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Goodie bag thank-you falls flat with Amazon employees after record-breaking October Prime Day

Workhuman’s Meisha-ann Martin explains how employers can get employee recognition right.
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Quick-to-read HR news & insights

From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

Everyone wants to be rewarded for a job well done. But employers that don’t take an authentic approach to recognition could risk upsetting employees. Lucky for them, there are a couple easy ways to avoid a cringe-worthy show of employee appreciation, one expert told HR Brew.

What’s happening? After Amazon’s latest Prime Day event, which ran from October 8–9 and broke sales records for the company, employees at one fulfillment center were thanked with goodie bags containing a few pieces of candy, according to a viral post on X.

This is not the first time Amazon has sought to show appreciation for its warehouse workers in this manner. Several posts on Reddit by users who say they work for the ecommerce giant describe previous occasions when they were given similar tokens, including stickers, hard candies, and pens, as a form of recognition. One called it, “The cringiest stuff I’ve ever seen.”

But Amazon isn’t the only company that’s come under fire for its take on employee appreciation. Earlier this year, Sephora thanked its retail employees for their role in the company reaching $10 million in revenue with a single cookie each, HR Brew reported. Walmart has also been criticized by some who believe that its employee appreciation efforts fall short.

Avoid their mistakes! Meisha-ann Martin, VP of people research at Workhuman, told HR Brew that employers have a responsibility to appropriately recognize employees, because unhappy, underappreciated employees can cost the bottom line.

“If you have an engaged workforce, according to our research with Gallup, a 10,000 person organization can save $16 million from the reduced employee turnover that comes with employees being engaged,” she said. “So when you think about the cost of recognizing people appropriately versus the cost of losing those people, or having them less productive in your organization because they’re not very engaged, the cost is minimal compared to the cost of not doing it.”

However, it might not be enough to just recognize employees for their hard work. “It has to feel sincere. And that means that the recognition should be really specific. You should be specific about what you're appreciating,” according to Martin.

The more personalized the recognition, the more it will be valued, she added.

“The most authentic recognition comes from one person to another person that emphasizes the behavior they appreciate and the impact that behavior had on the person, the team or the business,” she said, noting the importance of regularity. “The focus really should be on integrating that into a culture.”

Quick-to-read HR news & insights

From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.