How To Create a People-First Culture Through Recognition

Employee recognition is a company-wide approach that aims to recognize employees in order to help them feel more connected and motivated. It can reduce turnover, increase engagement, and improve productivity. Companies that employ this strategy see an average productivity increase of $1,737 per employee. Real-life examples of employee-first culture include Baystate Health, where employees produced 15,000 moments of recognition and 66% of the company’s 12,000 team members received the well-deserved praise they so desperately needed. The nurses who received this praise were, in many cases, over seven times less likely to leave.

Baystate Health has put their full attention on a people-first strategy, and the results have been extraordinary. To create a people-first culture, it is important to establish organization-wide alignment in business processes, teach leaders and senior executives about the importance of recognition, and develop employee feedback opportunities. Company-wide surveys are a good starting point, but they may not provide actionable solutions. Engaging with employees in meaningful ways and understanding their perspectives can help direct energy towards solutions employees actually care about. The most important details in this text are the importance of recognizing contributions from both peers and leaders, giving leaders strategies for establishing trust and empathy, encouraging active employee engagement through real-time feedback, and embracing employees first to create a positive workplace culture.

Recognition is the cornerstone of an employee-first strategy, and it helps connect employees to one another and to leadership, reminding them that the work they do matters. Incentives that go along with the recognition system are a great way to motivate people to engage with one another, and a servant leadership approach is a great way to learn how supporting employees can actually look.