This week’s Thanksgiving holiday is a good reminder that practicing gratitude at work is well worth the effort. For the person sharing thanks, there are documented benefits for mental and physical health, and leaders who regularly express gratitude reap the rewards of increased psychological safety, engagement, and retention across their teams.
We gathered our favorite tips for showing recognition, appreciation, and gratitude from the past year of Charter coverage. Here are eight tactics to try:
Put out gratitude jars. At software company HubSpot, employees create gratitude jars at the beginning of each year. In the following months, workers write messages of appreciation and place them into the jar for the colleague they’re addressed to. Throughout the year, employees can reach into the jar for a delayed pick-me-up.
Track and recognize team members’ specific contributions throughout a project. The best messages of gratitude—like all good feedback—are timely, specific, and actionable. To help collaborators feel appreciated in the flow of work, make sure you track team members’ contributions throughout the course of a project. During project updates, set aside time to express your gratitude to collaborators by thanking them for specific ways they impacted the final product.
Use gratitude to fight micro-managing impulses. For leaders, highlighting successes that happened without their involvement can reinforce the importance of delegating to and empowering team members. Next time you feel yourself diving into the weeds of a project, remind yourself of the progress made without you. Do it in a public channel, like a weekly team meeting, or in your own private reflections with a coach or in a journal.
Express “bragitude.” Next time you share a win of your own, use it to highlight a colleague’s contribution to that success, recommends inclusion expert Ruchika T. Malhotra in her recent book, Uncompete. (This practice is also called “dual promotion” by organizational psychologists. Research shows that it helps increase the status of the person sharing others’ contributions.)
Write a letter to your employees’ family, a practice former CEO Indra Nooyi shared in her memoir, My Life in Full. Throughout her career, she wrote letters thanking her employees’ parents and spouses for their role in her colleagues’ success. Charter’s co-founders recently took a page out of Nooyi’s book, writing letters to every employee’s parents on Employee Appreciation Day.
Add a gratitude agenda item to your next team meeting. Kick off a meeting by asking all attendees to share something that they’re grateful for about the person to their left, going around the circle until everyone has given (and received) gratitude. Or add a check-out question that asks all team members to write a message to a colleague who helped them do their best work in the past year. Then, share them all in the meeting’s chat at the same time for a flood of gratitude.
Show employees recognition by giving them a chance to pay it forward. As part of PwC’s milestone rewards program, the company gives employees who reach certain work anniversaries the chance to select experiences or grants from a rewards marketplace. Options include cash grants, well-being experiences, and time off, but also what PwC calls “purpose experiences,” or curated opportunities to participate in community service. Employees have used purpose experience rewards to plan and launch a leadership program at a local high school or travel abroad and volunteer with an NGO.
Applaud employees on their way out. When workers leave their jobs at advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy, they get a standing ovation the last time they leave the office in recognition of all their growth and success while at the company. Exceptions are very rare, and CEO Neal Arthur told Charter the company has maintained the practice even when staff turnover is elevated or there have been significant layoffs. If former employees “boomerang” back to work at the agency again, they get clapped into the office upon their return.
Have a favorite gratitude practice? Share it with us by replying to this email. And happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones! We’re grateful for your support and readership.