This time of year brings Thanksgiving, a time to reflect on everything to be grateful for in family, work, and life in general. It also comes a few weeks after attending the “Art of Leadership” conference in Vancouver, where I really enjoyed Neil Pasricha, a thought leader on happiness. Neil provides in-depth research on the sources of happiness and five key practices to increase it through meditation, journaling, exercise (in nature), kind deeds, and gratitude. In this blog, I want to focus on the last one, highlighting three ways in the workplace, at times with the aid of your intranet, to create a grateful work environment.
1) Daily Huddle
In a previous post, I gave some tips on how to adopt daily huddle meetings and ways to keep it interesting. Shortly after, our company actually built a Daily Huddle application on our intranet and had the huddle leader post topics there ahead of time. This evolution from a simple Message Box widget to an app, then allowed us to enable social features like commenting/rating as well as keep a historical list of previous topics. This now facilitates the reuse and acknowledgment of good questions to the leader.
One topic that we try to bring up regularly is giving kudos, thanks, or a high 5 to a coworker for small or large victories.
2) Gratitude Tree
There’s something to be said for a physical medium, and what’s better than post-it notes? We’ve set an ambitious goal for our team this quarter to fill a tree-worth of thank you notes (200 to be exact), that can be seen as you come and go from our office. Being a software company, we are a highly creative group, and I’m excited to see how this initiative grows. At the very least, if it brings a smile to the face of our employees as they come and go and provides an additional way to give a voice, it will be a great success in fueling workplace happiness.
Check our gratitude tree out below!
3) Share Customer Feedback
Lots of focus, in terms of measuring how companies are faring, goes on satisfaction surveys, net promoter scores, and other indicators. However, what can be lost is the real commentary and subjective/personal feedback. When your team gets an incredible email, satisfaction survey commentary, a card/package, photo from a visit, or even an amazing recorded call/session online, why not give them an avenue to share on your intranet? This will certainly reinforce a job well done but also serve as examples to staff of what constitutes exceptional results in the eye of a customer.
“Thank You” Creates Energy
Recognition and gratitude for great work is the biggest motivator, more than rewards, money, beer Fridays, Foosball, and the sorts. Not that we don’t want or enjoy these things, they’re just less fulfilling. Why not find ways to ingrain them in your work culture, and ensure thankfulness becomes a ritual that’s practiced by all, magnifying the energy of the team in the process.
There’s no doubt the simple words “Thank You” are the most powerful ones you’ll use. Discover how your intranet can help you show gratitude, and improve workplace happiness, by requesting a one-on-one demo with a product specialist.
