Staff recognition and why it means so much

5 quick ways to increase staff recognition

1. Encourage everyone to ask for feedback – in our busy lives, we often overlook this simple task. When a project has finished it can be really valuable to ask the stakeholders for feedback. The trick here is not to fish for compliments! Instead of asking “did I do a good job” ask “did that project go as expected”?
2. Encourage others to show recognition – showing simple signs of recognition is habit. A gentle nudge to a colleague after witnessing one of their peers helping them will help recognition become an engrained habit amongst everyone, not just yourself.
3. Ensure 1:1s take place – regular meetings with line managers are the perfect opportunity to review performance but they often get pushed aside by other priorities.
4. Just say thank you – recognition doesn’t need to be planned. If someone does something that helps you, just say ‘thank you’ or leave them a thank you note. It’s a small act that can go a long way.
5. Start team meetings with recognition – rather than diving straight into a meeting, if someone has done something noteworthy, mention it at the beginning of that meeting.

Give yourself a pat on the back

As an internal communicator, most of your work is to inform and help people. But do you, and your team, have the recognition you deserve?

Unfortunately, the communications team is often reliant on person-to-person feedback to gauge how well the department is performing. This is a unique position to be in. Every other department you think of has some sort of statistical measurement to keep tabs on how well they are doing. HR can be measured by staff turnover, estates can be measured by the number of maintenance jobs carried out and finance can be measured by how well the books are balanced!

In every scenario, there are numbers, and those numbers can be equated to performance. For many NHS communication teams, those numbers just aren’t there.

If you use internal communication software such as Trusted Delivery you are an exception to this rule. When our customers send emails, they see detailed analytics on the performance of every email they send. These staff engagement figures are a direct representation of the performance of the communications team.

But if you are reliant on Outlook, or another non-analytical platform, to share messages, take a moment to appreciate what you and your team achieve. You are the team that keep staff informed. You connect people with the information and people they need to work, and live, better. That really does deserve a pat on the back.