Does Recognition Help Employee Engagement

As I’ve mentioned, a couple of weeks ago I was in Paris for the launch of Christophe Laval’s new book “Plaidoyer pour la reconnaissance au travail,” which literally translates to, “A Plea For Recognition in the Workplace.”

During the launch, Christophe and I fielded questions from the audience of senior level HR professionals.

One of the questions was, “Does recognition help employee engagement?”

Both Christophe and I gave a resounding YES!

I've said this before, engagement is a two way street. Don’t expect to have employee engagement if you don’t have employer engagement!

I’d go even further by saying that engagement must first come from the company… after all it's the company that literally and figuratively “engages” new employees. We all know that though employees join a company, they quit their manager. In my opinion, all too often managers do not live up to the company’s promise of engagement.

Every time a manager gives recognition, they are actually engaging their employees. Recognition is probably the single most powerful employer engagement tool in existence, yet all too often it lies unused in a manager’s toolkit.

Make sure your managers use recognition to engage their employees because remember, they’re your employees too!