“I appreciate you!”

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." – Peter Drucker

Being part of the leadership team at Printable, I have found this to be very true, as culture is the secret sauce that helps team members feel a sense of belonging.

Now more than ever, workers (especially the remote ones!) want to feel a sense of belonging in their workplace.

One of the easiest things I have found to help team members feel a sense of belonging is to…drum roll, please…

Express appreciation and gratitude.

A revolutionary concept, right?

This is so easy to do yet in a recent employer survey by Forbes, 66% of employees said they would consider quitting their job for a lack of appreciation.

And for millennials, that number jumps up to 76%.

Appreciation is SO much more than a soft HR concept.

As the author of the article, Victor Lipman writes: “Appreciation matters. It’s a short message with a powerful takeaway.”

My good friend, Mark Greenburg gave me a simple formula for showing appreciation:

Try starting a sentence with “I noticed”.

As in, “I noticed that you did X (be specific!) for the team/company the other day and I just wanted to say, thanks for doing that. I appreciate you and like having you on the team”

I shared this tip with Joseph Sommer and Claudia St. John, SPHR, SHRM-SCP at a Commonsku event who were intrigued with Mark’s approach and were going to try it on their teams too!

Expressing gratitude and appreciation is so simple, yet so powerful.

Go tell someone you appreciate them! What are you waiting for?