For a lucky few, a consistent paycheck is recognition enough for effort put in at the workplace. But for most of us, being otherwise recognized for our hard work is priceless. Having a boss or manager take a moment to thank a worker for their efforts is encouraging to the employee in question as well as to other employees who hope to be eventually called out in similar fashion. Some managerial teams prefer to operate with a little less effusive praise given, often for strategic reasons. We asked employees, “Are you typically recognized for the impact and accomplishments you make for your current company?”
The information comes from the latest reading of an ongoing survey by Comparably.
Male and female employees are aligned almost identically on the issue. Over half feel they are recognized for their work efforts, which of course means just under half feel unappreciated more often than not. One potential variable here, and a fact of work life, is that not every employee may be as worthy of enthusiastic recognition as they would like to be.
When responses are broken down by ethnicity, the result is that each grouping reports feeling more often recognized for their efforts than overall men and women as seen above. While speculating as to the reason for this outcome is a dicey proposition, it’s worth nothing that the “other” group – made up of those who chose not to identify with one ethnic group – felt slightly less recognized than those with declared ethnicity.
Employees from the executive and HR departments were most likely to say they felt recognized for their work accomplishments. We often see employees from those two departments as being the most supportive of company policy, and that would naturally extend to general recognition efforts as well. Feeling least “seen” are the trench-bound employees from IT, Customer Support, and Operations – groups that traditionally feel under-recognized for their consistent accomplishments.
Employees feel less recognized for their efforts as they age. Young employees report feeling appreciated most often, but those numbers drop with each successive age bracket. The reasons for this could be a number of things, from older workers expecting more praise for their deeper experience, to managers assuming more seasoned employees will need less encouragement, similar to the way we seem to praise young children more often than teenagers.
Very little difference is seen when responses are broken down by education level of respondent. In fact, those holding a master’s degree responded just slightly less positively to the question than those who had completed only high school.
As with age, we see that the longer an employee stays in the workplace, the less he or she will feel appropriately appreciated. Entry-level employees reported feeling encouraged and appreciated nearly 10% more often than those employees who had been with a company for a decade.
Latest reading as of November 8.
