Beyond the stale cookie: How strategic employee recognition can transform workplace culture
Imagine dedicating 20 years of your career to an employer only to receive, as recognition, a framed photo from the owner’s vacation — a vacation you weren’t invited to join.
Or picture your company hitting a $10 billion revenue milestone and it marks the occasion by passing out cookies to the staff — stale cookies.
Those are not hypothetical scenarios but, rather, real-world examples of workforce recognition gone wrong and gone viral, highlighting a major challenge facing business leaders on this annual “Employee Appreciation Day.”
With just one-quarter of employees actively engaged in their work and trends like “revenge quitting” and “The Great Detachment” dominating the headlines, bosses certainly appear to be missing the mark on meaningful appreciation.
Just 1 in 5 managers and employees strongly believe their senior leadership values recognition. This, despite ample evidence that gratitude isn’t merely nice to have — it’s the fuel that drives engagement, purpose and retention.
“People know that recognition is important, but they’re not very intentional about it, and they don’t give it the effort and the time it deserves,” said Meisha-ann Martin, vp of people research at the employee recognition platform Workhuman. “We need to bring humanity back to the workplace.”
“As a purpose-driven company with a 40,000-person global workforce, we want our employees to feel valued, cared for and supported so they can be there for each other and our policyholders when they need us most,” said Jen Ughetta, chief people officer at the insurance company Liberty Mutual. There, the executive leadership team prioritizes visibility and connection, actively engaging with employees across the company through events, conversations and open feedback sessions, she notes.
Recognition programs fail or fly based on the foundation on which they’re built, suggests Eric Mochnacz, operations director at the HR consultancy Red Clover. Token gestures — chocolate bars with puns on the wrapper, sad bagels with orange juice, a pizza cut into sixteenths — mean even less, he says, in an environment defined by unfair pay, toxic management and systemic disrespect.
“Save your chocolate bar and recognize me by paying me fairly for the work I do and addressing the toxic behaviors which are directly impacting my employment,” he said.
Shezza Carter, vp of HR at cloud communications platform Alianza, whose 20-year career in talent management and acquisition also includes stints at Netflix and Skullcandy, thinks employees often don’t feel valued because their companies don’t know what matters most to them.
Leaders who genuinely want to fix the sorry state of employee appreciation should start by talking to their people, she advises. “Instead of guessing, actually listen and respond to what employees care about, whether that’s growth opportunities, recognition, flexibility or better pay,” she said. “A generic, one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. People feel valued when they get what’s meaningful to them, not just whatever’s easiest to hand out.”
At Liberty Mutual, this approach is already in place and yields solid results. Through its employee listening strategy, the company issues monthly surveys to capture the latest in employee sentiment, according to Ughetta. “Being heard and trusted by their people leader is one of our strongest ‘moments that matter’ for our employees,” she said.
However, the emphasis on employee input extends beyond surveys, she points out. Through employee focus groups, feedback is also sought across a range of topics — from benefits to technology — and team members are regularly called upon to help shape company initiatives.
The data supporting strategic recognition is compelling. Employees who strongly agree that recognition is central to their organization’s culture are more than four times as likely to feel their company cares about their overall well-being. Meanwhile, companies where people feel properly appreciated have a 45% lower turnover rate.
Those statistics support the idea that recognition can be a powerful lever for addressing a whole range of business challenges, from retention to engagement to overall workplace happiness.
As Martin sees it, effective recognition is defined by several factors, among them:
Authenticity. “Just sending a stupid token or saying, ‘Hey, you’re a great teammate’ or ‘Good job’ … it’s so much less than how good it could be,” she cautions. Instead, she advocates for specificity: What exactly are you thanking me for? Why are you thanking me for that? Why is that important?
Consistency. One-off recognition programs create more problems than they solve. Effective appreciation must be woven into the daily fabric of organizational life.
Equity. Recognition should reach all corners of the organization, not just the usual suspects or high-visibility roles.
Personalization. Cookie-cutter approaches (especially stale cookies) generally fail to resonate with team members.
Consistency. Recognition must be something everyone in the organization is doing on a regular basis and embedded in the culture.
Martin believes recognition addresses a universal human need while creating tangible business value — a rare double win in an increasingly complex work environment. Workhuman recently rolled out next-generation data and AI activations aimed squarely at bolstering business’ ROI.
“When we get recognition right, we’re not just building better workplaces — we’re building a more connected, more human world,” Martin said. “And in times like these, that might be the most valuable business outcome of all.”