How Recognition Shapes Workplace Culture, Belonging and Leadership

In this episode of Relationships at Work, we explore how recognition is more than praise — it's a cultural signal that defines values, fosters belonging, and drives performance.

Host Russel Lolacher sits down with a workplace recognition expert from Workhuman to dig into:

• Why generic praise fails to make people feel seen
• How meaningful recognition strengthens psychological safety
• The damage of performative or biased recognition
• Why culture is built from everyday moments, not posters on the wall
• The global, generational, and leadership nuances in how people want to be recognized

If you're a leader or HR professional looking to create a culture of trust, recognition may be the most underutilized lever you have.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: Alright, we're hidden away in Workhuman LIVE right now. Uh, a little quieter because it's the hustle and a bustle outside the doors. Um, yeah. Thank you for joining me. I've got Naomi Dishington with me today.

Naomi Dishington: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Russel Lolacher: You excited to do this now?

Naomi Dishington: Yes?

Russel Lolacher: Is this a second podcast you've ever done, Naomi?

Naomi Dishington: Uh, not a chance.

Russel Lolacher: Okay, perfect. OK, perfect.

Naomi Dishington: Brimming, brimming with excitement.

Russel Lolacher: Seasoned pro.

Naomi Dishington: Yes.

Russel Lolacher: Seasoned pro. Perfect. Uh, Naomi's from Workhuman, uh, and we're gonna be talking about recognition. We're gonna talk about its connection to inform the culture, uh, very familiar topics on this show.

But before we get anywhere, you're not off the hook. You have to answer the question I ask all of my guests, Naomi, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Naomi Dishington: I will share one of each because the, the juxtaposition is interesting. I can remember vividly my first week on a job, not my job at WorkHuman, in which I was walking to the restroom. For a quick minute. And in order to get there, I had to pass my boss's office and she said, oh, would you just pop in here for a minute?

So I popped in and sat down opposite her at her desk, and immediately she started talking something very deeply work related for my onboarding. And I was like, oh, excuse me. I don't have anything to write with. And she just put her hands on the table and she said, don't ever come into my office without a pencil.

I was stunned because I wasn't planning to go into her office. We didn't have a meeting booked, and that set the tone. It helped me understand instantly this is a different leader than the leader who interviewed me, and I'm gonna have some adjusting to do. So contrast that with a few years later, I was hired into a role that felt like a stretch at the time, and my leader said to me on my first day, there's nothing you can say that's gonna lose us a deal.

Go for it. We trust you. We hired you because we trust, you bring it. And I just kind of had that same moment of shock, like wow. And the two very different experiences were both incredibly meaningful. And you can imagine which one has really inspired me to be the kind of leader that F, that infuses the team with that much confidence from day one.

And it just was a surge of, wow, I wanna do really good for this person. Right. I wanna make that person so proud and glad she made the decision to hire me.

Russel Lolacher: Absolutely. And it's also funny how we don't realize something is as bad as it is until we see how good it can be. And vice versa.

Naomi Dishington: 100%.

Russel Lolacher: So, yeah, and I appreciate that because I really love defining things 'cause we don't do a great job of defining things in the workplace a lot of the time. We'll say leadership, but they're like, okay, but what do you mean by leadership? So to hear you talk about how they are defining onboarding, how they are gonna define your experience in those initial moments...um, yeah. And how long ago was that?

Naomi Dishington: More than 10 years, now. The first one. Yes.

Russel Lolacher: And you're still remembering it.

Naomi Dishington: Oh, vividly.

Russel Lolacher: Because I asked this question and you were like...

Naomi Dishington: Instant. Yeah. As vividly as possible. And I think words are so, so powerful. But again, like with onboarding, we might think of onboarding in HR as a time period in which an employee kind of comes up to speed, right?

And there might be a curriculum that accompanies that. Tick, tick, tick, tick. They're onboarded. What that person, I think humans are like little. We have little antennas on our heads when we arrive in a new position, in a new environment, and those antenna are scanning quickly and immediately for what's, what's really the real deal here. Right? And that's the culture. That's what our antenna pickup. Immediately, which is intangible at times. But that's what I think is gonna be fun to talk about.

Russel Lolacher: And, and it's important. And I, I hear what you're saying from the onboarding thing. That's why it's so important that we don't treat onboarding like a one-off, because we talk about employee journeys and then we go, onboarding.

We'll care about you for a week.

