“When a manager recognizes an employee’s behavior, personally and sincerely, both feel proud, gratified, and happy. There’s a human connection that transcends the immediate culture to create a shared bond. The power of this bond is stronger than you might think; indeed, it’s the power that holds together great organizational cultures.”
– Erik Mosley and Derek Irvine, co-authors of The Power of Thanks: How Social Recognition Empowers Employees and Creates a Best Place to Work
The world has been gradually shifting from putting emphasis on quick income to realizing the value and significance of human relations. Paycheck alone is no longer sufficient neither to attract the top applicants to the Organization, nor to keep them in the company for a long time. “Most people will never admit it, but money is not the thing they desire most from their work. Instead, showing appreciation, respect, and, yes, even love are the three most important ways to make your employees feel happy about their work. And happy, engaged employees are the single best way to impact your company’s bottom line” (Patkin).
Just consider these somewhat shocking stats. A quite recent study by The Conference Board revealed that 51% of the U.S. employees are unsatisfied with their job. Knowing this, it doesn’t come as a surprise that 50% of the U.S. employees are also considering a new job, as reported by the Gallup Workforce Panel study. The same study revealed that the main reason why employees leave their jobs is exactly lack of recognition. Gallup Poll showed that 65% of employees haven’t received any form of recognition for good work! And recognition here doesn’t imply just some monetary incentives, thus 82% of employees would rather receive praise than a gift, as was discovered in Officevibe’s recent study.
People long for sincere, open, humane relationships in the team, for being a part of the company, for feeling like their job makes a difference. No monetary reward will be able to substitute this feeling of belonging and no fat bonus will bring the same satisfaction as the feeling of being appreciated does. That’s why positive Reinforcement is not just a useful managerial tool, but an essential habit managers need to adopt to create a healthy, happy, and motivating work environment. And, as we’ve already mentioned in the beginning, happy and engaged employees are the single best way to impact the company’s bottom line. Let’s now look into more detail exactly how positive reinforcement positively impacts employee motivation, engagement, and commitment to the organization.
The impact of positive reinforcement on employee emotions.
One of the possible ways to get an insight into the relationship between positive reinforcement and human behavior is to consider that reinforcement causes a person to feel an emotion, which in its turn influences a person’s behavior. For example, such type of positive reinforcement as feedback results in an emotional response from a person and afterwards this emotional response affects employee’s work behavior, because “feelings are responsible for causing shifts in motivational focus and influence work behaviors. When experiencing emotional reactions, behaviors to cope with the emotion(s) get priority and take precedence over other behaviors (e.g. Lazarus, Weiss & Cropanzano). … feedback elicits emotional responses. These emotions, in turn,will influence (extra-role) work behaviors and attitudes.”
In addition, according to Maertz and Grieffeth, emotions which an employee possesses towards the organization affect emotions that are connected with the idea of being a member of this organization, and as a result of this, the authors suggest that “emotional discomfort” is most likely to result into employee’s wish to leave the organization and “emotional comfort” is most likely to increase commitment and attachment to the organization.
Usage of positive reinforcement to cultivate positive emotions in employees is also relevant in employees’ daily activities, because positive emotions will motivate employees to introduce greater deal of creativity when dealing with tasks, to aim for performing at a higher level, and to be more considerate and supportive of their colleagues and thus to be better team-players. In addition, “positive feelings also lead to increased job satisfaction which, in turn, has positive influences on important organizational outcomes such as commitment to the firm and job performance. For service organizations, the feelings experienced by employees when they interact with the customers are especially important [because] …when employees are transmitting positive emotions, it tends to elevate the mood of customers, leading to more satisfied customers who are also more likely to return for service” (Judge & Ilies).
The impact of positive reinforcement on employee health and safety.
Research shows that positivity results in an increased health and that emotions that employees experience at work affect their health conditions. For example, when employees frequently experience negative emotions (such as anger, frustration, desperation) at their jobs, they are more likely to be stressed, which will in its turn lead to negative health outcomes. And on the contrary, when employees experience pleasant and happy emotions at work, they are more likely to be less stressed at their jobs, which will help them to cope with stress and other pressures better, avoiding or minimizing possible negative health consequences.
