How to Reduce Employee Turnover with Authentic Workplace Appreciation with Dr. Paul White

Dr. Paul White is a psychologist, author, and speaker on developing healthy workplace relationships. He is the co-author of the best-selling book The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, which he wrote with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages. Based on extensive research, he has developed practical ways for leaders and employees to communicate authentic appreciation that leads to increased employee engagement, lower staff turnover, more positive work environments, and higher productivity.

He is a psychologist by training. Early in his career he focused on evaluating individuals for ADHD, dyslexia, and learning problems. Mid-career he was approached by friends who were business consultants and who, in the late 90s and early 2000s, kept running into family business issues, because 85 percent of all the companies in the U.S. are family-owned. He had grown up in the context of a family-owned business himself. So he wound up traveling around the country and some in Europe, working with highly successful multimillion dollar family-owned businesses on the family issues and relational issues that intertwine with the business, including the next generation questions. Around that same time he and his wife were rereading The 5 Love Languages, and he wondered whether the idea could help in family businesses.

He pursued Dr. Chapman. It took a year to get through to him. They finally met, he pitched the idea, and the two of them worked on it together, developing the book, an online assessment that half a million people have now taken, and training materials so people could apply the concepts in their own setting.

The languages themselves are the same: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, tangible gifts, and physical touch. They are applied differently, because the nature of relationships at work is different from a personal relationship with a spouse or your kids. Love is not a great match for most workplace relationships, so appreciation became the equivalent concept, and the materials and the assessment were translated into that. The assessment does not only identify the language that matters to a person. It identifies the actions, because an act of service looks different for an HVAC person than for a nurse in a hospital or a school teacher. Contextualizing it that way produced 20 different versions for different work settings, so the actions match the environment.

What made the correlation obvious was that not everybody feels loved in the same way, and field research and conversations showed that not everybody feels appreciated in the same way either. Most workplaces start with words. Thank somebody, praise them, give them an award in front of others. But less than half of employees have words as the primary way they want to be shown appreciation, so if you only use words you are going to miss over 50 percent of your people. Tangible gifts in the form of bonuses and raises were not working either. People kept leaving their jobs and not feeling valued even when a bonus showed up.

One example of the disconnect came from a construction company in North Carolina. He asked the dad how the plan for business succession to his son was going. The dad said he thought it was going well, that his son was stepping up, that it would work. He walked across the hall and asked the son the same question. The son said this is never going to work, I can't ever please my dad. That pattern turned up over and over.

This was in the 20 teens, and there was a lot of turnover, which continues today. Over 90 percent of all companies have some kind of employee recognition. It might be as little as a card on your birthday, or it might be bonuses. It was not working then and it is not working now, because people do not feel valued from it.

The book and the assessment were developed at the same time, because they wanted to know how people wanted to be shown appreciation. What came out of it was that most people do not necessarily want to be appreciated by their supervisor or their boss. They want it from their colleagues, or from people underneath them. So the assessment lets a person identify which actions they want and from whom, because it may differ between a boss and a colleague. Then came a training process, about a half day, to teach people how to show appreciation authentically instead of going through the motions, and how to deliver it in ways that mean something to the recipient. Most of us start by communicating appreciation the way we like to receive it, which is fine, except that maybe 25 or 30 percent of people match you.

Without the assessment there are two tactics people use, neither of which works very well. One is to observe how people give or receive appreciation, but it is not a high frequency behavior. It usually happens one on one between two people, and unless you are one of those two people you are not going to see it. The other is to ask, and most people do not know. They say they don't know, tell me thanks. That is about all you get.

The reason the work had to go down to the level of specific actions is that even inside a single category there is enormous variety. Words of affirmation are words that affirm the value of a person, but about half of the population does not want to be affirmed in front of others or publicly. That is exactly what employee recognition usually is: the employee of the month award and a little ceremony. For about half of employees, they really do not want that. They do not want to be called out in front of others. Even though the intent is good, it does not accomplish the goal of helping them feel valued in a way that is important to them.

Appreciation has not really been a topic or a focus in the workplace until recently, except in the form of recognition, so people tend not to think in those terms. The training gives lots of examples and has people harken back to prior relationships, a school teacher or a coach who did or said something that supported them and made them feel valued, or an earlier job. People generally know what they do not like first. It is harder for them to narrow down that yes, they really do like it when somebody helps them out when they are overwhelmed and trying to get through the day.

