How to nurture mental wellbeing through regular and authentic recognition
With nearly 10% of UK adults needing to take time off for mental health reasons in 2024, mental wellbeing support is fast becoming a critical part of businesses’ employee wellbeing strategies.
When looking at ways to support mental wellbeing, businesses naturally look to bring in mental health support services like employee assistance programmes (EAP).
And while there’s no doubt that this type of support is effective, another often overlooked way to boost mental wellbeing in the workplace is employee recognition.
Regular, authentic and structured employee recognition has the power to nurture four key areas of good mental wellbeing and create a culture whereby employees are empowered, supported and connected.
How employee recognition supports mental wellbeing
Employee recognition contributes to four key components of good mental wellbeing:
- Confidence and self-esteem
- Emotional connections
- Sense of purpose
- Community and support system
These four areas fit into to the Self Esteem and Social layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – two fundamental parts of a psychological framework that maps out the core mental requirements of humans.
Strengthening connections between colleagues
Our need for human connection is innate and this is naturally present in the workplace too.
Seven out of ten (70%) of employees say they strive for emotional connection at work, demonstrating the importance of individuals forming bonds with their colleagues to support their overall mental wellbeing.
Recognition in the workplace helps facilitate and strengthen these peer-to-peer connections, because the act of sharing appreciation is a positive exchange from which relationships can flourish.
For businesses that have an integrated peer-to-peer recognition scheme, these interactions are frequent and commonplace.
Individuals are empowered to appreciate their colleagues in the moment and therefore have a solid foundation from which they can build mutual respect, develop strong colleague relationships and support their mental wellbeing.
Boosting employees’ confidence and self-worth
Recognition at a very basic level is positive reinforcement – it demonstrates that a particular action or achievement is good.
When recognition is facilitated business-wide, employees have regular opportunities to get positive feedback and reinforcement – chances to have their confidence and self-worth boosted.
Employee recognition – whatever that looks like in your business – is simply re-assurance for individuals that they’re doing the right thing or, in some cases, being exceptional.
Beyond that, it’s confirmation that their contribution to the business is not only seen but appreciated.
This goes a long way in shaping employees’ mental wellbeing because if employees aren’t recognised and, importantly, don’t feel appreciated, they’re more likely to feel low, de-motivated and even experience stress and anxiety.
Building a community and sense of belonging
Employee rewards and recognition help reinforce business’ shared values, behaviours and goals – elements that form the foundation of a solid workplace culture.
When workplace culture is positive, cohesive and strong, it feels and acts like a community.
People feel part of a bigger picture; they feel supported; they feel connected.
On top of that, when recognition is delivered publicly within a business, employees get greater visibility and awareness of others, helping facilitate community further.
Linking back to Maslow, feeling part of a community and having a sense of belonging directly feeds into our core social needs as human beings.
If this desire can be satisfied in part at work through a structure employee reward and recognition programme, employees’ mental wellbeing will naturally benefit as a result.
Reinforcing a sense of purpose
Having clear direction in life and work is really important for good mental wellbeing.
Purpose provides motivation and meaning, both of which have a big influence on our emotional state.
Interestingly, Gen Z and Millennial employees highly value a sense of purpose at work, with 86% of Gen Z and 89% of Millennials stating that it’s important to their overall job satisfaction and wellbeing.
Employee rewards and recognition take your business’ vision, mission and objectives, and turn them into tangible goals for employees to strive for every day.
Whether it’s based on performance, behaviour or commitment, recognition programmes provide clear direction to employees and demonstrates that their efforts are contributing to a bigger picture and that they can make a real difference as individuals.
So, with the state of mental wellbeing in the UK an ongoing concern and businesses looking to diversify the way their support employees, a solid reward and recognition programme is another support tool to consider as part of your business’ wellbeing strategy.
Supplied by REBA Associate Member, Boostworks
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