The power of praise

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The drivel that flows through the average journalist’s inbox each week is a wonder to behold.

Last week though, among the usual alerts about obscure middle managers moving to unremarkable jobs in companies you’ve never heard of, and the vital news that AI is disruptive, there was a corker.

An online resume writing outfit had written to say an analysis of 20-plus UK industries showed that a) the happiest employees worked in finance and insurance and b) these workers got paid the most, averaging £85,538 a year.

This sum was nearly three times the pay of the least happy employees, in accommodation and food services, and more than double that of the second least happy in the farm, fishing and forestry industries.

Wow, I snorted to myself. The highest paid workers are the happiest. Who could have ever guessed?

I was still thinking about this when I caught up with a friend who reminded me that things are actually not that simple.

Several lavishly remunerated executives at her financial group had recently quit to work at rival companies for reasons that went beyond money. “They don’t feel loved,” she said, explaining that one man she worked with had just left after his manager repeatedly praised his colleagues but almost never mentioned his equally valuable efforts.

Frankly, I think I would summon ways to suck it up if I were being paid half what this man was earning. Also, since bonus season is upon us, it is worth saying that money is still a powerful motivator, especially in finance.

But my friend had a point. Once you earn enough to meet what you deem to be basic needs, you are more inclined to value non-remunerative aspects of work, such as praise and appreciation.

Put another way, people can stay in jobs that pay less than the market rate if they feel their work is regularly and properly valued. To be more specific, if they are recognised at least monthly, they are 33 per cent more likely to say they are not job hunting in the year to come, some research shows.

Yet the share of US workers who say they have been praised or recognised in the past seven days for doing good work sank to a 15-year low this year, mirroring a slump in the percentage who say they are extremely happy with where they work.

This raises a question: why don’t managers deploy praise more adroitly?

It is hard to think of anything else that costs so little, takes such a piffling amount of time, and yet achieves so much, as a short email or a brief chat to praise someone’s work.

For employees whose work is largely unseen, or only noticed when they muck up, this recognition can be seriously significant.

Pathetically, I can still remember the time when I was a news editor and a senior executive came by to marvel at how our desk had turned several illegible stories into readable reports, at speed. This was of course our job. But it was also largely invisible, except when we inserted an error or committed some other atrocity requiring corrective action.

Still, even star employees on big salaries in high-profile jobs like to be praised. And there’s much to be said for being recognised by peers, too.

I will let you into a little known fact: one of the reasons the FT is such a pleasant place to work is that, though it is rammed with competitive strivers, a notable number send notes of thanks or praise to colleagues when they spot work they like.

This happens organically. Other, larger, companies try to manufacture this sort of thing with programmes such as the one US airline, JetBlue, has used to encourage staff to name colleagues doing admirable work.

The admired received points they could use for various treats. One analysis of the effort has shown that for every 10 per cent increase in people reporting they’ve been recognised, the airline experienced a 3 per cent rise in retention.

This is not nothing. Replacing an employee can cost up to two times their annual salary, not to mention the extra work and dented morale faced by colleagues left behind. All up, it says a lot for a note containing six brief words: thanks for such a great job.

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