The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of employees around the world out of their offices and into makeshift home offices as they do their daily work. Around six months into the pandemic, 71 percent of Americans who said their jobs could be done from home were doing their jobs from home.

HR Managers and Directors understand employee recognition is one of the most important areas to keep up with in the workplace. Employee recognition can help with many companies' greatest concerns such as diversity and inclusion and employee motivation. Most of all, employee recognition feeds employee engagement, which leads to increased happiness.

In the American workplace, there’s a traditional idea that the best way to praise an employee is strictly through financial rewards - employees receive a regular paycheck, what more could they need? It can even go so far as to say employees who receive recognition in the form of written or oral praise will get “soft” overtime. 

For young people searching for jobs today, it’s almost impossible to avoid companies trying to lure them in with office perks like game rooms, massage chairs, and yoga classes. And all these things sound fantastic, especially when you’re fresh out of college dorms, where forty people are sharing three showers and you can hear your next-door neighbor snoring through the wall.

Silicon Valley is particularly notorious for providing employees with a swath of benefits and perks from free meals and snacks every day to in-house barber shops and dental offices. Companies like Facebook and Google draw in thousands of new employees, largely by offering an array of perks that appeal to the generations who have come to expect convenience and comfort.

Younger generations tend to receive a fair amount of criticism for their obsessions with instant-gratification-based systems like social media and video games. There’s this idea that somehow, older generations were wired to be more patient while technology has fundamentally corrupted the young mind beyond repair. 

You’ve most likely heard the commonly-held belief that work life and personal life should be distinct and separate. Why should it matter if you enjoy being at work and interacting with your coworkers as long as you can go home and relax at the end of the day? Well, since happiness has become an increasingly popular area of scientific inquiry, more and more research has been produced demonstrating just how important basic happiness can be in many areas of our lives, including at work. 

We’ve all had the life experience where a group activity is going smoothly and morale is high… up until that one person walks in with “negative energy.” It’s like the spell of positivity and efficiency is lifted, and negative emotions spread throughout the rest of the group. How by a single person or small group of people who project their emotions onto the rest of the team, whether it be consciously or subconsciously.

As highly emotional animals, humans pick up on other peoples’ signals like body language and energy levels, and often their own experience will change as a result. This type of mimicry is called emotional contagion, and it can apply to both positive emotions as well as negative ones. In both cases, emotional contagion has important implications when considering effective teamwork strategies and organizational culture in particular.

The dictionary defines muscle memory as, “The ability to repeat a specific muscular movement with improved efficiency and accuracy, that is acquired through practice and repetition.” In other words, we have the ability to put our body and mind on autopilot.

The challenges of managing a multigenerational workplace have come more sharply into focus as Generation Z enters the workforce, Millennials emerge as team leaders, and more Baby Boomers delay retirement. Generational stereotypes and workplace ageism are real issues, but a deft manager can head off discord by emphasizing common values and goals and cultivating a culture of appreciation and support, rather than internal competition.

Preciate is a recognition app with serious ambition: it wants to change the world, one recognition at a time. Preciate believes that through meaningful ‘preciation’ and recognition of others’ achievements that stronger and more powerful relationships will be built.