The most critical component of 2023 planning

A strong talent strategy is essential to engage employees and yield strong business results

Gallup’s 2022 State of the Global Workplace Report stated that 60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable. A quick review of the CUInsight Weekly Job Report tells a compelling story —job openings are increasing weekly. While I wish I could attribute this change to industry growth, the honest truth is that employees are making changes, which can have major impacts to our credit unions.

With the close of 2022 in sight, most of us have entered Strategic Planning season. This year, it’s critical to prioritize workforce engagement. Setting a Talent Strategy that has a strong connection to your credit union’s purpose, values, and goals is a crucial first step. A strong talent strategy helps everyone understand how they contribute to organizational success and empowers employees to do their best work, driving desired business results— a win-win.

We’ve developed some questions to help you take inventory of your talent strategy. Review the following questions on Purpose, Values and Goals and create or update your Talent Strategy!

Purpose

Most of us have taken inventory of our personal and professional lives over the past couple of years to determine what’s most important to us. Employees certainly have, and they want to know why a company exists – beyond making a profit. When leaders are able to help employees understand that they are a part of something greater than themselves, and that the work and tasks they do every day are making a difference.

Questions to ask:

• If you asked an employee what the organization’s purpose is, could they share it?

• How would employees respond to ‘The purpose of the company makes my work feel important’?

• Do employees feel they are empowered to live out the purpose?

Values

When employees’ personal values align with the organizational values, they have a stronger sense of belonging and engagement. But a single descriptor for a value is not enough. You must define specific actions and behaviors to ensure employees know not only what they should do, but how to do it.

Questions to ask:

• Does each organizational value have behaviors/actions tied to them?

• What stories are being shared with employees? Do they reinforce how your values show up?

• Do your employee programs (benefits, pay, time-off, policies) reinforce the values or contradict them?

• Are values integrated into all of your talent practices—Recruitment, Performance, Development, Recognition, Incentives, DEI?

Goals

Having a meaningful Purpose and defined Values create a strong culture foundation. But to ensure genuine connection and a sense of belonging, it’s critical that employees understand how they contribute to achieving business objectives—  individually and as a collective team.

Questions to ask:

• Does every employee have goals tied to the strategic plan and clear expectations for their role?

• If you asked employees to name your company’s top measures of success, could they do it?

• Can employees describe how their work helps drive key results?

Take action!

In our engagements we see that credit unions that develop and maintain a talent strategy attract and retain employees and ultimately drive measurable business results. Here are three things you can do to get a pulse on the effectiveness of your Talent Strategy:

1. Reach out to ten employees from across the organization and ask them:

• What is our purpose?

• What are our values?

• What are our key measures of success/goals?

• How does your role contribute to the goals?

• How often are you connecting with your leader on your goals?

2. Review your corporate communications for the last week.

• Are the purpose, values and goals reinforced in the messaging?

• Is your 2022 business plan easily accessible for all employees?

3. At your next leadership team meeting, share your insights and plan for your talent strategy to address gaps and enhance the employee experience!

As you check-in on your strategic plan with your board and leadership teams this fall, make sure talent attraction, succession planning, and employee engagement are at the forefront of your 2023 business plan.

CUES CU Management Feature | Above And Beyond Onboarding

How credit unions can respond to the Great Resignation and set labor standards that will benefit everyone for years to come

Credit unions have not been immune from the effects of the pandemic-induced Great Resignation; employees have quit their jobs in higher-than-usual numbers, and positions have remained unfilled much longer than is typical.

You may have heard stories of employers getting no applicants for their open positions—or experienced it yourself. Or perhaps you’ve heard about interviewees who stood up the recruiting panel. Even worse are what CUES member Kent Lugrand, president/CEO of $1 billion InTouch Credit Union in Plano, Texas, calls “ghost employees”—new hires who accept a position and then don’t bother to show up for their first day. 

Credit unions offer some of the work perks employees are asking for today, such as a mission-driven culture and employee-centric benefits. But it is important to take a new tack when it comes to communicating those perks to potential employees and mentoring them through the application and hiring process. 

The Great Resignation by the Numbers

The pandemic caused many people to reevaluate their priorities, which caused a record number of people to leave their jobs. In 2021, 47.8 million people voluntarily left their jobs, an increase of 12 million over the previous year and the highest report of voluntary resignations since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking that number in 2001.  

