Increase Productivity by 31% Just by Saying “Thank You”

Recognize This! – “If managers just increased their praise and recognition of one employee once a day for 21 business days in a row, six months later, those teams as opposed to control group had a 31% higher level of productivity.”

Please, if you do nothing else with anything you read in my blog, take 15 minutes to listen to this podcast on HBR by Shawn Achor, CEO of Aspirant and author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.

If you can’t listen in, the post below is quoted highlights from the podcast:

This is research about how you affect the bottom line. And that requires changing the formula for success. People used to think if you worked harder right now, you’ll be more successful. If you’re more successful, you’ll be happier. This is wrong for two reasons:

1) If we follow that formula, we never get to happiness, because every time we get to success, we move the goal posts of what success looks like. If happiness is always on the opposite side of success, we push happiness over the cognitive horizon.

2) More importantly, your brain works in the opposite order. When your brain is positive, it outperforms your brain when it is negative, neutral or stressed.

When we’re at work, our brain is usually negative neutral or stressed, which hamstrings our brains ability to deal with all we could if our brain were positive.

You can change your brain and rewire it much more quickly than we thought was possible. If managers just increased their praise and recognition of one employee once a day for 21 business days in a row, six months later, those teams as opposed to control group, had a 31% higher level of productivity.

Think about what a 31% change in productivity would look like and what a small change in recognition practices would require.

One thing we suggest is when you open your inbox every day, write a 2 minute email praising and recognizing someone. You just activated 21 people in your environment making it easier to have a feedback loop with your people in your circle. Your brain also begins to recognize that you also have a lot more social support in your network. The greatest predictor of your success and happiness during a time of stress is your social support network. If you create social cohesion at work and home, you start finding more meaning at work, connect to more people, and your job satisfaction and life satisfaction skyrocket.

“When companies decide to invest in their employees to make sure they have a positive and engaged workforce, they’re reaping back a long term return on their investment that’s much higher than what they put in initially.”

I challenge you – take the 21 day experiment. Take 2 minutes every day for 21 days to recognize and praise one person. See how that changes your own positive perception of the workplace as well as those around you.