As for why it took so long, he grew up working most of his life in the 1900s, when it was about getting the work done and doing the job, and you got paid and had a nice day. It was not part of the milieu of the workplace. Different generations have different expectations for jobs now. They want work to be fulfilling and satisfying and to meet needs other than the paycheck, and Gen Z and the generation below them have higher expectations for what they will get out of a work experience than he did as a teenager or a 20-something. His own high school job was part-time at a Christian bookstore. He enjoyed it, but the boss scared him to death. The man owned other businesses, including a construction firm, and he was hardcore and did not smile. It was not that he was looking to be praised. He just did not want to be yelled at or criticized. It was a fear-driven kind of motivation.

He grew up in a family manufacturing business, which is not his skill set. He has very poor mechanical and visual spatial ability, and he had two older brothers, so he was always going to be the younger one. His skills were verbal and social, so he was looking for a different pathway. Looking back he thinks he probably could have found a place in it, but he could not see it at a younger age.

Because he grew up professionally in the not-for-profit and social service world, where people do not get paid much and the emotional demands are high, he wanted to create a resource those settings could afford. Training costs money. So they built a training kit, an online course that takes a couple of hours to go through, that lets one person lead a team or several teams through the process. A do-it-yourself resource for learning the languages, what impact they have, what authenticity means, and the mistakes to avoid. The in-person workshops still run alongside it, and there are 1,300 facilitators around the world who can come and do the training.

Walking into a room, he tries to find out the context. He recently did a workshop for Sandia National Labs in New Mexico, a government agency of engineers and computer programmers, which is a different room than a group of elementary school teachers or social workers. Sometimes he is brought in because there is a morale problem or low satisfaction. Other times it is more we are doing okay but we could do better. Knowing which one it is sets realistic expectations for where to start and how far the group can go. The sessions are interactive, with people at group tables, questions and examples and stories and humor and cartoons throughout.

There are people who are not interested, and body language usually gives it away. This is not necessarily for everybody. Some people say we pay them, that's enough, have a nice day. He asks those people not to be obstructive, just to stand to the side and observe. Over time the focus on authentic appreciation, rather than trying to look like you appreciate somebody, tends to bring them in. People see that it is genuine and that it works, and they lower their defenses. There is also published research showing it makes a difference in attendance, in people not quitting, in showing up to work on time, in following instructions and doing things the right way. It increases profitability because you are not losing and retraining people. Customer feedback improves too, because the morale and interaction style of the team is more positive. It works if it is done right.

Authentic appreciation is the opposite of the version everybody has received. Some people say I really appreciate you, you're great, glad you're on the team, way to go, and then go complain about you to another employee. It's just words. The work is helping people find things or characteristics they can truly value about another person, even though people can be irritating and different from each other. Nobody has to become your best friend. You can value that somebody does a thorough job, or gets their work done on time, or is willing to listen and try new things.

Not everybody is great at their job, either, so what do you do when somebody is struggling? Part of the answer is the difference between appreciation and recognition. Recognition is largely about accomplishing goals and good work, which is good and should be encouraged and rewarded. But employees are people, and people are more than a production unit. We have strengths and value beyond our work. He had a team member who was a good worker and also had a cheerful personality and a fun sense of humor that lightened the room in a group meeting, and he valued that about her as a person, not about her output. Sometimes it is not about work at all. Somebody is training for a half marathon and you are impressed by the discipline, so you say so. Somebody is a single mother deeply committed to her kids and making sure she is at their events, and you can communicate value about that even when it creates a little tension because she is coming in late with a sick kid.

So it is not only learning to communicate appreciation. It starts with a shift in how you see the people you work with. Historically one theme of capitalism is efficiency, productivity, profitability, and maybe unintentionally that turns people into tools or objects or machines for getting work done, which depersonalizes them. There is a reaction in the culture against that, from people who want to be seen as more than a computer programmer or an accountant.

It is interesting that outside the workplace we can all get on board with viewing people as precious individuals, and then somewhere inside the workplace it gets dehumanized. His answer is that the purpose of work is to provide a good or service somebody wants or needs and is willing to pay for. That is what work is. This is not about making everybody feel good. Businesses have to make money, keep expenses low, and generate enough revenue to have a profit. What is interesting is that companies that treat employees as people and show appreciation are more profitable and more successful than those that do not. Research on it is emerging in the European Union and at the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the point that they are beginning to monitor and measure these things, because it matters to an investor. Two paint companies, one that treats employees well and views them as people, one that turns the screws for maximum profit. The first is actually more profitable.