In addition, “when people feel happy and optimistic they are healthier, therefore, more productive in every area of their lives” (Parker). Also, “while positivity is widely believed to lead to greater physical, mental, and emotional health, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that positivity can also increase relational health.” This is especially important in organizations, where people often have to work in teams and, consequently, where interpersonal relations play a big role in employees’ jobs.
Another issue that can be significantly improved through the usage of positive reinforcement techniques is safety at the workplace. By creating a safe environment for the employees, organizations can minimize the injuries in the workplace as well as the costs related to them and the time employees spend recovering from the injuries. In the majority of the cases a manager is not able to look after each and every employee during the whole workday, that is why it is so important to reinforce and motivate employees to create and maintain a safe environment. Research shows that “if workers receive praise for their contribution rather than punishment for their slip-ups, they will be more likely to play an active role in maintaining a safe environment” (Johnson).
The impact of positive reinforcement on employee absenteeism.
Virtually any organization encounters employee absenteeism, which is often considered to be impossible to control or manage, however “for human resource departments and managers battling to build credibility and extend their influence by contributing to their company’s financial success…targeting absenteeism may present significant means for providing cost savings and added productivity” (Avey, Patera, & West). The problem with absenteeism in organization may also be that when faced with an employee performance problem, managers tend to experience two primary emotions: anxiety and anger, and then managers may direct those negative emotions towards the employees, which creates a negative environment, which is likely to result in making an employee want to avoid such an environment and thus be absent from work again. In such a case, “offering positive reinforcement for good attendance may help decrease the number of people abusing the [attendance] policy in the first place. Rewarding staff for good attendance does two things: it acknowledges positive behavior with rewards and encourages others to improve their subpar performance” (Oaks).
Absenteeism can be divided into two types – involuntary and voluntary absenteeism. Involuntary absenteeism can be defined as “an absence from the workplace that, under normal circumstances, is unavoidable by the employee such as physical or psychological illness” (Avey, Patera &West). Voluntary absenteeism can be defined as “a reasonably avoidable absence from the workplace. Familiar examples include vacation or voluntarily choosing to be absent due to potentially unnecessary personal reasons.”Usually involuntary absenteeism is considered to be uncontrollable and unmanageable, however research shows that through the usage positive reinforcement it is possible to decrease it as well as voluntary absenteeism. Positive reinforcement helps employees maintain an optimistic approach to life, which does not only help an employee not to pay too much attention to problems and thus not to get overstressed and sick eventually, but also, if the sickness already took place, an optimistic approach makes an employee treat it more effectively and in a more efficient and timely manner, which in its turn results in smaller number of days that an employee is absent from work. In a similar way positive reinforcement can influence voluntary absenteeism, thus, through increasing employee’s optimism it enables employee to expect positive things to happen more often and if negative things happened, then to attribute them to some external and not personal causes, which helps an employee to avoid feelings of shame and blame and thus decreases the probability of employee absenteeism due to those feelings.
The impact of positive reinforcement on employee satisfaction and commitment.
Positive reinforcement leads to increase in employees’ positive feelings and “positive feelings also lead to increased job satisfaction, which, in turn, has positive influences on important organizational outcomes such as commitment to the firm and job performance” (Judge & Ilies). Studies show that, for example, such type of positive reinforcement as rewards, lead to employee satisfaction, which then leads to higher employee performance.
Job satisfaction and organization commitment are of significant importance, because they were found to make it less likely for employees to leave their jobs or to leave the organization. One of the ways to explain this is to look at it again through the viewpoint of emotions that employees experience, thus, “positive/negative responses toward the organization or its members cause psychological comfort/discomfort with membership. Whereas emotional comfort motivates staying or approach, discomfort motivates avoidance or quitting” (Belschak & Hartog). This is especially significant given that when an employee leaves the job, an organization is faced with substantial additional costs related to the selecting and hiring process, as well as training of a new employee. In addition, until the replacement is found, an organization is likely to either experience decrease in the output due to the employee leaving or, if another employee takes over the responsibilities for the time being, an organization may encounter dissatisfaction and burnout of that employee due to the additional responsibilities. The training process is not only associated with the direct costs of the training program, if necessary, but also with the time that the new employee will not be able to perform at fullest during the learning process and the time that other members of the team will spend helping the new employee instead of focusing on their own jobs.
