How to Foster a Culture of Gratitude in the Workplace

Welcome to People Ops Problems with LeAnne Lagasse, a bi-weekly video series designed to help Business and People/Culture Leaders improve employee engagement, retention, and communication with their employees. Sign up now to get it in your inbox.

Expressing authentic gratitude is perhaps the easiest, most inexpensive, and most effective way to boost both employee engagement. 💡 

Watch the video above, or read the outline below, to learn 3 strategies for communicating gratitude in your workplace.

 👉🏻 How to Foster a Culture of Gratitude in Your Workplace

• A Strategy for Your Organization: Move From a Model of Episodic Gratitude to Continuous Gratitude

  • Ask yourself, 'What are the rhythms we could adopt in our organization to continually communicate gratitude?'
  • Consider adopting HR tech that can help you embed these rhythms in your organization and prompt you, your people managers, and all employees to express gratitude.
  • But remember that the specific tool you use isn't the most important thing. The communication it facilitates is the most important thing.

• Strategies for Your 1:1 Communication With Your Employees

  • Be concrete and specific. Saying, 'Thank you', or 'Great job' goes a little way. But specificity goes a long way in creating a culture of gratitude. It's the difference between saying, 'I appreciated your input in yesterday's meeting,' and saying, 'We wouldn't have come to the conclusions we did yesterday in our meeting without your critical thinking skills – your ability to synthesize information so quickly was exactly what we needed, and we're so grateful to have your voice on this team.'  
  • Individualize to each team member. Ask your team members, 'How would you prefer us to communicate our gratitude for you?' Then, do everything you can to communicate that gratitude in ways that align with their preferences, strengths, and personalities. 
  • Connect your messages of gratitude to something bigger. Try connecting it to their talent and strength, to the values or your organization, or to your organization's mission. In doing so, you are nurturing a culture of gratitude and moving from that episodic model to a continuous model.

     

Hey, thanks for being here and for watching/reading. My goal is to consistently create content that's engaging, applicable, and inspires you to continue learning and growing as a leader. If you have ideas for future content or any questions at all, please shoot me an email at: [email protected].