Why saying ‘good job’ to an employee is no longer enough

Recognition has become one of the most talked-about – and most misunderstood – issues in today’s workplace. In Singapore, a recent Randstad survey shows that a lack of recognition or appreciation is among the top three factors discouraging employees across Gen Z, millennials and Gen X. Such consistency across generations should provide employers cause for thought.

Their instinctive response is to reach for familiar levers: adjust pay, refresh benefits, promise clearer promotion pathways. Yet recognition persists as a pain point even in organisations that already offer competitive compensation. This suggests the problem is not primarily about rewards.

What employees are reacting to is something more fundamental: whether their effort, judgment and adaptability are acknowledged as part of a fair and ongoing relationship with their employer. Recognition, in this sense, is not a perk layered on top of work. It is a signal about the quality of the employment relationship itself.

And in an era where roles are fluid, workloads are ambiguous, and employees are routinely asked to step beyond formal job descriptions, that signal has never mattered more.

# Recognition as part of the social exchange

Every workplace operates on an implicit deal. Employees offer time, skills and, increasingly, discretion: solving problems that were not anticipated, supporting colleagues, learning on the fly and absorbing uncertainty. In return, organisations provide not just pay, but signals of respect, support and reciprocity.

Recognition is one of the most powerful of those signals. It communicates that contribution is seen, valued and remembered. When recognition is missing, employees do not simply feel underpaid. They feel invisible.

This distinction matters because modern work is no longer neatly contractible. Many of the behaviours organisations depend on – initiative, collaboration, learning, judgment – cannot be fully specified or measured in advance. They rely on trust. Recognition is one of the everyday mechanisms through which that trust is sustained.

# Two ways to view the employment relationship

One way to understand the recognition gap is to distinguish between two implicit models of employment.

The first is a transactional, quasi-spot contract. Employees deliver clearly defined tasks and are compensated accordingly. The relationship is economic, narrow and short-term. Recognition is optional because the exchange is simple: do the job, get paid.

The second is a mutual investment model. Organisations invest broadly in employees – through development, trust and longer-term support – and in return expect open-ended contributions that go beyond any single role: initiative, adaptability, collaboration and concern for the organisation as a whole.

Most organisations today say they want the second model. They ask for ownership, flexibility and commitment. But many still operate recognition practices as if the first model applies.

When employees are expected to give broadly but are recognised narrowly, the relationship becomes unbalanced. Over time, people respond rationally: they conserve effort, reduce discretionary contributions and disengage. This is not entitlement. It is a predictable response to a mismatched exchange.

# Why recognition keeps breaking down

Recognition often fails, not because managers do not care, but because systems and norms work against it.

It is treated as a reward rather than as part of everyday management. Bonuses and promotions are scarce by design. Recognition, however, needs to be frequent, timely and specific. When appreciation is delayed until appraisal season, it loses much of its motivational value.

As well, recognition is often trapped at the level of the direct manager. In hybrid and fast-moving teams, managers simply do not see everything. When recognition depends entirely on one person’s bandwidth, invisible work – mentoring, coordination, problem-solving – goes unnoticed.

Additionally, corporate culture quietly defines what counts as “real” contribution. If leaders celebrate only outcomes, not learning or collaboration, employees quickly infer what is safe to prioritise and what is not worth the effort.

# Closing the recognition gap in practice

Some organisations have found ways to embed recognition into how work is organised, rather than layering it on as an HR initiative.

At the global luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, daily team huddles include the sharing of service stories. Frontline contributions are surfaced routinely, not occasionally. The lesson is not about hospitality rituals, but about designing recognition into the operating rhythm of work.

Over at global software company Atlassian, peer recognition allows employees to acknowledge one another’s contributions by linking them explicitly to shared values. This helps surface invisible work and reduces reliance on managerial attention alone. Zappos, an American online shoe and clothing retailer, similarly encourages frequent, informal peer-to-peer appreciation, making recognition social rather than hierarchical.

Microsoft’s cultural emphasis on learning reframes recognition itself. Contributions are not limited to hitting targets; they include collaboration, experimentation and improvement. Employees are recognised not just for outcomes, but for how they get there.

Netflix takes a different approach, signalling respect through candour and trust. In its culture, recognition is not always praise. It is being treated as an adult, given context, and trusted with responsibility. While not every organisation will adopt this model, it illustrates a critical point: recognition is ultimately about respect, not compliments.

Some Singapore organisations show that effective recognition does not require large budgets or elaborate programmes.

At start-up e27, employees have used simple peer-driven recognition habits – such as voluntarily awarding small recognition-signalling points to colleagues through an easy-to-use platform like PraisePal during team activities – to acknowledge everyday contributions in real time, without waiting for formal reviews or managerial approval. The key idea is authenticity: recognition works when employees feel it reflects real contribution, not corporate choreography.

By contrast, many workplaces rely on episodic appreciation – annual awards, generic praise, symbolic gestures disconnected from daily effort. Others roll out recognition platforms that feel compulsory or uneven, breeding cynicism rather than motivation.

Perhaps most damaging is the mismatch between rhetoric and reality: organisations that talk about valuing people, while managers communicate mainly through silence. In such environments, even genuine praise can feel hollow.

# Why this matters now

Research consistently shows that when organisations invest broadly in employees – and recognise open-ended contributions – employees respond with stronger commitment, cooperation and trust. This is precisely what organisations need in uncertain and complex environments.

When jobs are fluid and problems ill-defined, employers cannot specify every behaviour they need. They rely on employees to exercise judgment. Recognition is the everyday mechanism that sustains that reliance.

So the Randstad finding should be read as a warning, not a complaint. Employees are not merely asking to be thanked more often. They are signalling a breakdown in how organisations honour the exchange at the heart of modern work.

Closing the recognition gap requires more than individual managers remembering to say “good job”. It requires leadership and design.

Leaders must clarify what the organisation truly values – not just outcomes, but learning, collaboration and responsible risk-taking. Systems must reinforce those signals: recognition embedded into workflows, peer-based appreciation that surfaces invisible work, and feedback norms that make contribution visible rather than silent.

Most importantly, recognition must be accessible. It cannot depend solely on managerial memory or annual rituals. It must be built into how teams meet, how work is reviewed, and how success is defined.

Recognition is not softness. It is infrastructure – the social scaffolding that allows mutual investment relationships to function in demanding, fast-changing workplaces.

Organisations that want commitment, adaptability and trust cannot leave recognition to chance. They must lead it, design it, and make it part of how work gets done – every day.

• Kang Yang Trevor Yu is an associate professor at the Nanyang Business School, and co-director of the NTU Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE), Nanyang Technological University.

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Source: The Straits Times