Financial services fared better than many sectors of the economy, but analysis from the economic policy center showed that quits outpace hires in our industry too. 

Why did so many employees quit? Employee well-being company Limeade surveyed people who quit their jobs, and they found that burnout was the top reason (40% of respondents), with organizational changes (34%), lack of flexibility (20%), discrimination (20%) and not feeling valued (20%) also cited. Limeade also found that a whopping 28% of the people who quit had been so unhappy that they left without first lining up a replacement job. And many older workers chose to retire, as stock market growth and rising home equity gave them a sense of financial security.

With all these workers quitting, businesses have a lot of jobs to fill, leading to a shift in the balance of power between employers and employees. BLS data shows that for every 10 open positions, there are only six unemployed people to fill those jobs. To help attract employees, businesses in all sectors are raising wages and offering signing bonuses. Payroll processor ADP’s research arm found that existing employee wages rose 5.9% in 2021, and job switchers saw increases of 8%.

What This Means for Credit Unions

Although there seems to be a general feeling of doom and gloom among hiring professionals across industries, there is good news. First, quits seem to be declining as 2022 progresses, according to the monthly reports from the BLS. Wage growth also seems to be leveling out, making it easier to predict staffing costs as the year continues. And credit unions are in an industry sector that has seen lower turnover across the board.

As credit unions work to overcome the Great Resignation and rebuild their talent pipeline, there are three main areas to focus on: pre-application, onboarding and retention.

Pre-Application

The most important change for credit unions to make in their talent acquisition strategy is to move from a passive strategy to an active one. According to Jason Walker, chief people officer of Thrive HR Consulting, “People are not seeking you out anymore. You have to go out and find the people you want in your organization.” To do that, he suggests using LinkedIn to find people to invite to apply, hosting online and in-person events (where it makes sense and fits local requirements) and increasing referral bonuses for current employees.

Chary Krout, co-owner and partner at employee engagement firm Cultivate, suggests that credit unions look outside the industry. “A lot of times,” she says, “organizations, boards and executive teams are looking for a specific skill set. And they recognize those skill sets may not be found in the credit union space.” Instead, recruiters need to search other areas of financial services and even other industries to find the right people.

“Boards and executive teams are looking for a specific skill set. And they recognize those skill sets may not be found in the credit union space.”

New college graduates might also be a great option, Walker notes, even if you wouldn’t have hired at that experience level in the past. The added training needed may be offset by the ability to get someone motivated into the position quickly.

Onboarding

An active strategy is necessary for onboarding new hires as well.

Credit unions will need to keep a one-on-one relationship with new hires from the time they make the offer until the hire shows up on their first day, says Walker. “You need to do an immense amount of hand-holding in that two-week period—from when they give notice at their old job to when they start—to make sure they show up.” Have the branch or department manager call ahead of the start date to get to know the new hire and send a welcome basket or other type of gift. Make sure they know their peers will be ready to welcome them and that a lunch has been set up for that first day. The crucial element here is to keep the connection warm, because your new employee may be reviewing other offers while they are waiting to start at your credit union.

Once you get your new employee in the door, you may want to change up your typical onboarding process. For example, Molly Lehrsch, co-owner and partner at Cultivate, points out that employees coming from a different industry may need some help getting acclimated to the jargon and the industry. What is NCUA? What is the league? What key publications are available in our industry? (CUES members can download the “Welcome to Credit Union Leadership” for their hires who are new to the industry.)

For employees coming from inside the industry, helping connect them with the contact at the league they’re likely to work with the most or introducing them to the local young credit union professionals group could help foster feelings of belonging right away. Just take 20 minutes to figure out what will help your new person feel comfortable in your credit union, Lehrsch suggests. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Retention

Although the immediate crisis of being unable to fill open positions may be taking the bulk of HR’s and the board’s attention right now, retention is the more important piece. A recent study by Glassdoor reports that the average cost of hiring a new employee is $4,000. And that only includes the hard costs. That number doesn’t take into account the soft costs of an open position, including lost productivity and stress on the other workers. 

Many employees who have moved to new companies are feeling regret. Job posting site The Muse surveyed its audience and found that 72% experienced “shift shock,” a realization that the new company or job isn’t what they expected. And 41% said they’d leave that new job in just a few months.