Naomi Dishington: Exactly.

Russel Lolacher: I'll see you when you quit. Like really?

Naomi Dishington: Maybe, you'll see...

Russel Lolacher: it's not a... yeah, maybe. But it's not a holistic journey. It is a one week of this compact little, we're gonna put our best foot forward. All these promises. And then it doesn't translate into week two, month three, month six.

Naomi Dishington: It's like, like, okay, you're on your own. Wipe our hands.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah. Did we do onboarding well? I'm like, yeah, but you didn't do the employee journey very well at all. Yeah. And, and I think recognition. I'm super curious, um, as we get into this topic is, and, and first I'm getting ahead of myself, how would you define recognition?

Naomi Dishington: That is such a great question and I've never been asked it, and I work at a recognition company. I mean, the way we think about it is calling out the good work that we see somebody do. And not just the good work, right? The who they are in the midst of that. Right? It was an amazing thing that you did. You leveraged and then really calling out the specifics that they brought to it and the impact that it had on the business.

So the what and the how is what is recognition done right, in my opinion.

Russel Lolacher: So recognition of someone say, you did a great job and left it at that isn't recognition?

Naomi Dishington: In my view.

Russel Lolacher: Sure.

Naomi Dishington: It's not enough.

Russel Lolacher: Okay. Oh, fair and fair, fair comment. Because you need to connect it to a dot of, but did you really see me?

Naomi Dishington: Did you see me? Did you see what it took? Did you notice the impact that it made? Did you notice that it really, uh, embodied the core value X, Y, Z that we're looking to drive? Yeah. It, it, it is like someone saying, that's a nice dress. Is it a nice, it could be a nice dress on anybody, right? Be specific, be meaningful, be authentic, be detailed. Be timely. When does the recognition happen? That's even a piece. If you're telling me six months after the fact, oh, by the way, that was a really good thing you did six months. Like, eh. It loses something. Oh, it absolutely, it loses the punch, right?

Russel Lolacher: So to connect that to the larger culture, how do you feel, and I love that you brought up values. Because so often organizations will say they have values, but it's really just on the website or a poster in the, in HR. As opposed to, but can we operationalize them? Can we connect them to be meaningful? How do you feel recognition could be that connective tissue?

Naomi Dishington: So I thought about that and I've been thinking about that a lot.

I think recognition moments can be signals in a lot of noise of communication. They can be signals about what's really meaningful. They can signal things like our core values. Yes. And in, in our mindset, we would build into any strategic recognition platform the values and behaviors we're looking to drive.

That's the whole purpose. So yes, it would amplify the core values and it would, it would personalize them. It would humanize them. Right? Take that value of integrity off the wall. And what does that mean? So what does that look like having integrity on a day-to-day basis? And what does it look like as an exec and what does it look like as a frontline manager?

And what does it look like if you're on the tarmac at three in the morning working for an airline? And who sees it, right? So it's really flushing it out in a way that's important. I also think the recognition moments, if you think of them as a, you know, pieces of a tapestry, it's all coming together. When you stand back and look at that, you're seeing a piece of art.

If you zoom in, in, in, you're gonna see things like, you know, moments that helped create psychological safety for someone. Moments that made recognition feel more consistent across the group, not just for the high achievers. You're gonna start to notice a, a complexity, a depth of that culture because it's owned by everyone in it and not a poster on the wall

Russel Lolacher: Fair.

Naomi Dishington: Does that make sense?

Russel Lolacher: Absolutely. Yeah. But we also use culture as a broad brush when we both know most organizations have 17,000 subcultures. How do you align recognition when it's not just one homogenous culture in most organizations?

Naomi Dishington: Yes. So I think what I would say is recognition informs culture. But culture also informs us. So it's, it's a two-way dynamic as I think about it. For example, culture tells me, go back to onboarding day one. Culture tells me, it helps me set the tone for behavior. How do we do things around here, I think is somebody's definition of culture. I can't remember the, the author of that phrase.

It's kind of this invisible hand that guides how we do things and how we show up and we learn it quickly. And some, I think, um, Amy Cudi said, we evaluate people subconsciously in an instant on two things, on warmth and competence, and we don't even know we're doing it. But I think we do the same thing with culture, right?

So we are informing it, it's informing us. And once we kinda have a sense, it guides our decision making, it guides our behavior, it influences our priorities, and it gives us as a communal, a shared sense of purpose. So yes, recognition might feel different. We all might have subcultures, but if we honor the human that we're working with.

