter after a month whether anyone has thanked them for something specific, and ask a long-serving quiet employee the same. If both say yes, you have one. Surveys about whether people feel valued measure the same thing more slowly.

Recognition glossary

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.

You have a culture of recognition when you could switch the program off and nothing would change. Almost nobody is there, and it is still the right target.

The test

A culture is what people do when nobody has arranged for them to. A company can have a recognition program, a platform, its own budget line and a slide in the onboarding deck, and still not have a culture of recognition, because all of it depends on the arrangement. Remove the program and the behaviour stops.

Where the culture exists, the program is scaffolding. People thank each other because that is what is done here, and a new starter learns it in the first week from watching, before anyone explains it. This is the most reliable sign: recognition reaching somebody who has not yet been told that it is encouraged.

What it consists of

Frequency, before anything else. A culture is made of habits, and a habit is something that happens weekly, not quarterly. Gallup’s figure that about one in three US employees strongly agree they received recognition in the last seven days is a measure of exactly this, and the frequency page goes into what the gap costs.

Specificity. A culture where “great work team” is the standard message has a culture of politeness, which is a different thing. The recognition has to name work, because that is how people learn what is valued.

Direction. Recognition that only flows down from managers is a management practice. Recognition that flows between peers, and occasionally upwards, is a culture. The thanking your manager messages exist because that upward flow is rare and worth encouraging.

Visible senior participation. Staff take their cue from what leaders do, and a leader who names two pieces of work in every update is teaching the whole company how to do it.

How it is built

Slowly, and by making the behaviour cheap and visible. The culture of gratitude post on this site covers the mechanics. In outline: put recognition where people already are, so that it costs seconds; make it public, so that people see examples; have senior people do it first and keep doing it; and watch reach, so that the quiet third of the company is not forgotten.

The timeline is longer than a launch plan. A behaviour becomes a culture when the people who started it have been joined by people who never knew it was started, and that takes a year or two of the behaviour continuing after the novelty has gone.

How it is lost

Faster than it is built. A leadership change, a round of layoffs or a quarter where every message from the top is about cost. Recognition is the first thing to go quiet when people are anxious, and the silence teaches its own lesson. The post on appreciation after layoffs is about precisely this moment, and why it is the one where recognition is hardest and matters most.

What it looks like

A new starter’s first week: three different colleagues thank her, in the channel, for specific things, before anyone has told her that recognition is encouraged here. That is the culture doing the onboarding.
In a company that talks about recognition constantly, an engineer goes four months without a single specific comment on his work from anyone. The values slide says one thing; his experience says another.
A senior leader begins every fortnightly update with two named examples of work from the previous fortnight, each described in a sentence, chosen from different teams each time.

Questions people ask

What is a culture of recognition?: A workplace where acknowledging colleagues’ work is normal, frequent and unprompted, at every level. The test is what happens without the program: if recognition would continue, the culture exists; if it would stop, it does not yet.
How do you build a culture of recognition?: Lower the cost of giving recognition until it takes seconds, make it visible so people learn what it looks like, have senior people do it in public every week, and measure reach so you notice who is being missed. Then keep doing it for longer than feels necessary.
How do you know if your company has a culture of recognition?: Ask a new starter after a month whether anyone has thanked them for something specific, and ask a long-serving quiet employee the same. If both say yes, you have one. Surveys about whether people feel valued measure the same thing more slowly.