With these results, it seems much more cost-effective to do the work to keep employees happy in the first place. But what do employees want?

Fair pay is important. InTouch CU does salary surveys every year to ensure parity in their local market. “I never want it to be where my employee can walk across the street to another institution, do the same job and get paid substantially more,” Lugrand says. 

Benefits are also critical. Health insurance, retirement contributions and paid time off for illness and vacation remain important, but Lehrsch says credit unions also need to look at other benefits that fit the employee they are going after. For example, a young professional may not “care about 100% paid medical but would really benefit from a college debt repayment program,” she notes. The key is to explore benefits from the lens of your employees.

Walker echoes this approach. Some companies are providing sign-on bonuses in cryptocurrency, because many younger millennials believe in the power of crypto, he reports. Others are offering pet insurance as a benefit because it’s valuable to so many job-seeking pet owners. Offering a flexible benefit package that includes perks you may not have expected a decade ago will help boost retention as well as success in hiring.

“The key is to explore benefits from the lens of your employees.”

What do employees value more than a robust benefits package? Work-life balance, according to a 2022 LinkedIn Talent Solutions report. Sixty-three percent of respondents said work-life balance was their top priority when choosing a new job. Flexible work arrangements, including the option of at least part-time remote work is an important component of work-life balance for credit unions who want to attract and retain top talent. After COVID-19 forced credit unions and other businesses to figure out how to work remotely, many employees haven’t wanted to come back to the office full-time. Whether it’s an issue of childcare or personal preference, 68% of workers would prefer to work from home three to five days per week.

Although it can seem challenging to implement remote work for some positions in the credit union, there is technology that can ensure contact center staff, for example, can work remotely—and securely—at least part of the time. Interactive teller machines can allow front-line staff to perform many functions for members without actually being physically in the branch that member is visiting, says Lugrand. Creative job-sharing could also let front-line staff work part-time physically in the branch and part time remotely in the contact center. With internet access and VPNs to ensure security, the experience can be the same for members while providing a highly desired employee benefit.

Finally, employees want to be part of a company that makes a difference. Lugrand announced a few changes and initiatives at InTouch CU recently that helped his employees feel more connected to their community. The first was additional paid time off that employees can use to volunteer at a charity or organization they’re passionate about. The second was a donation to local food banks. The credit union surveyed employees, he says, asking “If the credit union could only support one charity to make a difference, what would it be?” And 90% of the employees ranked “food insecurity” as one of their top issues to address. As a result, InTouch CU now donates a portion of every loan payment and every debit card swipe to local food banks and charities that help feed the community.

Making the Change

As credit unions adapt to the new normal of hiring and onboarding, the challenges can seem overwhelming. Assess where your biggest pain points are—whether it’s in finding appropriate applicants, getting new hires to commit or retaining great staff—and decide which changes you need to make first to solve the immediate issue of shifting from the Great Resignation into the Great Regeneration. Then, with the right talent in place, you can move on to the next elements of your post-pandemic strategy.

Attraction and retention metrics: Go deeper to drive change and employee engagement

Tracking the right employee engagement metrics will focus efforts and deliver desired results.

No one wants to become a casualty of the Great Resignation. But utilizing traditional people metrics alone won’t provide the insights needed to create higher employee engagement levels. By gathering additional data points, we can focus effort where it counts, quickly adapting and changing talent strategies – especially in the areas of recruitment and professional development. 

Attraction Data

There’s More to The Story than Time to Fill

Aggregate metrics that summarize several activities and efforts, like time to fill , often make it a guessing game on why desired results aren’t happening. Without additional data points and context, it can be hard to understand where changes are needed and accountability resides. Time to source and time to interview help focus on the details behind the broader time to fill metric.

Time to source

This data point gives insight into the power of a recruitment brand. It’s common for recruiting teams to track cost per posting, but this only shows how much was spent, and not if the posting is getting in front of the right people. Time to source validates whether job opportunities are reaching the right talent pools and if not, makes it easy to adjust where, how and when to share job opportunities.

To improve results, revisit the job posting and evaluate how the language aligns with your culture. Is it two pages long, yet your values and messaging are about making things ‘simple’? Maybe there is misalignment and a shortened, five bullet list would be a truer representation of your culture. 

