17% leave their job due to insufficient recognition

17% may leave their job, but I'm sure many more simply stay put without truly being engaged, all the while collecting a paycheck.<p>Recognition arbitrage, employees claiming credit for the work of others, by corporate-climber types is probably to blame in many cases. From my experience, credit usually goes to whoever delivers the results or the news first. Smart corporate climbers will go to great lengths to be the first to take credit for new ideas or inventions within a company, and they will work hard to maintain a high profile.<p>I've tried to do a modest amount of self-promotion to stay visible within my companies after a few very bad experiences early in my career. Just as importantly, I try to go out of my way to call out another person's accomplishments whenever I get an opportunity.<p>A company that fails to recognize valuable people isn't likely to succeed. When self-aggrandizing people are promoted faster than the get-it-done types, I take it as a red flag that management has no clue how things are actually done within the company. Companies who instead go out of their way to recognize valuable team members and promote those who work hard will end up with competent and motivated management. Now if only I had identified this pattern earlier in my career I could have avoided some train-wreck companies.

My guess is that when some chose "insufficient recognition", a possible reason was that someone else was taking that recognition. Having a site that allows people to recognize others for their achievements could just as easily compound the issue. For example:<p>Susan wants a new application, so Jim tells Bob to write it. When the application is complete, Jim shows it to Susan, and Susan praises Jim rather than Bob, because as far as she is concerned, Jim made it happen. Yet, Jim did little more than tell Bob to do it and show the result to Susan. If recognition requires little work, Susan will praise Jim more often (if she is not aware of Bob, or chooses not to recognize him). If Bob sees this praise of Jim by Susan for his work enough times, he may leave the company one day citing "insufficient recognition", when, in fact, more recognition was being given, albeit to the wrong person.

Does "insufficient recognition" as a reason for leaving a job mean simply not getting praise, or does it mean employees not getting the changes to their responsibilities, workload or perks that reflects what they feel their strengths and contributions are? Praise is all well and good but no amount of "good job" and wizard clipart is going to make up for the feeling of being stuck in a silo and/or burdened mainly with the stuff other people don't want to do.

This phenomena was described to a t in Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality. In it, he first describes a situation in which one would be paid a high salary (I think a million dollars) for creating power points that were immediately deleted. He asserts that most people would not be able to handle the job. To test, he does some interesting experiments wherein students are paid for assembling simple lego figures. If the figures were then disassembled in view of the student immediately after their completion, students on average, constructed far fewer figures. Worth a read.

I think "Insufficient Recognition" translates into a lot of different things - overly competitive internal structure, poor lines of communication, ill-defined job descriptions, etc.<p>For example, I work at a company with ~50k people. My immediate boss is the "Sales Executive" for our division and, as such, is charged with establishing sales goals by region for our national sales force. Usually, he makes them up. When he realized that I was kind of a data geek, he decided to bump that responsibility to me (at this point I had been here less than a month.)<p>I did what I could with incomplete information and sent him a huge spreadsheet annotated with problems I expected him to correct based on an in-depth understanding of the situation. Turns out he doesn't really know how to use excel.<p>Long story short, my painstaking work to come up with rough numbers is passed off as somebody else's work to come up with great numbers (they weren't great numbers.)<p>This conveys a few things: A) My boss is fine taking credit for my work - this is obviously a problem; B) Nobody really noticed that my numbers were really bad - this is a bigger problem.<p>In an exit interview, this would be easy to categorize as "insufficient recognition," but the real problem is "nobody has any idea what the hell is going on and I'm getting off this boat before somebody puts my name on it."

Recognition is a function of management. If a manager is truly engaged in the day-to-day activities of a team, that manager can (and will) naturally recognize work properly.<p>The problem however is that for whatever reason, management isn't as effective as it should be. A function of time, burn out, or simple inadequacies, if people are leaving a job because they aren't recognized, chances are good that they would also say their manager wasn't very good at his or her job.

In my experience, people that feel chronically under-appreciated are also bad at self-promotion, and would be more appreciated if all of their contributions were actually known. Especially when you go above and beyond (the sort of thing you most want recognition for), it's often a proactive effort that may not have an obvious cause-effect benefit that's visible to anyone outside the situation.

I was on a sales team of ~12 enterprise engineers and account managers that was always a top performing region in our operation. I think this was due to the fact that our boss consistently recognized team members publicly (in group emails or voicemails) almost on a daily basis. It made me want to work harder for him every day. Still the best boss I've had.

Another (frankly more likely) possibility is that people think they deserve more recognition than they actually do. This post is based on the premise that it is the employer's fault and that doesn't necessarily follow.

Speaking for myself at least I think that when I had a better opportunity I filled in reasons for leaving that made me feel more justified about my decision. You can extend the recognition reason pretty far if you're looking for reasons to dislike your current job.<p>For example: "I'm recognized on my team but what about the company at large"? or "Everyone at the company knows I'm great but our customers don't know me."

Peggy Olson: "You never say thank you!"<p>Don Draper: <i>"That's what the money is for!"</i>

This isn't just a facet of the tech scene but jobs all over. I left my restaurant job for this very reason. I gave my managers ample opportunity to tell me where I needed improvement and give constructive criticism. Yet they continued to mess with my hours and not give reason, hiring more people instead of giving the hours to people who needed them. My managers would rather stay non-confrontational, not recognizing that confrontation isn't necessarily a bad thing but a way to improve relationships between coworkers and employees as well as improving quality across the board. It was this lack of communication that drove me away.<p>It was a tough decision for me, because I not only left the job but a steady paycheck. While the check may have been smaller than I'd have liked (or needed) there's something to be said for reliability. Being a contract dev has given me much more freedom and the ability to write my own paycheck, but it's definitely not easy. Some days I'd much rather be working for someone... but finding management that are willing to put themselves out there and communicate on the level needed to keep me happy is tough. I demand a very high level of communication because that's the way I've found to be able to do the best job I can. Make no mistake, I may be tough to get along with but I always strive to do the best job I can. I suppose the only one that really understands that and can deliver on those demands is me.

As an employee for the first time in the last year, I've struggled with this at times. I spent 6 years as an entrepreneur, where validation was with customers, or as a contractor or consultant - where validation was hourly. It was always very clear and direct.<p>Employee validation is more complex. You can accomplish a lot, but piss a lot of people off and you've done wrong. You can make a lot of people happy but not get much done and only the standouts will notice.<p>Nobody wants it to be the care bear cousins, where everyone gets a gold star sticker and a cookie. On the other hand, when you work twice as hard as others to go above and beyond, you do want that to matter or you will burn out.<p>I don't really have a point. Maybe if they're oatmeal cookies?

We recently implemented a new recognition program for and by employees called the "EmploYAY" Program (yeah, it's cheesy on purpose). Anyone in the company can nominate a peer for the award, and based on the particular event or effort that inspired the nomination, the recipient gets different levels of awards. It's definitely helped recognize people for their awesome contributions, and made it fun for all involved.

What do you do when someone wants recognition and support for a skillset or r&#38;d project. Gets it from his manager but does not support the manager in selling the organisation on the skillset or project letting the manager hanging in limbo. Then complains that they are not recognized ?

How many employees desire recognition for simply doing their jobs? I work with several people who feel that they should be promoted because they have managed not to be fired.

If everyone is recognized, does it still keep its value?

and 17% stay at their job due to generous recognition.