I think we can align, right? It can synthesize some of those cultures around stuff that we all agree is important.

Russel Lolacher: And that adds another layer to it is the diversity side of it as well. Because even though I'm talking about subculture, that's two colleagues can be a culture, but then you bring from outside the organization into it and what you like to be recognized as could be very different than how I recognize based on geography, based on so many different factors.

So how is that also to inform culture for good or for bad?

Naomi Dishington: It's really a great question, and I, I'm hesitant to open this can of worms, but I'm going to.

Russel Lolacher: Do it.

Naomi Dishington: So I, I'm, I'm very sensitive to the nuances of culture. I grew up in a very, um primitive environment where we were the only outsiders from the west, they had no exposure at all.

So we lived there in this jungle environment and, and we, my parents learned the language and translated and everything else. One fascinating element of that, and the reason I'm telling you is because in that culture, they didn't have a word for, thank you. There was no word. So there are humans on this planet for whom they feel gratitude deeply, but they don't say the word. And so coming from an American or Western perspective, that's, that's crazy. Right? It's, it's absurd. But there are, there's inferences in the culture and there are manners of behavior. It's reciprocal. You gave me, you know, something last week.

I'm gonna give you something next week. We don't even have to talk about it. It's assumed. It's deeply felt, right? So there's that. On one end, we work with folks all over the world for, for it at Workhuman. I'm back now to modern day. We work with folks from, you know, certain organizations that would say, well, we, we feel uncomfortable about that. In our culture, if a manager gives me something as a recognition, she'll do it privately, behind closed doors so that nobody knows. Because that would make, that would make me stand out. It's just fascinating. And you have cultures where the reciprocal nature of recognition feels very natural. And in our system that might flag as fraud.

Like someone's trying to game the system. You get me, I'll give you. Right. But in fact, in their culture, it's totally the norm. So we are sensitive to those things, and that's where I think the Workhuman consulting practice comes into play in a really rich way, because we've had those experiences. We understand, okay, we're gonna roll this out globally.

Companies made that decision. Here's how we're gonna help you communicate that in a way that feels culturally relevant where you are. As best as we can. Right? Some cultures prefer to receive recognition as a group. Others prefer the individual glory. Some like it public, shared on the company award speed with everyone chiming in their congrats.

Other people would rather die.

Russel Lolacher: Absolutely.

Naomi Dishington: And want that privacy setting right and really value that. So I think to honor the preferences of every individual in the world's a challenge in a piece of technology. But I, we really strive as best we can to make it feel meaningful in whatever the context is that you're living and working.

And I think that's important.

Russel Lolacher: Agreed. I also want you to put your black hat on for a minute and get a little negative with me. Because we're talking about how recognition can inform the culture. That informing a culture doesn't necessarily have to be a positive thing sometimes.

Naomi Dishington: True. Oh, absolutely.

Russel Lolacher: So there, I, I, I'm kind of wanting to put you to think of it from that perspective of either lack of recognition or the wrong type of recognition and how that can inform culture.

Naomi Dishington: This is so fun. Like how to get it wrong.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah.

Naomi Dishington: Oh my goodness. I have so many examples. Here's one. Naomi, thank you so much for coming with us on the sales event. Your beautiful smile surely helped us win the deal. That's a literal, we see that. Okay, that's one. It's like, hmm. Is that really what you're trying to say? Or, uh, another one could be, you know, thank you Russel for staying overnight at work to make sure that project got through by morning. It's like, hmm, do we really wanna be promoting that kind of behavior?

Because you have to assume others in the organization are gonna see that. Is that what we're saying? Is that the culture we're trying to drive? There's that, there's also the, the obvious one where the, the bright lights, the people who are front and center get a lot of recognition and it starts to feel like a popularity contest.

That's another really good way to get it wrong where you're not considering who else had a hand in that? Who was behind the scenes contributing to that? Gender comes into play. We see this. Our Workhuman IQ team has uncovered some really uncomfortable data that shows, in fact, men nominate their male peers at a higher level than women.

That was sort of like, okay, duh. But what was shocking was women nominate women with less economic value attached than they give to their male counterparts. So these are the kinds of things you can start to see. Recognition can also be a mirror for organizations. It's fascinating, and that's where you get into the human intelligence that we've been talking loudly about this year because it reveals types of insights like that. How else would you know that?