Time to interview

This metric helps leaders understand the experience created for the candidate. Nothing says to a potential hire that people aren’t a priority more than a manager who delays a job interview for weeks. Candidates expect that their questions are answered quickly and directly by the hiring manager. One of the goals in attraction efforts is to help candidates envision themselves working for a new employer early in their journey.

Time to interview demonstrates that the role of a Hiring Manager is just as crucial as a Recruiter. If your data reveals that managers aren’t committing time to candidates, it’s better to stop the recruiting process than combat a poor impression.

Why attraction data matters

When recruitment brand and candidate interviewing experiences align, new hire engagement and onboarding satisfaction is improved. The recruitment process should model the high-touch, responsive, and engaged interactions we’re expecting our people to deliver to members.

Retention Data

Onboarding and professional development should take a front seat.

Attracting great talent is difficult in this hyper-competitive environment, so keeping our best people and helping them grow should be a top priority. Developing our employees has become an organizational mantra, but looking beyond feel-good metrics like number of online classes completed, is critical. Looking at attrition and career development metrics inform how to create customized development programs and experiences for employees. 

Attrition of New Hires

Knowing why new hires are leaving in the first 90—180 days is crucial for attraction and retention. This metric helps identify cultural and recruiting issues that may lead to fallout. New hire attrition data gives insight into whether what was promised was delivered, if the candidate sees a future with the company, and most importantly, if they feel like they belong.

Attrition of Critical Talent

We sometimes call this regrettable turnover, but losing critical talent is a clearer statement about why it’s important. Determining what roles and skillsets your credit union can’t afford to lose, and then tracking tenure/turnover is a top priority. Identifying critical talent might include factors like: how difficult is it to find replacements, succession planning, or overall impact to the business if expertise is lost.

Career Stagnation

Career stagnation highlights opportunities to improve access to learning and development offerings. If you’re not tracking this metric, start today! Begin by identifying loyal employees who have not had meaningful growth in their role for 2+ years and are below market in their salary range. Ensure equitable access to skill-building and growth opportunities for all demographics and adapt as needed.

Why retention data matters

When both career stagnation and attrition of new hires is low, an organization can see higher engagement and NPS scores. These measurements are culture indicators and drive stronger business results!

Take Action!

You Get What You Measure

Attracting and retaining the best talent should be measured, monitored, and managed. Go deeper, look at the data frequently, ask the hard questions and take risks. Try new ideas to move the needle. Data can help tell a story and bring awareness, but it takes action and commitment to make change.

CU Times Feature: Recognition Improves Employee Relations

The $12.6 billion First Tech Federal Credit Union in San Jose, Calif., had a problem – the company’s employee recognition tool wasn’t working. The previous tool was outdated, it wasn’t social and its reward amounts weren’t meaningful. In addition, the former program’s budget was parsed out to leaders and the amounts were small; because of this, it didn’t encourage employee participation or cross-team participation, explained Chary Krout, former SVP, human resources at First Tech and current founder/co-owner of Cultivate.

Employees were ultimately unsatisfied with this. They wanted more clarity and communication on performance. They felt their managers just talked at them, and that they didn’t really see the work they were doing and understand the areas where they needed development and support. The company’s leadership also recognized a need for change – they wanted a solution that would help them transition away from annual reviews, and ultimately empower employees to adapt with agility and update their priorities as the goals of the business changed, as well as reinforce a culture of shared accountability, according to a First Tech Case Study.

“Recognition is important to our people and culture. Traditional annual bonus programs are a one-time shot in the arm and key contributions are often forgotten by the time we get to the annual performance review,” Krout said.

She’s right – once-a-year recognition is great, but generally only great for that one day and maybe a short time after. Employees often need more regular engagement and recognition to feel satisfied at work.

Not only is recognition important for employees at First Tech, it seems to be important for employees across the country. However, many companies aren’t meeting the mark, and recognition may be one of the best ways to decrease turnover, and improve employee engagement and satisfaction.

An analysis by Gallup found only one in three workers in the U.S. strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work in the past week. “At any given company, it’s not uncommon for employees to feel that their best efforts are routinely ignored. Further, employees who don’t feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year,” according to the Gallup analysis.

The risk for turnover is even higher for high-performing employees. “Highly talented employees who are not engaged were among those who had the highest turnover in each organization – on par with low talent, disengaged employees. In other words, when your best employees are not engaged, they are as likely to leave your organization as your employees who tend to have performance issues and are unhappy,” a Gallup article stated.

