According to a survey of 2,000 Americans, people are less likely to feel or express gratitude at work than anyplace else, despite the fact that 93% agreed that grateful bosses are more likely to succeed, and most reported that hearing “thank you” at work made them feel good and motivated. A paycheck is only one of the motivations we bring to work. We don’t just work for money. We also work for respect, a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of purpose, and more. Gratitude is a non-monetary way to support those non-monetary motivations. “Thank you” doesn’t cost a dime, and it has measurable benefits. Building a culture of gratitude at work may not be easy, but it is worth it.
#1 – Start at the top:
#2 – Thank the people who never get thanked:
Every organization has a class of employee that hogs all the glory. In hospitals, it’s doctors. At universities, it’s faculty. And every organization has high-profile individuals. But what about those who cut the checks, submit the invoices, mop the floors, write the copy? Thanking those who do thankless work is crucial because it sets the bar and establishes the tone. Public appreciation of, for example, administration and physical plant staff makes their contributions visible and thus broadens everyone’s understanding of how the organization functions—and needless to say, it improves morale and increases trust.
#3 – Aim for quality, not quantity:
Forcing people to be grateful doesn’t work. It feeds the power imbalances that undermine gratitude in the first place, and it can make expressions of gratitude feel inauthentic. The key is to create times and spaces that foster voluntary, spontaneous expression of gratitude. When you are specific about the benefits of a person, action, or thing, it increases your own appreciation—and it tells a person that you are paying attention, rather than just going through the motions.
#4 – Provide many opportunities for gratitude:
When people are thanked for their work, they are more likely to increase their helping behavior and to provide help to others.
But not everyone likes to be thanked—or likes to say “thank you”—in public. They may be shy or genuinely modest. The key is to create many different kinds of opportunities for gratitude. For example, research consistently finds that keeping a gratitude journal makes you twenty-five percent happier. Can an office keep a journal? Of course! The Administration and Finance office of the University of California, Berkeley, created an appreciation platform that allows employees to recognize each other’s contributions, which feeds into a “Kudos” webpage that publically highlights these contributions. You don’t need to build a website—a bulletin board will do, sometimes called a “Gratitude Wall.” This kind of project works best if the “thank you” targets actual human beings instead of things. We are all thankful for coffee, for example, but the gratitude should go to Mary, the administrative assistant who makes the coffee every morning.
Gift-giving is another way to foster gratitude. Research shows that giving gifts may have an important effect on working relationships and reciprocity — and non-monetary gifts are the most beneficial of all. You can say “thanks” by taking on scut work, lending a parking space, or giving a day off. These kinds of non-monetary gifts can lead to more trust in working relationships, if it’s reciprocal, sincere, and altruistically motivated.
#5 – In the wake of a crisis, take time for thanks giving:
Cultivating a culture of gratitude might be the best way to help a workplace prepare for the stresses that come with change, conflict, and failure. Making gratitude a policy and a practice “builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall,” writes psychologist Robert Emmons. “There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals.”
Gratitude helps employees to see beyond one disaster and recognize their gains. Ideally, it gives them a tool “to transform an obstacle into an opportunity,” as Emmons writes, and reframe a loss as a potential gain. If your office has gone through a crisis, hold a meeting with the aim of gaining a new perspective on the incident. Here are a series of questions, adapted from Emmons, to help people recover from difficult workplace experiences
- What lessons did the experience teach us?
- Can we find ways to be thankful for what happened to us now, even though we weren’t at the time it happened?
- What ability did the experience draw out of us that surprised us?
- Are there ways we have become a better workplace because of it?
- Has the experience removed an obstacle that previously prevented us from feeling grateful?
The science says we Americans need to overcome our aversion to gratitude on the job, and come to see it as just one more career skill we can cultivate alongside skills like communication, negotiation, and forgiveness. It’s something anyone can learn—from which everyone will benefit.