They witness
- Roland Robeveille, former Renault human resources manager, teacher and co-author of the book Benevolent management, performance accelerator: People at the heart of the company’s successpublished by Gereso
- Gaël Chatelain-Berry, speaker and creator of the “Happy work” podcast. He is also the author of The benevolent manager 2.0, published by First editions and will publish on April 2023 another sum aptly named happy job.
- Marion Choppin, manager of the Listen Léon app.
Compliment in business: well-known virtues
There are countless works extolling the merits of benevolent management which recommend the use of compliments. Their followers are spoiled for choice if they wish to shower the open space with compliments by interposed app. Discord, the instant messenger for gamers, has just bought the GAS social network, based on compliments and kindness.
Applications to compliment colleagues
There are a handful of apps that leverage the power of compliments and positive feedback. Here are some examples:
- Listen Léon: allows you to give and receive anonymous compliments to your colleagues
- Supermood: allows real-time sounding of employees’ feelings and commitment and sending targeted thanks.
- 5feedback: continuous feedback app that allows you to work on your soft skills (and in particular the ability to give compliments)
- Other apps come from the United States. Here is one to measure what will happen to us: Compliment me.
- Other “apps” help to develop benevolence in companies such as “Culture Amp” or “Workday/Peakon”.
- Finally, there are “apps” to improve the atmosphere in the workplace by discovering new colleagues through sport, such as “Kiplin”, “Squadeasy”, “AllSessions”. Or reduce the pressure at work via “Calldoor” to restrict your laptop to office hours.
Roland Robeveille
“That this culture of compliments is developing in France does not surprise me, considers Roland Robeveille, former head of human resources at Renault, teacher and co-author of “Benevolent management, performance accelerator: The human being at the heart of the company’s success” published by Gereso. It’s part of a general vibe of Covid, war in Ukraine, rising energy, unbridled competition. According to an Ifop poll at the end of 2022, 83% of French people consider the future worrying. This has consequences in business with a hardening of social relations. The pressure exerted by the shareholders on the leaders leads to tense relations with the local managers who pass it on to their subordinates. With, as a result, authoritarian practices. So it doesn’t surprise me that employees are looking for kindness and compliments”.
It’s good for morale, good for productivity: several studies, including that of the OECD, have shown that productivity increases with the well-being of employees. The results of the sociologist Elton Mayo (before the 2nd World War) (read the article by Mona Cholet on this character here) or those of the OECD in the 2010s go in the same direction.
The compliment to reduce stress?
As demonstrated by Elton Mayo and studies by the OECD, compliments de-stress employees. This is what Gaël Chatelain-Berry, speaker and creator of the “Happy work” podcast, recalls. He is also the author of The Benevolent Manager 2.0 book at First editions and will publish another sum aptly named “Happy work” in April. “with lots of advice to better live your daily work”.
Gael Chatelain-Berry
“The compliment is not cultural in Francehe says. Our teachers underline in red the spelling mistakes of our children. But there are countries where pedagogues point in green to what has been well written”.
Still, the compliment is important. Who wants to rub shoulders with malicious managers, colleagues arriving late for meetings? You have to take care of your employees. Otherwise, we will lose them. “France has 14% of employees in burnout (Read here the 2022 Opinion Way study on psychological distress in France before the summer of 2022 summarized in this infographic), continues Gaël Chatelain-Berry. In addition, 41% of French employees declare themselves to be in psychological distress. We must therefore develop the benevolent return. It is up to the manager to do this, to free up speech, to train managers in management. 40% have never had one. However, one of the sources of demotivation consists of small incivilities like never saying hello. It is learned”.
The compliment for improving your productivity?
Compliment improves intelligence and productivity. This is the study thesis on the effects of gratitude on the brain (read here the research in English by Christina M. Karns and her colleagues from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon). She decreases heart rate And develop empathy. It has actions on the active part of our cerebral cortex facilitating decision-making. For these researchers, this part of the brain is the one that makes us smarter.
To think that this therefore improves our productivity, there is only one step that Marion Choppin blithely skips.
Marion Choppin
“With our app, we make employees want to do good around them”, explains this leader of Listen Léon. This “positive” application allows you to anonymously send compliments to your colleagues in at least 140 characters. The app then goes further by determining, via an artificial intelligence brick, its strong points via the compliments received and also by offering the company, one goes with the other, elements on the strong points of its services and the company in general. The employee then has a map of his strengths (individually) and the company a map of the strengths of its employees. For the employer, the cost of the subscription is 5 euros per month and per employee. It’s free for the latter.
The app allows you to challenge yourself, to force yourself to send a compliment every week to a colleague. This is important when you know, according to a study by Deloitte and Cadremploi, that “7 out of 10 employees do not feel recognized at their fair value”.
The compliment therefore has a future in business. Employers are beginning to understand that teams only hold together, this is particularly true since the Covid, through the wealth of informal ties. Google has thus brought together its executives to understand, it is its Aristotle project (read here the Google blog on the Aristotle Project), what makes the performance of the company. They concluded that kindness and the need for psychological safety are the hallmarks of successful teams.
Can compliment marketing kill the compliment?
“The compliment only plays if it is sincere “says Roland Robeveille, former head of human resources at Renault. It must also be centered on real facts, on productivity, the resolution of difficulties. But it is obvious that the compliment positively marks the psychology of the receiver. We all need love, recognition. It feels good and I therefore consider that we should not exclude measures that feel good: apps, text messages, messages via the internet. Sometimes it’s the little things. But I am in favor of these ideas of marks of love”.
Gaël Chatelain-Berry, from “Happy work”, agrees: “kindness by calculation does not develop benevolence, but I prefer feigned kindness to honest malevolence”.
But giving compliments indiscriminately can also be counterproductive. “With the consequent loss of recognition value, concludes Florent Letourneur, founder of “We feel good”, an employer branding and HR communication agency and of the recruitment firm “Happy to meet you”. The compliment is an act of management to be done with the heart for a remarkable achievement. This form of thank you is only a motivating factor if it is sincere and honest. You have to take care to orchestrate it well, in a dedicated room and not on the stairs going to the coffee machine, at the right time and not to make up for a reproach made in another file”.
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