You're spending money fixing the wrong problem

You're spending money fixing the wrong problem.

It's easy to overthink how you recognise your team. Even at Christmas, employers tie themselves in knots debating the merits of Amazon vouchers vs. catch-all hampers vs. beautifully thought-through, hand-sourced, hand-painted vases or somesuch.

But here's the uncomfortable reality: it doesn't really matter all that much.

Uncomfortable for you, due to the time squandered deliberating - all to avoid the ungrateful "Oh, I don't really eat chocolate" moans from employees. And uncomfortable for us, as a gifting platform who prides itself on the 1000s of genuinely awesome gifts employees can choose from.

But we're not going to kid you. Here's the reality.

When we asked people how often they feel demotivated:

• People who get a tangible reward when they're recognised said 21% of the time.
• People who just get a verbal thank you when they're recognised said 26% of the time.

We hate to wow you with our mathematical expertise, but that's a difference of only five percentage points. Five. It was the same story when you looked at flight risk instead - 55% of recognition-gifted people were looking to leave, versus 58%. Hard to justify the 300 hampers you plan on shipping out with those numbers behind it.

But still, for many, it's tempting to just point at making those tangible rewards better - assuming it's that people want better 'stuff', rather than a different approach overall. And that's because it's easier to justify things to the finance team if you speak their language. It's hard to make a business case for "making managers recognise their team more consistently", especially when you sort of have no idea how you'd actually approach doing that.

So, like many of us, in many aspects of life, we focus on the things that we can control. Rather than the things we can't, hoping it actually fixes the things we can't. God loves a trier. But there is another way.

In the recent data we've collected, we figured out what really matters. What makes people stay, what makes them motivated, what makes them a massive fan of their line manager. And it's - drumroll please - consistency.

Ok, not the most exciting reveal. But seriously, this is worth paying attention to. When people are recognised frequently, their motivation was high. Recognised infrequently, and it absolutely tanked. So it's pretty clear - what matters isn't how recognition is packaged, it's how often it comes.

We're not saying "don't bother sending gifts". Obviously - we've all got bills to pay! What we are saying is this: you need to make it easy for managers to recognise their team, you need to lead by example to make it an every-week thing. You need to make it a habit, not throw money at the problem once or twice a year and wonder why there's tumbleweed in that once-chat-heavy Slack channel.

Next week we're publishing what 500 UK workers told us about recognition. The reward-form finding is the least surprising thing in it. Sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about it.