A Psychology Today article confirmed similar sentiments regarding the link between turnover and lack of employee recognition.

The article noted a study funded by Make Their Day, an employee motivation firm, and Badgeville, a gamification company, which surveyed 1,200 U.S. employees from a broad cross-section of industries. It highlighted the following results:

• 83% of respondents said recognition for contributions was more fulfilling than any rewards or gifts;

• 76% found peer praise very or extremely motivating;

• 88% found praise from managers very or extremely motivating; and

• 90% said a “fun work environment” was very or extremely motivating.

First Tech’s leaders understood the importance of a robust recognition program. They wanted to create an experience that allowed employees to not only recognize peers on their own team, but also recognize colleagues on any team within the credit union.

The credit union partnered with Workhuman to design and implement an application that connects employees to their business and coworkers, and drives measurable business results. The application is composed of two programs: Conversations and Recognize. The Conversations pilot program enables managers to frequently check in with employees to provide feedback, and set goals and priorities. The Recognition tool enables people to express gratitude for work being done. “The functionality of the tool is simple and easy to use. You can ‘Recognize’ co-workers, ‘Redeem’ awards, scroll the Recognition Feed and comment/like on awards given,” Krout explained.

Krout said the Recognize tool provides a microphone-type effect that is commonly experienced when interacting on a social media feed. Together, the two tools provide a platform for users to effectively tell the complete story of an employee’s impact and journey at First Tech.

Results for the past year are positive: 100% of employees received a Recognize award within the first year and more than 3,400 check-ins occurred during the Conversations pilot group. Initial data also showed employees who give recognition are two times less likely to leave the credit union than those who just receive recognition. Employees who receive recognition are more than two and a half times less likely to leave First Tech, according to the First Tech case study.

The Recognize tool has been especially beneficial to contact center employees, who often encounter challenging member interactions. Leaders are using the Recognize tool to motivate the call center team, lift engagement and remind employees of everything they’re doing right, Krout said. “We believe that when you are able to retain employees, you’re able to deliver better results. When retention levels remain strong, it helps ensure projects are delivered [in a] timely [manner], [that there is] minimal business interruption of daily transactions, and future planning processes continue,” Krout explained.

These results fall in line with the goals of Workhuman’s Social Recognition tool, which was created as a response to the insight that frequently sharing positive stories of gratitude and respect, in alignment with company values, motivates and inspires people to do great work, and result in measurable benefits for the organization. Here are some stats on the tool:

• Employees who receive more than five rewards per year are significantly more likely to also increase their year over year performance rating.

• Employees with 1.5 to two awards per quarter feel more appreciated for their work, and as a result, are significantly more engaged.

• On average, a rate of seven to 10 recognition moments per year is correlated to a two times lower chance of voluntary turnover.

Krout explained that other credit unions are moving forward with the concept of recognition as a way to further engage employees in their work and demonstrate how their values show up every day. “These progressive credit unions and leaders see recognition and continuous feedback is a key component in connecting their employees to their mission, vision and values, and most importantly, connecting them to their work, each other and members,” she said.

CU Times Feature: Let’s All Set Fire to the Burnout Epidemic

Everyone handles work-related stress differently, but for me, the feeling resulting from a towering pile of projects is pretty distinctive. I imagine it’s what the early stages of being suffocated would feel like, and goes something like this: My carefully-planned to-do list is set for the week. I’m comfortably busy at work, but have enough breathing room to schedule in a few workouts, a happy hour and time to prepare healthy meals. Then, within the span of a few hours, an email comes in from another department requiring follow-up, a co-worker stops by my desk with a stack of documents that need my attention, and someone from the executive team emails about a new campaign I must set in motion.

These unexpected projects, some of which have no clear directions or set deadlines, wipe out that sense of calm I had earlier, replacing it with panic, a loss of control and even resentment toward those who unapologetically came along to ruin my plan. Feeling overwhelmed, I step outside the office for a few minutes to gain my composure, because despite my frustration over the workload, I still value my professional reputation and would rather not have anyone see me in this frenzied state.

With most companies striving to accomplish as much as they can with as few resources as possible, it’s common for a single employee to be dumped with a heavy workload that should really be split between two, maybe even three, people. And most employees in this position – myself included – would hesitate to address it for fear of sounding lazy or whiny. Plus, adding salt to the wound, employees who dutifully complete additional projects often don’t get a big expression of appreciation from their employer – they just get more work.