Russel Lolacher: And it's, and the thing I always love about data is data's great and you have to do something with it though.

Naomi Dishington: Indeed.

Russel Lolacher: Like having that data and information... great, but there's a lot of people that will ignore it because it didn't, doesn't fit their narrative. I don't see this, so it must not be true.

Naomi Dishington: Yep.

Russel Lolacher: Regardless of what data's being presented.

Naomi Dishington: 100%.

Russel Lolacher: So how do we approach people like I, I think of the birthday card analogy. Where we pass a birthday card around and people like... Or, or somebody leaving an organization, I'm like, oh, everybody else says happy birthday. I need to say something else.

Oh, the pressure. Oh, or good luck on your next chapter of your career. Oh, 17 people wrote that. Oh what am I...? But that's the thing. And recognition falls under that in a lot of ways, because some people aren't the extroverts or they're not, they're not used to doing the work. So in order to help with their culture or help with the recognition, help with that connection, they're not built that way.

How do we help them? Because they're, they're contributing to the culture just in a very different way.

Naomi Dishington: Completely. Some folks, it will roll off the tongue, right? We can all think of people in our workplaces who are just naturally exuberant, cheerleaders, champions of others. Those aren't the ones we're worried about.

What we're, what we designed for in our platform as one piece of scaffolding, right? To help those folks is in that moment where you have that white space and you have to type and you know what you type is likely gonna be on the company awards feed for others to see with your name and your face on it. So there's some trepidation there for some. What we have built into the platform is a guide, an advisor, a moment, not AI to say, write it this way. It's not a ChatGPT feature, but it's, Hey, great job bra isn't quite hitting...

Russel Lolacher: Does it say brah?

Naomi Dishington: The value? People say it,

Russel Lolacher: Please say it does.

Naomi Dishington: People say that all the time.

Russel Lolacher: I know they do

Naomi Dishington: Right? We see it all the time. My kids call me brah. Like, so...

Russel Lolacher: I just needed to know that was in there.

Naomi Dishington: So in that moment it could be a little encouragement to say, Hey, you know, add some detail. What, what, what behavior did you see? Be more specific so that when it lands, the person feels okay, I was seen, or I was really seen, and the rest of the organization has the benefit of seeing that's what good looks like. That's what we're talking about. If I'm a newly onboarding employee, the best place for me to go is the company awards feed. Look, okay. What does it take to get a pat on the back? What do we really prize? And if I'm newly promoted and I'm taking on a team and I wanna quickly get to understand the nature of the dynamics on my team.

Look at the, look at their recognition for the, from their last manager, from their last team. It gives you such a beautiful insight quickly about who that person is, what they're known for within the org, and where they excel.

Russel Lolacher: I'm curious how you approach leadership with this as it changes. So change management, say they're working with a recognition program, but you have a great leader that did all this, and then the next leader is like, I don't do that.

That's not how I lead in my leadership style. But the organization's like, but this is how we do it, but the team's gonna suffer because that leader, how do you approach that leader who is not used to doing that sort of thing?

Naomi Dishington: So one of the, I think self-reflection is the best way for leaders to see.

So if we can show them without saying it. So if you can see a dashboard of your peer leaders and you can see that you're, it's...

Russel Lolacher: So shaming.

Naomi Dishington: Um.

Russel Lolacher: A little bit.

Naomi Dishington: Let's... Social pressure. How about social pressure? Sure.

Russel Lolacher: No, that works. Absolute, absolutely. Yeah.

Naomi Dishington: Humans respond to social pressure.

Russel Lolacher: Sure, shaming.

Naomi Dishington: You said we could wear a black hat, so I'm not, so okay.

Russel Lolacher: You can absolutely.

Naomi Dishington: So a little bit of light social pressure.

Russel Lolacher: Now, it's light.

Naomi Dishington: Applied carefully and the, the manager I need will opt in to see it.

Russel Lolacher: Absolutely.

Naomi Dishington: So you have that kind of open mindset when you're going in. If I see that my manager peers are delivering recognition in a much greater way than I am, I have something to, to think about there. No right or wrong necessarily. What also works is data. If I'm we, this is a true story actually, in one organization. There is a plant in the southeast and there's a plant in Nova Scotia. One of those managers is an expert recognition giver and very, uh, generous. One is not. Launched at the same time.

