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Seen@Work: The Podcast is hosted by Natalia Eileen and features the efforts of human capital professionals around the United States and showcases how they are helping their fellow employees feel "seen at work."
Is your top talent quiet quitting? Hey, everyone. It's Natalia Eileen with seen at work. Excited to bring back weekly wisdoms, Wednesday mornings at 9AM, where I share information about how you can help your employees feel seen at work. Hey, we have a crisis happening right now.
Natalia Eileen:Quiet quitting has turned into quiet cracking. And we're seeing more and more folks struggling with the brunt of all the stress that's on top of them as they're working. So let's talk about it. Specifically, I wanna talk about how to support your top talent during this time with recognition. Let's first talk about quiet cracking.
Natalia Eileen:This was a recent post by Adam Grant on LinkedIn where he talked about what quiet cracking is. He says quiet cracking is the new term for silently disengaging from a job that slowly breaks your spirit. Let's call it what it is, burnout. He talked about how this is still caused by the same old, overworked, undervalued, and disrespected culture that we sometimes see within company. Today, I specifically wanna talk about the undervalued part.
Natalia Eileen:Here you can see in this graph by Glassdoor that people are talking about burnout way more than they have in years. That's because in addition to feeling overworked and disrespected, many people are also feeling undervalued. That's why I wanted to spend a few weeks focused in on recognition and how you as a leader can do a better job of supporting your employees, making them feel recognized and valued for their work. Specifically, let's talk about how we can be thinking about recognition for our top talent. How can we think about recognition strategies that help our top talent thrive?
Natalia Eileen:How are you defining your top talent? Sometimes when we do this, we might leave some people out. So let's keep in mind that we might be focusing too much on the end result and not the journey. We might be focusing too much on in person contributors and not remote contributors, or we might also be focusing too much on revenue generating operators and not back office staff. So first, make sure that you're defining top talent in a way that is inclusive and is responsive to the fact that you have a lot of folks doing great work.
Natalia Eileen:And maybe we need to make sure that we're not focusing too much on the end result and not those milestones as we go along. We're not focusing too much on in person folks that we see at the office when we know that there are remote people doing great work as well, potentially within our workplace. And then we have revenue generating operators that are probably doing fantastic work. They could not do that work in many instances without that back office staff. So make sure you're defining that top talent in a way that is broad, in a way that is inclusive, and then let's jump in to how you can make sure you're recognizing them.
Natalia Eileen:Because that is just one of the many ways you can demonstrate that folks are valuable to you as a leader, valuable to the organization, and valuable in general for their contribution as workers, for their contribution as people. And that's why we're gonna focus on those four strategies. So strategy number one, offering legacy building recognition. People everywhere, always, wanna know that their influence can and does last beyond a project or beyond their tenure. You might wanna consider ways to acknowledge that this person created that process or this person spearheaded this major project.
Natalia Eileen:Put their name on it. Talk about it in terms of their great work. Give them that legacy building sense that they are part of this company. They're part of these missions. Make sure that they know that their influence lasts beyond the project and places a foundation under which you and your team are building everything you do.
Natalia Eileen:This is one way people don't always think about, but it can help top performers feel like they're making an imprint and feel motivated to continue to do so. Here's the second thing we might wanna do to support our top talent. Offer recognition through growth. Sometimes when people hear this, they think it means giving people more work. Sure.
Natalia Eileen:Giving your top talent more work because they're doing so great with the other work can be a way of showing them that you're recognizing them. But remember, we're in this culture right now where people are feeling overloaded, and burnout is everywhere. Instead of demonstrating recognition by giving people more work, give them opportunities to grow. This is not necessarily through more work. It can be by investing in their career in a multitude of ways, offering to pay for certification classes, to send them on a conference, to give them access to leaders within the organization that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise, give them an opportunity to reflect on what they want for their careers and give them those openings wherever possible.
Natalia Eileen:Offer recognition through growth. Say, hey, I'm noticing you're doing great work. What would it take to make you feel like you are valued in this place through investment? How can I invest in you? That's the second way you can demonstrate to your top talent that they are valuable to you.
Natalia Eileen:Let's go on to the third. We also can consider recognizing via autonomy. So showing them that you know they're good at what they do by letting them take ownership, by letting them drive, by saying, hey. You've been doing such great work. I trust you on that.
Natalia Eileen:That sense of trust and autonomy that people have when you give them that and you offer that as part of how you're recognizing their good work, it can help them take full ownership and make it even better, feel like they have something that they own that is theirs that they can be diligent about making better, and that makes everyone's lives better in turn within your organization. The fourth and final way I wanna talk about creating a sense of recognition within your workplace for your top talent is one that can be extrapolated to many different people, not just your very top best talent. You wanna offer personalized recognition. Everyone is different. Show you're paying attention.
Natalia Eileen:Show you actually want to recognize this person by making your recognition tailored. Ask questions in the very beginning of your time together, or ask questions when you realize that this person is a rock star. How do they like to be recognized? Do they like just to have someone shout them out in the middle of a team meeting? Do they like to get their favorite snack delivered to their front door?
Natalia Eileen:Do they like handwritten personalized messages? What gets them excited and feeling good about continuing to contribute? You can ask those questions or you can pay attention to what they say lights them up when they feel recognized by others. Again, we don't have to see everyone quietly cracking. It doesn't have to be that way.
Natalia Eileen:That's literally why I do what I do, to support leaders like you in creating workplace cultures where people feel seen and therefore able to thrive and be their full selves. Recognition is just one of the many ways to do that. And your top talent, just like everyone else, deserves great opportunities of recognition. So I actually created a couple of ways to help support you with your recognition work. I wrote an article that you can access via our website at cnetwork.com.
Natalia Eileen:Within this article, we also have an opportunity for you to check out a guide where I've outlined everything related to the earned expected recognition matrix. This is just one way for you to create a workplace culture, create a habit that supports that recognition based culture. You can download this guide, again, at our website, cnetwork.com, and specifically under the insights tab. I am also releasing these videos on the podcast every Wednesday morning. So if you wanna follow along in your car or in your headphones while you're washing the dishes, you can do that.
Natalia Eileen:A new episode is dropping every Wednesday morning on the Scene at Work podcast. And, of course, you can always work with us. We offer a bunch of ways for you to create that workplace culture we're all dying to create. Specifically, I have listed here our workshops, of which we have 15 that we can offer to your employees, your leaders, your senior managers, your newly appointed managers, thinking about ways to support your workplace culture and creating that sense that people can feel seen at work. You can work with us by scheduling a consultation or by checking us out on social media and via our newsletter.
Natalia Eileen:And with that, I hope this was helpful because we just don't need to see all this burnout that's happening. Ugh. We don't need it. We don't need it. Check out all the resources I've just shared, and I'll see you next Wednesday for another weekly wisdom.