Why Recognition Is Key to Unlocking Employee Engagement and Retention
- Sean D’Arcy
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
According to Gallup, global employee engagement has fallen to its lowest point since 2020, sitting at just 20%. Despite years of workforce leaders talking about the critical importance of engagement, elevating it to buzzword status, actual engagement levels continue to drop. This does not mean there are no paths out of the woods, however, and many leaders may already know where they are. In the 2025 Workplace Culture Report, when leaders were asked what would improve their team’s engagement the most, 69% pointed to a simple solution: recognition.
Celebrating employees’ achievements and contributions can no longer be thought of as a ‘nice to have.’ It’s a cornerstone of a productive and sustainable workforce. Professionals who strongly agree that their coworkers give them valuable feedback are five times as likely to feel engaged at work, and well-recognized employees are 45% less likely to have left their company two years later. Over 90% of employees say they would work harder if others recognized their contributions. When companies get recognition right, they not only retain their talent at higher rates; they unlock the energy of entire teams.
Unfortunately, the Workplace Culture Report also revealed employee recognition as one of the main tools leaders believe is missing from their team engagement toolkit, only following better access to training and upskilling opportunities. Only 22% of employees in the U.S. believe they receive the recognition at work that they should. This number hasn’t changed since 2022, even as the number of senior leaders calling recognition a strategic priority has risen from 28% to 42%. Such a gap between awareness and action suggests a need for clearer steps and easier solutions to implement.
Organizational leaders looking to design an employee recognition plan they can actually put into practice can begin with these three strategies:
1. Start with celebrating learning achievements
Changing company culture is always challenging, because culture is shaped by the behaviors, attitudes, and values of everyone in the business. Instead of trying to build a culture of recognition across the entire organization at once, leaders should choose one area to change and focus on effective delivery. For most organizations, the perfect place to start is training.
Nearly every employee participates in training, and it provides clear pathways to achievement and milestones to celebrate, as opposed to a more ambiguous “employee of the month” type of program. Organizations can recognize employees’ learning achievements in many ways, from shareable certificates and badges to company-wide spotlights—and most importantly, opportunities to use their new skills and knowledge.
2. Empower employees to become peer leaders
It’s not only important to be recognized by managers, but by peer coworkers as well. In fact, research shows that companies with peer-to-peer recognition initiatives are 37% more likely to see a positive impact on business outcomes compared to companies that only focus on recognition by managers.
One powerful way to spark more peer recognition is to make it easy for any employee to be a leader. With the help of accessible digital learning and communication tools, employees can host sessions for peer learning and knowledge exchange, brainstorming, and more. By doing this, employees create their own opportunities for recognition, boosting their profile within their organization, making connections with coworkers, and honing their leadership skills.
3. Tap into the power of friendly competition
Friendly competition provides built-in opportunities for recognition by highlighting winning participants or teams. While some workforce initiatives can feel like only a box to tick, friendly competition gives employees an outcome to get invested in, whether winners earn a prize or simple bragging rights. This boosts recognition’s visibility, and therefore impact. Though gamified activities can be completed solo or in teams, a strong social element is a powerful motivator.
Explore activities like hackathons, creative pitch contents, or knowledge tournaments. Digital tools can also add friendly competition—and therefore, recognition—to regular work activities, including meetings and presentations, internal communication, and events.
By starting to integrate recognition throughout the flow of work, organizations gradually build a culture of recognition where every employee feels confident that their contributions will be seen and valued. This gives employees a greater sense of purpose in their work and motivates them to strive for top performance. The result: employees stay at their companies longer and bring their A-game to work, turning moments of appreciation and celebration into real business impact.
Sean D’Arcy is Chief Solutions Officer at global learning and engagement platform company Kahoot!