As for what companies measure, it is still in process. Measuring takes time and energy. Turnover is easy to measure. On-the-job accidents go down when people feel valued. Customer ratings go up when employees feel valued, because that gets transferred to the customer. He measures some of it and encourages clients to measure more, but people have enough to do, and unless they really want the information a lot goes unmeasured. They are on the pathway to more of it.

The timeline varies. Working with DirecTV and a number of their customer service offices across the country, they saw differences in people's behavior and attitude within a month, then at three months and six months. A mining company in South Dakota and Colorado has worked with them for six or seven years, bringing them back for retraining and upgrades and new angles, because profitability and retention have grown, and eventually running their own training. Within a year you can document it. Typically you will see it earlier, in three to six months.

Making it stick is the trick, and the way through is finding the systems a company already has. If they hold stand-up team meetings at the beginning of the day or the beginning of the week, that meeting becomes the place to ask people to tell about an incident this past week where they got positive feedback or felt appreciated. It becomes part of the culture instead of a separate thing. Usually a few key people really get the idea and become ambassadors who help lead meetings or the discussion inside a meeting. One place bought thank you cards and kept them on racks in the office so anybody could grab one and write a note. There is a version for virtual teams too, with a separate assessment for remote workers, because how do you spend quality time with somebody who is not in the office. And in a setting like nursing in a hospital, where a team meeting rarely happens, the question becomes how else you get people together. It is creative problem solving, whether the setting is manufacturing or construction or education or medical services.

That approach comes out of his work as a psychologist. Behavior change is more successful when it builds onto an existing habit, or closely resembles one, rather than creating a whole new thing or system. A whole new system is too much to ask of people. In a manufacturing plant they are on a production line and cannot shut it down to spend time with somebody, so it happens over lunch, at breaks, at a pre-work or after-work meeting, or not at work at all.

Frequency differs across industries, across people, and by how long somebody has been there. If you have worked alongside somebody for seven years and you work together well, communicating appreciation does not need to be as frequent as with a new team member who is still learning what to do and what is expected, and whose behavior you are actually shaping to be positive. The new person might get something a couple of times a week. The long-tenured person might be once every three weeks, something like I really appreciate it when you get those folders together and they're ready for me and then I'm good to go.

The model they teach for words is three parts. Use the person's name. Be specific about what you value. Then say why it is important to you, or to the organization, or to the client. Jennifer, thanks for getting reports to me on time, because that helps me have time to think about it and write my report that goes to the management team, instead of not knowing and having to rush.

Quality time carries a generational difference. For older workers it frequently meant getting time with a manager or supervisor, to ask questions and get clarification, to be instructed, or to give feedback on what they were seeing. Time was known to be valuable, so the fact that a manager chose to spend it created a sense of value. Younger workers do not really care about spending time with their supervisor or manager. They would rather be with their friends, which could mean lunch together, working on a project together, or going out after work to a sports bar to watch a game. One administrative assistant said her boss liked quality time, but she was shy and he was intense, so it did not make her feel valued. Lunch with her friends would have.

Acts of service is not rescuing a low-performing person who is not doing what they are supposed to do. In a service setting like a dentist's office, a whole group of patients might show up at once and the receptionist could use help, so the office manager steps in and checks people in even though it is not her responsibility, instead of leaving the receptionist overwhelmed. Another version is a time-limited project, a report or presentation due tomorrow, where somebody else takes part of today's responsibilities so you can stay focused, or goes and makes the handouts. It is helping out when you can see the person has more than anyone could handle.

Tangible gifts are not rewards or bonuses. They are small things that show you are getting to know somebody and what they like. Their favorite cup of special coffee. Something frozen in the summertime. A magazine about something they are interested in. If you know they follow the Chiefs, the preseason article. If you know they are about to coach their kid's flag football team and you have done that before, a website with good drills and plays on it. It is about them.

Physical touch is the most awkward one in the United States, though it is highly valued in other cultures, where not touching at all feels cold and impersonal. In the U.S. it is largely about celebration: a high five when a project is finished, a fist bump when a problem is solved, a congratulatory handshake. There are hard moments too, when somebody's husband has been in a car wreck and people go to the hospital. The recipient always chooses what is appropriate, and it differs even culturally within the country, with more touch in the South than in the Northeast. The assessment does not include physical touch, because of the reactivity around sexual harassment.

