Do You See Me? Recognition In The Remote Age.

Humans are social creatures, bound by social interactions and motivated by community. We are also creatures of habit. Unconsciously, our brains seek patterns in seemingly wild data sets and we seek continuity. 

Evolved traits of herd and community safety and understanding in the modern world are much harder to see - what with the digital world supplanting the analogue throughout the pandemic - but at the core of who we are and how we live is our cooperation and interconnectivity.

Central to this within our working lives is recognition and appreciation of the labour we give and the work we do.

Looking at recognition from the perspective of your workplace culture, rather than celebrating or recognizing only isolated events, goes a long way to fixing what can be a rather bland affair of employee appreciation and morale building.

In the era of remote work, your job as a team leader, manager or business leader has got a whole lot harder - if you are now dealing with remote or hybrid remote-inhouse teams, you’ve had a year of screen-based people management and that has put huge strain on communication systems worldwide.

Think of who takes the lead in acknowledgement of success, feedback, appreciation and analysis? Is it generally one-on-ones, between manager and employee? Is this the best way to understand recognition in situ, in context and in teams?

For the managers

For managers worried about whether their role will diminish as a leader or authority, think of it this way - use Social Recognition tech to augment your HR and Internal Communications strategy. It’s easier to align your human resource, review, and diligence data sets and systems through and with a forum where everyone can witness fair reward for work completed. It reinforces the good in the work people are doing. Don’t overlook how effective that can be in keeping morale high, especially in disparate workforces.

Your place as a business leader or mentor will only gain further relevance and authority if you’re giving your team the chance to celebrate the wins as one. You can still keep your one-to-ones, in fact, we urge you to consistently provide facetime with your staff members especially around periods of review and appreciation. But involving your team has been proven to improve trust and productivity by huge margins, and being a visible and communicative manager only furthers this.