The study of Ulrich, Halbrook, Meder, Stuchlik and Thorpe also found that employee commitment to the organization is related to the customer loyalty to this organization. Thus, the results of their study show that the way that employees are treated in the organization leads to the creation of a general employee mindset which they express through their behavior to the customer and in such a way contribute to the creation of the customer mindset. And customer mindset determines customer loyalty to the organization and eventually strongly influences organization competitive advantage.
The impact of positive reinforcement on employee performance.
Try thinking about positive reinforcement as building trust with employees, and trust “focuses on what was done right, looks at how much was achieved, and makes people happy and more likely to perform even better the next time”, also it “creates team players, employees who work together for the common good of the organization, realizing they are “in the same boat””, it “leads to employees being accountable for their actions, to learn from mistakes, so everyone can help prevent the same mistake from happening again,” and it “spawns creativity where employees constantly think about better ways of doing their jobs, to anticipate and adapt to change, and not be afraid of failure” (Jim Grigsby).
Even though money is often considered to be the most effective reinforcer and thus the vast majority of companies employ it as such, nevertheless, it has to be noted that the impact of the non-monetary incentives may be the same or even exceed the impact of money on employee performance. For example, Scott Jeffrey in his research about the motivational power of tangible non-cash incentives came to the conclusion that “working adults who engaged in a challenging mental task performed better in pursuit of a noncash incentive than in pursuit of a cash incentive of equal cash value, even though they stated a preference to receive cash award”, that is why “these findings suggest that firms must be careful in asking employees what incentives they prefer, because the preferred incentive may not be the one that leads to the best performance.” It means that in order to motivate employees an organization does not need to spend fortunes, but the impact of a simple “thank you” is significant in relation to employee performance.
Edward Hallowell in his system of five-step cycle of excellence, which is aimed at igniting the peak performance of employees, lists “shine” as a last step, which refers to simply using positive reinforcement with employees to make them shine. He notes that “managers can help people to shine by providing them with praise, rewards and awards for a job well executed. People who shine want to keep shining. They are motivated. They feel connected to the team, the group and to the organization. They become extremely loyal and want to help others in the organization advance. This completes the Cycle of Excellence and keeps it in motion.” Hallowell also emphasizes that it is important to positively reinforce employees not only for good performance, but also for extra effort or extra time they put into accomplishing a task, because when positively noted extra effort will motivate employees to work harder on extra tasks or tasks that were not even assigned to them.
Studies show that performance feedback is among the most frequently used tools of the positive reinforcement techniques to improve employee performance. It is especially important that performance feedback is positive because it is about coaching and consulting, not criticizing or giving advice. Feedback influences performance because it increases clarity about the task to be performed and because the information brought by positive feedback “may raise a person’s self-efficacy, their self set performance goals, and ultimately their performance” (Waldersee & Luthans).
We hope that all these examples have managed to show you the gem that the positive reinforcement truly is. It’s easy to initiate, in most of the cases it doesn’t cost anything to implement, it can be combined with any other programs that aim at increasing employee productivity, and it works across different ages, cultures, and industries. It is one of the greatest tools to increase job satisfaction, motivation, engagement, commitment, and loyalty of your employees. And this love employees feel towards your organization, which makes them feel so valued and important, they will further carry to customers, family, and friends, creating an excellent brand image for your company and participating in making it a continually prosperous one.
Ann Bailey
More articles about positive reinforcement:
“Why Companies Should Use Positive Reinforcement As An Employee Motivation Tool”
Reinforcement And Punishment, Negative And Positive: What’s The Difference And Which One Should You Use?
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