Recognition That Actually Works: Why Psychological Safety Comes Before Celebration
1 November 2025
Recognition That Actually Works: Why Psychological Safety Comes Before Celebration
In many workplaces, recognition has become overused – shout-outs, employee of the month and HR work anniversary emails. Yet, recognition misses an important step, without which, it stops being effective.
As Harvard professor Amy C. Edmondson’s research has shown, psychological safety – where employees feel safe to speak up, take risks and admit mistakes – is the strongest predictor of learning, collaboration, and long-term performance.
No amount of free pizza can outdo a history of ignored harassment or consistent unfairness. In this case, recognition and celebration starts to feel transactional, political and manipulative. When employees fear embarrassment, appreciation becomes performative. But when they feel accepted and respected, recognition becomes a part of belonging and connection and feels genuine. This guest post offers some practical and well-researched insights into valuable team-building ideas.
1. The Foundation: Fairness and Safety Before Celebration
The Gallup-Workhuman study found engagement to be 9 times higher if ‘recognition’ is:
- Personalised
- Authentic
- Embedded in everyday actions
- Fair
We argue that all of the above can be summarised into “recognition needs to be ‘fair'”. This shows
that recognition without fairness has very little impact.
Fairness leads to trust, which is the foundation of psychological safety. The Pew Research Center’s post-Great Resignation study identified “feeling disrespected at work” – an important sign of a lack of psychological safety – as one of the top three reasons people quit.
Many studies agree on the benefits of psychological safety on engagement and retention. Google has concluded psychological safety to be the foundation of team effectiveness. A study in Current Psychology found that teams who feel psychologically safe report higher innovation; another study found up to almost 50% lower turnover intentions. It is not the perks that keep people, but trust.
2. How to Ensure Psychological Safety in the Workplace – the Policies
Have a clear, confidential harassment and grievances reporting policy, preferably with the assistance of a removed 3rd party, and a harassment elimination policy in place. Communicate it to all employees and ensure they know whom to confide in when something like this happens. 50% of employees have been bullied at work and 26% did not know what to do if being bullied, which is a disappointing statistic.
Track and measure addressing grievances and ensure accountability – someone checking that the person in charge of addressing grievances has done so. 85% of people at work have some sort of grievances against their colleagues that are going unaddressed, so this definitely needs improvement.
Ensure employees’ career aspirations are recognised through goal setting and measure their satisfaction with how they are doing. Have a policy in place on what to do when employees feel that their managers are not doing everything they can to help them grow in their career in the desired direction.
Eliminate unfair career progression incentives by abstaining from limits on how many people can be ‘promoted’; in a certain period and other unjust practices.
3. The Power of Small Gestures
Once the trust exists, small acts of recognition become powerful. They become authentic, rather than performative.
Recognition and micro celebrations help establish team bonding and collaboration, which in turn helps with the sense of belonging, cultivates friendships, and helps people feel like they matter. This becomes a reliable predictor of retention.
Research shows that micro-celebrations – brief, sincere acknowledgements – can create measurable
impact:
Birthday celebration matters for retention. A Harvard Business Review analysis found that job-searching activity spikes by about 12% around an employee’s birthday, particularly if they feel undervalued. A well-timed, genuine micro-celebration can help reverse that effect.
Friendship helps career progression. A 2024 KPMG survey reported that 41% of employees credited work friends with helping them find advancement opportunities inside their company, and 36% outside of it . Acts that help with connection – like a collaborative celebration – help people grow.
Workplace friendships increase retention. Gallup 2024 found that employees with strong workplace friendships are more likely to stay and more likely to be engaged. Once again, micro-celebrations bring people closer, helping with this.
Small gestures increase productivity. The Social Market Foundation’s study found that small gestures of recognition worth even 2 USD per person can raise worker output by 20%.
Help teams work more effectively. Teams, where collaboration feels more comfortable, and teams, where friendship opportunities were cultivated, report greater information sharing and innovation. In other words, after safety has been established, recognition does not have to be grand to have an impact.
4. Celebrations and Everyday Rituals That Help With Recognition and Connection
Recognition is based on rituals – the repeatable moments that shape how people feel day to day. In hybrid or remote teams, intentional rituals of connection, become especially important. Here are a few grounded in research and practice:
End-Of-Week Round-Ups: end the week with a quick team round-up, where everyone shares one success or learning. Keep it optional and low-pressure to help encourage group reflection.
Group Cards and Collaborative Messages: tools like group greeting cards help teams collectively celebrate milestones in an inclusive way. When colleagues sign a group birthday card, a thank-you note, or a leaving card, with collaborative messages appreciating the recipient, each message becomes a small affirmation of belonging. A 2015 study in Emotion showed that expressions of gratitude increase the likelihood of friendship, even among weak ties.
Rotating Hosts: allow a different team member to lead the recognition ritual each time. This removes the hierarchy from appreciation and ensures everyone feels involved.
Creative Ideas for Hybrid Teams: hybrid teams still have so many options of celebratory rituals together: hosting online trivia games, coordinating an online world cooking session, or sending a collective well-being package signed by the team. These tangible acts carry symbolic weight: we remember you and we care.
Shared Meals or Coffee Breaks: On top of celebrating milestones, it really helps to also include everyday rituals like these. In-person or virtual, they provide space for spontaneous appreciation and team bonding.
Each of these gestures costs little but reinforces what psychologists call relational energy – the emotional lift we get from feeling valued and connected.
5. Tips On What Managers Can Do Differently
HR policies might shape what is done, but it is the managers that embody how it is done. They truly shape the emotional climate of a team. Their words and silences set the tone for what is recognised and what is ignored.
To make recognition meaningful, managers can:
- Model vulnerability: admit mistakes publicly and thank others for spotting them. This signals that honesty is valued over perfection.
- Personalise praise: instead of “Good job, everyone,” mention the specific action: “Maria’s data-check saved us having to re-do our calculations – thank you for catching that early.”
- Invite reflection: end team meetings with one round of “something I appreciated this week.”
- Encourage peer-to-peer recognition: encourage teammates to acknowledge each other directly – through a quick message or a mention in meetings.
- Use empathy as a guide: a 2024 study in The Journal of Neuroscience showed that empathy activates the same neural circuits as social bonding. When managers consciously take a colleague’s perspective, trust accelerates.
These behaviours require no budget – only intention.
Conclusion: Recognition as a Language of Safety
Recognition that truly works is less about the ceremony and more about certainty that you’re seen, treated fairly, and trusted to be imperfectly human. When organisations put psychological safety before celebration, every thank-you, every team lunch, every signed card becomes more than a gesture – it becomes the evidence of belonging.
In such an environment, people don’t just perform better. They stay longer, help each other grow, and create the kind of culture that maintains itself. Small rituals, shared humanity and fairness is the recognition that actually works.
Author Bio: Julia V is a writer and workplace culture researcher focused on connection, recognition, and psychological safety at work. She is a also a writer at GatheredCards, a platform that helps teams celebrate milestones with group greeting cards, which bring colleagues closer – whether they work side-by-side or across time zones. Her work explores how small, authentic rituals of appreciation can build stronger, happier teams.
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