Culture of Gratitude

Culture

Breaking Down Culture

Culture is a nebulous topic. The Webster dictionary defines it as ‘the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.’ When looking at culture from this broad lens, how do we influence change? How do we create and maintain an innovative and creative culture?

At Prominence we’ve created a framework to breakdown culture into something that is tangible, manageable and measurable. Our culture framework has 3 tenets, each with its own specific components:

Company: Leadership, Vision and Social Responsibility
Team: Accountability and Expectations, Recruiting, Hiring and Onboarding, Communication
You: Benefits, Recognition and Rewards, Professional and Personal Growth

In our next series of blogs we’ll outline how we approach the various components of the framework. Today we’ll focus on Recognition and Rewards, and how we use that to foster a culture of gratitude

Gratitude

According to Derrick Carpenter, at Happify, “The benefits of practicing gratitude are nearly endless. People who regularly practice gratitude by taking time to notice and reflect upon the things they’re thankful for experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, express more compassion and kindness, and even have stronger immune systems. And gratitude doesn’t need to be reserved only for momentous occasions: Sure, you might express gratitude after receiving a promotion at work, but you can also be thankful for something as simple as a delicious piece of pie.” We practice gratitude frequently at Prominence and it comes in different forms to reach and resonate with our team members.

Recognition

At Prominence, we believe that our team needs personal and professional satisfaction. We see the indicators of satisfaction in the eyes and words of our co-workers. Recognition comes informally via meme-filled emails or shout-outs during weekly team calls. During all company monthly meetings our leadership team more formally calls out individual successes, connecting them to our company mission of helping customers with their toughest challenges. This inspires us all to grow our customers and grow ourselves.

Rewards

How do you like to be rewarded for scaling an insurmountable summit? We take a very personal approach by setting aside funds specifically for recognition that is based on individual team members’ recognition language – for example:

Do their children love the zoo? Let’s give them a day off and a membership pass.
Do they love their English muffin and peanut butter breakfast? Let’s ship them a month’s worth.
Is their work nickname “Unicorn” due to their magical problem solving? Let’s send them a unicorn float for their pool.
Is the entire team utilized to meet critical customer deadlines? Let’s have a company holiday next month to give everyone some down time.

These examples come not only from team leads, but also team members. Everyone can reward each other for a job well done and Prominence’s leadership team expects the recognition account balance to be used every year.

We believe that recognition doesn’t stop at professional accomplishments. We have a team member whose responsibility it is to acknowledge birthdays, weddings, new family members, and other important life events with thoughtful gifts and personal messages from Leadership.

So how do we foster a culture of gratitude? We do so by modeling gratitude for our employees via our personalized rewards and recognition. We consider this a key component of our culture at Prominence.