Stiff upper lip - 07/2001

Businesses across the UK are losing millions each year because managers are so bad at recognising the efforts of their staff, according to a series of studies by business psychologists Kaisen Consulting.

British companies are consistently bad at giving staff recognition, because of our stiff upper lip - making people feel good about their efforts is apparently not the ëBritish thing to doí.

Yet feedback and appreciation are critical psychological factors in ensuring people remain engaged and motivated. The result of poor recognition is de-motivated staff who put in minimum effort to ëkeep out of troubleí and in extreme cases, become depressed, resentful and embittered, searching for ways of sabotaging the organisation before they eventually leave to find new jobs.

Yet a simple acknowledgement of peopleís efforts and contributions can prevent many of these problems.

Recognition of peopleís efforts ñ emotional appreciation rather than tangible rewards - is one of the strongest factors which affects overall levels of job satisfaction ñ and therefore a significant driver of commercial performance. But British managers are consistently bad at providing this factor ñ they tend to focus on the task but are far too uncomfortable with the more personal but equally critical parts of the job ñ and hence they avoid them.

The simple expectation that people will perform to the best of their ability and the assumption that people know when theyíre doing well leads us to ignore this critical issue. The upshot is that employees often feel taken for granted and complain that the only time they get noticed is when things go wrong.

In this country, if someone is good at their job, we promote them out of it and give them management responsibility ñ but without any specialist training. We tend to believe that management is a soft skill, but itís not. It has to be learnt like any other. Under the circumstances, itís not surprising that British management often under performs.