Why Reward Gateway created a ‘chief appreciation officer’ role

Showing appreciation can go a long way toward making employees more productive and passionate about their work.

That’s why employee-experience platform Reward Gateway named Nebel Crowhurst as its first-ever chief appreciation officer in April. In her role, Crowhurst, who is also the company’s chief people officer, will try to cultivate a deeper culture of employee appreciation at the company and improve productivity.

Crowhurst spoke with HR Brew about her expanded role and what it means for the organization.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Why did Reward Gateway create the chief appreciation officer position?

We have always done significant research reports to help inform what we need to do as an organization to support our clients and the employees within their organizations. One area that we began to explore in the earlier part of this year was appreciation, but very much linked to the economic value of HR and the impact and value that HR brings to an organization. So, that work led us to focus on what that means internally for us.

As part of our focus on appreciation, it made sense to then elevate the notion of appreciation internally, and for me to have this supplementary role alongside my chief people officer role to help make sure that what we’re talking about externally and we’re inspiring other organizations to think about, we’re living and breathing that within the business as well.

How does the CAO role fit into Reward Gateway’s overall HR strategy?

The role works in parallel with my role as chief people officer and our people strategy that supports the overall organization. But what’s different about the focus on appreciation is the work that I do with our leadership teams and the link to how leaders behave in an organization that has an appreciation culture, and a focus on emotional intelligence. So, we need to make sure that we’ve got a highly emotionally intelligent organization and, indeed, emotionally intelligent leaders, for them to understand the link between self-actualization and appreciation in the business. So, I work closely with leadership teams on that.

The other piece is the way we look at appreciation through what we’ve termed a “total employee experience pyramid” that’s fundamentally linked to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I need to make sure that, from a people strategy point of view, we’re meeting each layer so that we can achieve a culture of appreciation and, in turn, close the appreciation gap. A lot of organizations provide benefits or initiatives to their people that perhaps address some of the areas of the pyramid but not all of the areas. And to achieve the closing [of] the appreciation gap, you need to make sure that you’ve addressed each area of the pyramid in a way that’s really in line with your organization’s workforce’s needs.

What is your ultimate goal for this role?

Internally, the goal is to ensure that we have a workforce of people who are highly motivated which, in turn, means they’re hugely productive, and we have a successful business overall, full of people who want to be part of the journey that we’re on.

But then, because of the nature of Reward Gateway and the work that we do, it’s about inspiring externally. We want to create a movement globally, to help people to understand why appreciation is such an important part of our business strategy. I think for so many years the perception has been that you can’t demonstrate the value that HR adds. We’re just the policy keepers, we’re the hirers and the firers. But we’re strategic enablers, and we’re the part of the organization that can truly help drive business performance in a way that perhaps many leaders might not realize. And so we have to help them to understand the correlation between employee appreciation and business performance.

Correction 06/13/24: This piece has been updated to clarify that Reward Gateway is an employee-experience platform.