One plant starts to see really it, uh, increased productivity, better retention, fewer absences, and we start looking, oh, well that's interesting. The champion team from that high performing plant went to visit their friends in Nova Scotia and shared some examples like, Hey, this is what we're doing, and look, it's working.

So that light social pressure becomes a coaching opportunity. Like, Hey, we all wanna do better. You wanna hit your metric? Have you considered the impact this might have? We love to interact with what we call recognition science deniers, because converting them is really a fun challenge and data is usually the thing that does it.

Russel Lolacher: The reason I brought that up, yeah. Is because consistency is what I am most worried about. Is that you will have this great leader who's great at recognition and then somebody with a different style comes in and doesn't. So you're seeing a team that is used to working at this level and getting recognized for this level.

Do you think that leaders should be rewarded for being better recognizers? Like just sort of from an idea of um, you're doing well. Like I'm just trying to, recognizing behavior is sort of from a consistency standpoint. Yeah. Because if this is the way you want your culture to go into embracing as recognition being an important part of it, is it an... I love the data 'cause it, it tells you basically if you do this, here's the path forward. But is that enough do you feel for leadership? It should be, but do you feel that's enough for leadership to go to buy in, or do you think it's, there's something, some reward system that needs to be a part of that?

Naomi Dishington: I think there's complexity in that question. I think there's, there's personality and that's something you just, you're never gonna, you're never gonna equalize personality. You're just never gonna do it. So fine. What I think would be a better goal is rather than striving to get all leaders on the same benchmark, I would rather democratize recognition.

So now if I have a poor leader who's not likely to recognize, but I have a really empowered team of 10 who are recognizing, and that leader has to see every one of those recognition moments happening because they might come to him or her for approval, now there's a, there's an awareness. So E, because managers can be a single point of failure.

If your manager didn't see it, it didn't happen. By democratizing it, you really do. That's culture. Right? That's not because now everybody's in and you're sending a message of trust to everyone on those teams. The organization trusts you enough to call out the good work that you see. Now that employee feels a sense of belonging.

A sense of ownership. And don't forget, everyone who gets to nominate also sees the benefit. Not just the recipient. We think about dollars and cents and comp and Ben and all, but really the nominator also has a lift in engagement, a sense of pride, brand ambassador, excetera. So that goes somewhere, that positivity.

It's a huge investment in our people at all levels.

Russel Lolacher: So without going into, you know, you need to set up a whole recognition program... . maybe it's a tomorrow thing.

Maybe somebody's listening to this now and going, I, I want this to be part of our culture. I need this to be part of our culture. Is there a baby step forward to at least have a better understanding of where attention should be paid?

Naomi Dishington: I love it. I think we could all do better just generally in our lives, practicing gratitude. That is not wasted.

Go and order your coffee and that is gonna come out of you into the world, right? So that's missional. Big picture. Smaller, more tactical? Yes. Start each meeting with a moment of gratitude. Show up to your next team call, looking for what's going right calendar. If it's not a habit yet, make it one. Put 10 minutes on your calendar once a week and that is time for you to reflect on your week.

Who had your back? Who did something worth calling out? You will feel so great if you send an email to someone. At the very least, right? We're changing the world and we're changing ourselves.

Russel Lolacher: I think this is also one of those things where you can start the practice in your personal life. Like with journaling, to your point about being tactile about it is like... I mean, gratitude journal, roll your eyes all your life, whoever's listening, but they're super freaking impactful. You just have to do it. But to take that and be grateful on a daily basis for your friends, your family. And then bring that, 'cause again, they're just humans. Nothing changes just because you turned on a computer or you walked into an office.

And if you can bring that in with you, then you already have a framework to how to express and understand gratitude in the workplace.

Naomi Dishington: People are starved for attention. Starved. And especially as there's more remote work, there's a whole new generation coming into the workplace that's learning in a time that's a little bit turbulent. I'll say.

Russel Lolacher: Nice.

Naomi Dishington: And, and what better time just to get really comfortable and intentional about using our words powerfully. Like you started this in a really great way because now I can pull those negative and positive words that I heard 10 years ago to mind in two minutes. We don't, we underestimate the value of a kind word.

I'm convinced of it. And people are starving for kind words. Costs us nothing to give them.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you, Naomi.

Naomi Dishington: On a human level. You're welcome.

Russel Lolacher: That's it. We're done.

Naomi Dishington: Fantastic. Fantastic.