Thanksgiving: the Secret Shortcut to Employee Engagement?

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Thanksgiving: the Secret Shortcut to Employee Engagement?

Why Gratitude Can Help Us Be More Engaged with Our Work

What about your job are you thankful for? By finding a few tangible answers to this question, you’re already on the road to greater employee engagement.

In the U.S., our Thanksgiving holiday season is a time to acknowledge and appreciate blessings. Recent happiness research at institutions like the University of California at Berkeley shows that gratitude as a regular practice can have social, physical and psychological benefits.

Looking under the hood, so to speak, it can be deduced that the benefits of gratitude can lead to greater employee engagement within an individual as well, following my definition of employee engagement as an attitude towards one’s work in one’s organization comprising vigor, dedication, absorption, psychological empowerment and motivation. Specifically, research shows a practice of gratitude can lead to increased enthusiasm and motivates helpful action, two components of employee engagement. It can also reduce stress and anxiety, which can be barriers to employee engagement. It improves relationships, the critical driver of engagement in the workplace. Click here to read more from U.C. Berkeley on gratitude.

The practice of gratitude, it turns out, is a practice. Like bowling, it may come easier to some people than others, but anyone can improve through focused effort and repetition. I suggest an achievable goal for those new to daily thanksgiving, since small changes are more likely to stick than big ones. Set a calendar reminder for the start of each workday to acknowledge one thing you are grateful for about your work. Keep that appointment every day, and try not to list the same thing twice. It can be really basic, “I am grateful there is indoor plumbing in my office” to very specific, “I am grateful Susan knew how to run that report and was willing to help.”

If that suggestion doesn’t appeal to you, or you already keep a gratitude journal, consider adapting another gratitude practice to the workplace.

And here’s the trick: stick with the practice for weeks: long after you have decided it isn’t doing you any good. Like many healthy habits (e.g., light exercise or meditation) the benefits may or may not appear directly linked to the practice, but if you pay attention, the correlation is undeniable.

As for me, I am thankful for you, my readers, both known and unknown, who help motivate me to keep learning and sharing about employee engagement. Thank you, and I wish you all a great start to the holiday season!