Gratitude has become such a scarce commodity there is a special day to remind us of it — September 21 is Gratitude Day. A Mumbai-based health insurance company has found a way of reminding its employees of it, every working day.
A poster of a tree displayed on a wall beckons employees to share their stories of gratitude. Envelopes are pinned onto the fruits on this poster tree. An employee can write a note about a helpful colleague and slip it into any of the envelopes. The tree with its notes of gratitude is called “Rancho Tree” deriving its name from the character played by Aamir Khan in
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Like leaven on dough, gratitude has a transforming effect on corporate teams. A culture of gratitude is best promoted when leaders promote it through personal example.
Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo who recently announced her retirement, is said to write letters each year to parents of her senior executives. The letters, according to “The David Rubenstein Show” where Nooyi has been a guest, are a display of gratitude towards these executives’ parents for have raised their children well.
Indra said she would write a paragraph about what their child was doing at PepsiCo. The letter would come to an end, with a heart-warming sentence — ‘Thank you for the gift of your child to our company.”
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Edureka, a Bengaluru-based startup, is celebrating its milestone in a unique way. The online training provider decided to remember its former employees and their contributions to the organisation in its growing years. A specially-drafted gratitude letter titled ‘You Made a Difference’, signed by the CEO of the company, was framed and couriered to 340 former employees recently. The start-up has 250 employees.
Pooja Bajaj, founder of Extra Mile, an employee engagement company, says gratitude at the workplace is a continuous engagement that some organisations invest in. “Previously, it was one-way. Now, it’s two-way with a “bottom-up” approach where gratification is introduced among all peers,” says Pooja.
So, how does an organisation develop a culture of appreciation?
K. Ashana, co-founder, AceNgage Infoservices, says an entire system has to lend itself to a culture of appreciation.
“Have metrics to measure; and start with a goal-setting process,” she says.
Ashana says one of the key reasons for any employee to leave an organisation is a feeling of being unappreciated.
“A manager has to know when to give feedback and when to offer a word of appreciation. Both have to be given immediately. Similarly, it’s also essential for a team to appreciate the manager.”
Worth its weight in gold
New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that people significantly underestimate the positive effect that a letter of gratitude can have on its recipient.
In the study, ‘Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation,’ published in Psychological Science, Nicholas Epley from Chicago Booth and Amit Kumar from the University of Texas found a wide gap between how little senders think their letters of gratitude will affect the recipient and the high level of happiness recipients feel upon reading the letter.
In a series of four experiments, these researchers asked participants to write a letter to another person who had touched their life in a meaningful way.
The researchers asked the letter writers to predict how surprised, happy and awkward the recipients would feel, and then they followed up with those recipients to measure how they actually felt.