For many companies, return on investment is the most elusive component of their effort to improve workplace culture and increase overall employee motivation. Some are uncertain what to measure, others simply don’t bother to put in the effort. Sooner or later, however, (and it’s usually when the economy takes a dip and management begins looking for places to make cuts), ROI is what saves programs from the chopping block.
Globoforce, a leading provider of social recognition solutions in the workplace, surveyed 828 full-time U.S. employees in attempt to find the answers to three main questions:
• What makes a workplace more human?
• What is the impact of a more human workplace on worker and company well-being?
• How can leaders create a more human workplace?
The resulting report, “The ROI of Recognition in Building a More Human Workplace,” was published this year. In a business environment where we frequently read about rampant disengagement, more than 9 in 10 employees (91 percent) responding to the GloboForce survey stated they are happy at work. A whopping 96 percent of employees who feel their company cares about them
also state they are happy at work. The happy-at-work share drops to 79 percent among workers who feel their company doesn’t care about them.
Not surprisingly, the report states, recognition is one of the strongest influences on employees’ impressions of a human workplace. When employees were recognized within the last six months, they are more than twice as likely to believe leaders cared than those who had never been recognized (84 percent versus 40 percent).
“The findings in this report make it clear that recognition is the strongest foundation for building a human workplace focused on well-being and caring. When organizations focus on frequent, values-based recognition, they make a direct impact on engagement, positivity, motivation, and happiness,” the report concludes. “The result is a unified, human work culture that gives organizations the competitive edge to be successful in today’s evolving business climate.”
The full report and other research from Globoforce can be downloaded at globoforce.com under the resources tab.
