Recognition role models

Monday, April 7, 2025

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The Recognition and Engagement Community of Practice (CoP), is comprised of staff members who take on an extracurricular commitment to enrich their work experience in several ways.

“A community of practice can be a powerful and enriching experience,” said ITS’s Mark Manton, director of Finance and Administration, recently. “It typically involves a group of people who have a common interest or passion and come together to learn from each other, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects.”

Manton is a member of Yale’s Recognition and Engagement Community of Practice (CoP), which, like many others that have formed across Yale’s campus, is comprised of staff members who take on an extracurricular commitment to enrich their work experience in several ways.

As a member of the same CoP, Lisa Kimmel, director of Employee Well-Being in Human Resources, notes that it is “…an incubator for brainstorming, innovation, and creativity that emerges from collaborative discussions and activities.”

Members of the Recognition and Engagement CoP recently participated in a focus group to exchange ideas on how they approach recognition practices.

The term “communities of practice” (CoP) has been around since at least 1991, when it was first proposed in the book “Situated Learning” by anthropologist Jean Lave and computer scientist Etienne Wenger. Its real-world practice has likely taken place centuries longer than the term, but the latter is widely used today in professional arenas.

CoPs often form across disciplines as is reflected in the Recognition and Engagement group, which had its second official meeting at The Well at the Schwarzman Center in January. In partnership with Yale Hospitality, the Recognition and Engagement CoP hosted a focus-group session for a group of 20 “recognition champions” followed by a show-and-tell of attendees’ current recognition practices, and then a cocktail/mocktail and appetizer pairing as a team-building experience, courtesy of Yale Hospitality.

Want to join a community of practice?

If you are interested in learning more about Yale’s Recognition and Engagement Community of Practice, email Brenda Naegel at brenda.naegel@yale.edu for information.

“Our champions are staff members with a keen interest and involvement in recognition,” said Brenda Naegel, the director of recognition and engagement. “Often, they enjoy serving on nomination review committees like the Linda Lorimer Award, or running a departmental Ycard program like the Five Finance Core Competencies, or building a program from the ground up.”

Naegel, a certified recognition professional, envisions the community of practice as a dynamic and expanding entity, and she hopes its members will take best practices back to their Yale communities and infuse recognition into their departments. She likes to gather at a unique campus location to increase attendees’ awareness of campus resources and engage in a team-building activity that they may wish to replicate in their departments.

It’s something that Manton finds value in, noting the “supportive environment where you can find encouragement and motivation, enhance your understanding of your field, and expose yourself to new perspectives.”

You don’t have to be a member of a CoP to practice recognition and engagement on your team and with your peers. Gary Chapman and Paul White give several data-based examples and suggestions in their book “The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People.” They note:

Appreciation in the workplace is directly related to employee engagement: Personally relevant, authentic appreciation leads to employee engagement that, in turn, leads to increased productivity while decreasing turnover and absenteeism.

Gallup researchers found that a core factor to significantly impact the level of employee engagement is the degree to which employees feel appreciated.
To increase employee engagement, Forbes recommends demonstrating appreciation for your employee’s contributions.
In a Glassdoor employee survey, 81% of respondents say they are “motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation for their work.”
In a study of more than 500,000 employees, PayScale found that “an employee feeling appreciated or unappreciated moves the needle on satisfaction more than any other variable.”
Employee engagement has been found to be three times more strongly related to intrinsic motivators than extrinsic awards. In a global study of more than 200,000 employees, Boston Consulting Group noted that the most important factor employees related to enjoying their job was that they felt appreciated (financial compensation came in at number eight.)