Asked whether recognition programs are too rare or too generic, his answer is some of both, but the generic part is what undermines it. Somebody gets employee of the month and a gift card to Amazon or a dinner out, and the response is yeah, whatever, because it says nothing about them or what they contributed. Over 90 percent have a program. The issue is that it looks lame and people are sarcastic about it. They say yeah, whatever, the employee of the month, and somebody comments that you should see her when she's not happy. It is a lack of authenticity.

In the training, teams do an exercise where they self-assess what they think their language might be and why it matters to them, where it came from, what it means, and then discuss it as a team. Often they are surprised to find they share a language. Words is the most common one, about 45 percent of the population. But what people want to be praised for differs, and how they want it differs, whether that is private or public, a note or an email or a text. Then there is the deeper question of why that message gets to them. People are surprised and intrigued that you can have the same language but different actions, and even the same action that means something different to different people.

That level of nuance can overwhelm owners, and at the beginning the focus was on managers and supervisors, which is what led to the discovery that people want to know they are valued by their colleagues and want to communicate appreciation to their colleagues. So the focus shifted from managers and supervisors to team members. There are also managers and supervisors who simply are not into this, and rather than let the whole thing stall out at that layer so nobody below receives any appreciation, they help the team apply it and give the manager a pass.

Managers and leaders who do not feel appreciated come up in the training too. The tendency is to think of appreciation as top down, but it is not according to the organizational chart. It is person to person. Manager to team member, team member to team member, manager to manager, or across to a different team. Somebody has computer problems and brings the laptop to IT and it gets fixed. You do not report to them and they do not report to you, and you still want to communicate appreciation for it. It frees the whole system to flow wherever the relationships exist. Most employee recognition programs are the company's program, which is a different thing. There are examples of an award given by a CEO because that is the CEO's role, where the CEO does not know this person and this person does not know the CEO, and it amounts to a stranger saying something nice about work they have never seen. This takes it from the generic to the personal.

On whether a person's love language matches their appreciation language at work, they have done research. About two-thirds of the time somebody's top love language is one of their top two appreciation languages, and the same holds in reverse. Physical touch falls out of the workplace assessment. Relationships and expectations differ between work and personal life, so the two are similar without being the same.

Whether appreciation language changes with environment has not been formally researched, but certain life circumstances clearly bring a couple of languages forward. In a stressful situation, like a husband in the hospital, acts of service pops up along with quality time, as support. That is enculturated, at least in North America, and it may last only as long as the circumstance. Over a career it can change too. Early on, with twin sons and a social worker's salary, being able to afford a babysitter and go out to a very simple dinner at Burger King was special. A Burger King coupon does not mean as much now, because that is a different life stage. And at the end of a career, words of affirmation that are specific about how somebody impacted you or the organization are far more valuable than gifts. The usual move is a retirement watch, which is fine. But people want to know how they impacted the place.

Buying the book gives access to the basic assessment, the generic starter version. Beyond that there are industry-specific versions for medical settings, school settings, construction, government, and military. Teams can buy codes or groups of codes for their people, plus a group profile. Knowing your own language is good, but the real goal is finding out how a team encourages each other. The profile identifies their languages, the actions they like, and the actions they really do not want, so nobody makes a mistake that creates embarrassment. Everything is at appreciationatwork.com, with an assessments tab at the top, and mbainventory.com is another site for looking at the assessments, including the industry-specific ones. There are training kits, plus examples on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Across 500,000 people taking the assessment, the patterns are remarkably consistent from culture to culture, with some exceptions. In the military, acts of service is more frequently a team member's primary language than words, because helping somebody get the job done is the focus of the work. There is a summary of the research articles available, covering differences across time, cultures, and generations, including that quality time is more important to younger workers, but time with their team members rather than with their supervisor. Which means an owner or leader can choose to invest in creating those opportunities: a lunch in, time to hang out after work, a ballgame together. Promoting relationships outside of work is a return on investment back into the trust and relationships inside it.

One of the major benefits of people feeling valued and appreciated is that they stay longer, and losing a team member and having to train a replacement is the single highest non-productive cost for most businesses. One research study found that 79 percent of people who left a job voluntarily, who were not fired but chose to leave, cited a lack of appreciation as the main reason for leaving. Most bosses think people leave for more money. They may in fact arrange to get more money, but that is not why they left. Leaving takes a lot of emotional energy over time, and what drives it is the sense that nobody here values or cares about me.