That’s bad not only for the employee’s health, but for the employer’s retention rate. A 2018 Gallup survey revealed that 23% of full-time workers say they are very often or always burnt out at work; that group is 63% more likely to take a sick day, 23% more likely to visit the emergency room and 2.6 times as likely to leave their current employer.

Here are some ways to get rid or ahead of burnout, whether you’re an employee dying for a glimpse of light at the end of the assignment tunnel, or an employer who wants their team to be productive, engaged and happy.

For Employees: Banish Burnout Without Getting Banished

• As a first step, determine whether the workload you’ve been overwhelmed by is truly unreasonable. Review your job description, or solicit opinions from friends outside your organization who are familiar with your line of work. You may just need to brush up on your time management skills.

• Have a few stress-busting techniques in your back pocket for the most overwhelming moments at work, like practicing breathing exercises or listening to a five-minute session on a meditation app. Also, try thinking about your work in small pieces. I used to struggle with managing stress at work when faced with numerous tasks at once because I would internalize the burden of every project in its entirety. Now, I remind myself that my brain doesn’t need to solve everything at once – it only needs to wrap itself around one step at a time.

• If you’ve concluded your workload truly is a problem and want to talk to your boss about it, do two things before walking into that meeting. First, prepare a detailed list of your current projects and deadlines, what each one entails and how long each will take to complete to prove that a lighter load is necessary. Second, be ready to present a few solutions, like using technology to streamline tasks or outsourcing items to an intern or freelancer. Then plan a check-in meeting a few weeks later to discuss how the new process is going.

For Employers: Give the Space and Recognition Your Team Deserves

• Consistent, transparent communication with all of your team members is one key to preventing employee burnout. A 2017 Forbes article on the subject recommended that managers maintain an open-door policy, give employees regular feedback (including a full, in-person explanation if the company chooses not to use something they just worked hard on) and include employees in the decision-making process instead of just giving orders.

• Clearly define what is expected of each employee. Forbes noted that when roles are not clearly defined, blame gets spread throughout the team, causing frustration and potentially burnout. It also emphasized managers should ensure employees have what they need to fulfill those expectations, whether it’s training or an additional new hire.

• Know the signs of burnout so it can be promptly addressed. According to Forbes, common signs to look for are exhaustion, disengagement from work, a drop in performance, and when an employee who is typically chatty during meetings becomes unusually quiet.

• Create a compliment-heavy culture. When we’re busy, it’s easy to move from one project to the next without pausing to thank others for a job well done, but it’s critical to take that pause. Feeling appreciated and valued at work is a major key to engagement, and ultimately, retention.

I’ll end with an example of how one credit union put that last tip into action. The $12.6 billion, San Jose, Calif.-based First Tech Federal Credit Union partnered with Workhuman to launch a digital platform with two tools: Recognize, which allows employees to recognize each other for demonstrating the CU’s core values, and Conversations, which enables managers to frequently check in with employees, provide feedback and set priorities.

“Employees’ response and adoption was overwhelming, so we harnessed their support and buy-in to launch across the credit union.”

As part of its launch strategy, First Tech hosted a “gratitude bar” at its employee conference, where representatives from each team got a hands-on experience with the new tool, Chary Krout, former SVP, human resources at First Tech and current founder/co-owner of Cultivate, explained. “Employees’ response and adoption was overwhelming, so we harnessed their support and buy-in to launch across the credit union.”

In less than a year after implementation, 100% of employees received a Recognize award, and there were over 3,400 check-ins through a Conversations pilot group, according to a First Tech case study. First Tech also found through internal data analysis that employees who recognize others are two times less likely to leave First Tech than those only receive recognition, and those who receive recognition are 2.5 times less likely to leave the CU than those who are never recognized.

“Neuroscience research supports that sharing appreciation has the same psychological benefits of receiving recognition from others.”

“Sharing gratitude and recognizing others helps remind us about the work we do, and the great people we get to do it with,” Krout said. “Neuroscience research supports that sharing appreciation has the same psychological benefits of receiving recognition from others. Ultimately, when we have busy days and work is challenging, stopping to recognize others helps connect us back to our work and appreciation for what we accomplish together.”