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The Love Language of Workplace Appreciation
Valentine’s Day and the month of February is all about showing that special someone how much you love them and what they mean to you. But what about showing employees a little love? In this blog series, we’re going to look at the five love language concepts and how you can incorporate them into the workplace. In part one of this five-part series, we’re going to focus on Words of Affirmation and apply this concept to showing workplace appreciation to employees through a redefined performance review process.
What is a Love Language?
Dr. Gary Chapman is the bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, which discusses love languages as ways to express and experience love and appreciation. People around the world have taken his concept of the 5 Love Languages and have applied them to their personal and professional relationships.
The five love languages consist of:
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch
What’s Your Love Language?
Find out by taking the love language quiz.
WORDS OF AFFIRMATION
How to Apply Words of Affirmation in the Workplace
Employees want to hear from their managers that they are doing a great job and their work matters. When dedication is recognized and validated, it results in more productive and satisfied employees. Performance reviews can be a very powerful tool for using words of affirmation to show workplace appreciation.
Performance reviews are a great way to affirm an employee’s contributions, while also holding them accountable to goals that are set. Applying words of affirmation to your company’s performance review process is the key to better understanding your employees and communicating with them effectively.
Redefine Performance Reviews So They Mean Something
Performance reviews are nothing new to the business world, yet some companies argue they have little impact on employees. You might even find that your own performance review process looks something like this:
Does this sound familiar? We can’t tell you how many times we have heard of this scenario happening over and over throughout multiple organizations and industries. The problem with this scenario is that it leads to employees and managers not taking performance reviews seriously; however, just because your company’s performance review process isn’t living up to its potential right now, doesn’t mean you need to get rid of the process entirely.
One solution to this perpetual cycle is to redefine your company’s performance review and incorporate words of affirmation into your reviews process. This way you will have reviews that better align with your business goals and provide more constructive direction to employees.
Use Performance Reviews to Show Workplace Affirmation
So what does this mean specifically when we apply Words of Affirmation to performance reviews themselves? While performance reviews can be a difficult process, there is a way to create a positive experience by applying the Words of Affirmation love language. Companies need to be more proactive about conducting reviews more frequently and holding employees accountable for reaching their goals.
How to step up your company’s performance reviews process using workplace affirmation:
Provide Regular Feedback
Be Transparent in a Positive Way
Set Goals
Want to Nurture Your Employees?
Read our article on Forbes about ways to focus on employee development.
Talking the Talk With WorKPLACE Affirmation
With better visibility into how employees are performing and what their goals are, management can make more informed decisions about raises, bonuses, employee incentives, training, and even recruiting and hiring. When you speak the language of proactive and meaningful performance reviews, you end up with happy employees. And when you have happy employees, you’re definitely speaking their love language.
Next: Part 2, The Love Language of Workplace Motivation.
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