How can you actually motivate employees to do their best work?

It’s a question organisations have been trying to answer for decades. And the answer is multidimensional - there are certainly several drivers that tap into engagement for people. Those of you that measure engagement in your workforce will have uncovered a consistent factor over the years - feeling recognised and acknowledged for good work.  Yet in practice, many recognition strategies, if they exist at all, are still built on assumptions rather than evidence. 

Our research across 2,000 employees in the US and UK highlights the importance of prioritising recognition in an organisation. Acknowledging others’ work isn’t just a social grace; it is  high-octane fuel for The Motivation Machine that exists within all humans.

Many large organisations come to us needing a refresh or refocus (or sometimes, even just founding) of a more centralised and deliberate recognition programme. They do this because they recognise that recognition is a true driver of motivation, and need to systematise, streamline and quantify it, without losing the critical human touch.  

In order to understand how to use recognition to motivate employees, we need to first understand the nature of motivation at work.

‍Understanding the Seven Motivators

Our research isolated seven key motivators, split between internal and external drivers:

1. Internal Motivators: Ideology (belief in what you do), Achievement (getting satisfaction from achieving new things), and Enjoyment (finding your work stimulating).
2. External Motivators: Material Rewards (enjoying prestige or life security), Expectations from colleagues or family (avoiding criticism or judgement from others) and Contribution (feeling like your work makes a difference),.

Critically, all of these motivators are available to employees. Rather than thinking about some motivators as good or bad, we should think about them all as potential sources of effort. Organisations should look to tap into all types of motivators to get their workforce “firing on all cylinders”.

Recognition is the rare catalyst that creates effort through both internal and external motivators. It improves internal motivation by building confidence and connection, and it increases external motivation by providing visibility and reward alignment.

Not All Recognition is Created Equal

Our data reveals that how and how often you recognize matters just as much as the act itself.

1. The "How": The Power of Personal Connection The highest impact on engagement comes from a mix of personal and digital modes.

• Top Performers: Formal company awards and emails drive the most significant increases in engagement and well-being.
• The Instant Message Gap: Interestingly, simple shout-outs on Instant Messaging alone—while common—showed no significant connection to increases in engagement or well-being in our study. They are perhaps too isolated and informal to feel significant.

2. The "Who": The Senior Leader Boost Who gives the recognition matters. A "thank you" from a manager has a "shelf life" of about three months, so needs to remain consistent and visible. However, recognition from a senior leader can last up to a year having about twice the impact.

3. The "What": Swag vs. Cash Perhaps our most surprising finding is that what employees say they want isn't always what drives engagement.

• The Gift Card Paradox: While 73% of employees say they prefer gift cards, these actually had no positive impact on engagement in our data.
• The Engagement Winners: The highest impact on engagement came from company-branded items (swag) and team activities, and so are a must in any recognition reward strategy.

Driving the Firing-On-All-Cylinders Culture

When an organisation masters the frequency and mode of recognition, they move their workforce towards being "Firing on All Cylinders" profile—where our research indicates 24% of employees reside.

But how can you  embed this culture into an organisation without creating a lot of work for your managers? 

Like so many other organisational behaviors, technology can help with this challenge. A good platform to enable recognition has a huge knock-on impact. Many of our customers not only see an increase in recognition rate, they are able to track and show the impact of that recognition in different parts of the business. They can expand the reach of those powerful company awards through enabling nominations in the platform. They can help managers stay on top of their recognition responsibilities through nudges and help them write a recognition that will land with their team while maintaining the human touch. They can enable recognitions to be sent thorugh instant message, but still maintain the broader visibility and impact of email that makes it so critical to engagement. They can also streamline reward spending and ensure that portions of employee reward spend are reserved towards rewards that will drive the best results for the company.  

In short, a recognition platform is an “effort machine”.

The Future of Motivation

If there is one consistent takeaway, it is this: motivation is becoming more personal, more immediate, and more dependent on context.

Employees are not looking for more recognition. They are looking for recognition that reflects how they work, what they value, and what they contribute.

The organisations that will lead are those that design for that reality. They will build systems that are flexible, grounded in human behavior, and supported by data.

Recognition, when designed well, is not just a reflection of performance, it is a driver of it.

And in that sense, the most effective organisations are not simply recognizing work, they are designing the conditions that make great work more likely to happen in the first place.