During a visit to UNLEASH World in Paris, we sat down with Robert Ordever, Managing Director at O.C. Tanner Europe, to discuss the key takeaways from their annual Global Culture Report, the enduring power of appreciation, and how to balance the growing influence of AI with the essential need for human connection in recognition. Ordever makes a compelling case for HR leaders to embrace recognition wholeheartedly to inspire better performance and retention.
What Stood Out Most in This Year’s Global Culture Report?
The things that particularly stood out for me this time were around inspiration and hope. I think that with everything going on in the world today, the economy, and all the rest of it, being able to create a work environment that is giving people hope and work that is inspiring them to do more and push forward, is key.
I think the key to producing great research is when you read the report and your response is, “Yes, of course.” Nothing in there is shocking, but the findings are really clear: what you assume creating a great workplace culture is exactly right. Of course, we are in the business of that and our research informs our product development cycle. What we do is provide people with recognition experiences that inspire them to do more, to repeat those things that they did well, to go on and drive further success.
“To be able to create a work environment that is giving people hope and work that is inspiring them to do more and push forward is key.”
It’s something that instinctively feels comfortable to me, that idea of inspiration. If you are not getting inspired at work, where are you getting inspired?
What practical action can any HR leader take from the report’s findings?
What practical action? It starts with appreciating your people.
When I think about employee recognition and all of the amazing research we do, it really comes down to a very simple concept: if people come to work and they feel appreciated, they will give more. They will grow and develop, and they will keep delivering for you.
Recognition is a concept that seems so obvious when we are kids. If you are at school and someone gives you a gold sticker or the teacher says, “Well done,” it’s great. Yet, when we become older and go to work, we feel slightly too proud for that. Somehow we feel like it does not apply to us anymore. The truth is, it does.
Every year our research comes out and every year there are a number of key messages, but it always comes back to how we recognise and appreciate the people that are working for us, to create an environment where people come in, they are inspired to be more, where we can provide them with a culture that is motivating for them, and enables them to go on and be their best selves.
The message of appreciation resonates with HR, but often struggles for wider adoption among managers. How do you tackle that problem?
I think you have to be bold enough to go all in with it.
We often see, particularly in more emerging markets where recognition is new, employers trying to do this themselves. And it’s really hard. Without the tools to do it, it is really difficult. It is hard to reach the different geographies and make that connection consistent.
Leaning on the expertise and experience of a global recognition provider is one step in the right direction. You need a tool that enables you to have cross-border connection, a level of consistency, and a level of reporting and analytics.
I think the hardest thing is where businesses try and do something half-baked: they lose complete control of their budget. They do not know where the money is being spent and it’s hard to track the successes. They cannot see the links between the recognition activity and the ROI.
If you have a provider that is really working with you and providing the inisghts, you can show return on investment, you can show improvement in retention, you can show improvement in productivity and profitability, but you have to be willing to go all in, you have to be willing to engage.
Recognition in Europe is more mainstream than it has ever been. It has never been easier to find a partner to help you. So that would be my advice. If you are going to do it, go all in and expect to see the return.
Where would you say the line is between useful AI and losing the human power in recognition?
That is such an important question, and it is a question that our clients, our prospects, and our technology teams are all wrestling with every day.
The power of recognition is about human connection, right? There is no question that if I receive a piece of recognition and it looks like a machine wrote it, it does not have any impact on me. It is better for someone just to talk to me verbally than to do something robotic.
Where we are trying to use AI is to enhance the human connection.
“The power of recognition is about human connection.”
I think AI can be extraordinarily good at working out who should be recognised and how they should be recognised, and who has not been called out in a long while. So it acts as a prompt to enable human connection.
When our system nudges me and it says, “your employee has not had any recognition for the last fourteen days, here are some things that we have picked up that he is working on,” that helps me enable a human connection. What it does not do is send him a recognition moment. When I write a piece of appreciation through our system, I can use our AI recognition tool to help me better formulate what that should look like to make sure that I am not underplaying his achievements. That is where it starts to provide guidance and coaching that enables me to have a better human connection.
When an employee hits a milestone, we can put in a comment, photos, and provide a keepsake Yearbook. When this reaches its recipient, the wording that I put in has been helped by the recognition coach. It helped me make it more meaningful. What it does not do is write it for me. Everything in here is completed by a human, and there is no obligation for you to keep the suggested wording.
It is about coaching me, not about automating the recognition experience. I think that is where the line is.
The other area that I think is awesome, and we touched on it before, is with analytics and insight. We have millions of data points within a client’s programme: Who is being recognised? What are they being recognised for? How often are they being recognised? How can we feed that back into their performance reviews, two-way, with their HRIS system?
I think AI can be a really powerful tool for reporting and analytics. It does not take away the human element; it just allows us to see and hear more to enable better quality human connection.
How do you imagine recognition will evolve over the next five years?
Wow, that is not an easy question. Where do I see it? Firstly, I would say I think it is going to be far more common to have a recognition programme, and in wider geographies.
Right now, if you look at geographies like the UK and the US, it is pretty accepted that you need a recognition programme to do this properly. Other regions in Europe are starting to really come on board. We have big clients with headquarters in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany and more. I think we are going to see a lot more of that. I think we are going to see more recognition and reward professionals in businesses, in the same way we see in the US and in bigger businesses in Europe. So, I think it is going to be a lot more mainstream.
As for how the product will change, that is a really big question. The development of our technology solution is now so fast, I am not sure I could predict Q1 and Q2 next year as easily as I would have done five years ago. We have about four or five new parts of our product launching just in Q4, so it is just moving at such a pace.
I think the big thing for us is making sure that our technology is led by our research. It is very easy in a world where everyone is talking about AI and tech to come up with things that look fancy and glitzy that make the HR person say “wow.” But you get caught out if it is not research-driven and it does not provide return on investment.
We’re nearly 100 years old but we have to behave like a start-up. We have the responsibility to build products that are going to last, to build solutions that in five years people can look back on and see the return they get. Our responsibility is to make sure that it is driven by that research, that it is absolutely driven by providing return on investment. I think that is going to be more important in the next five years than ever.
How is O.C. Tanner applying these insights internally?
Well, in my view, like a lot of people’s view, is that AI is not going to replace us, but those people that embrace AI will replace those that do not.
So we are working really hard internally to get people familiar with AI, to get comfortable with AI. We have a very strong AI governance process. I sit on our AI Governance Committee, and we have an AI Innovation Committee. We are trying to be cutting edge and forward-thinking, but responsible. Our clients trust us with their data, they trust us with their people. We have to be absolutely solid in terms of making sure that we are behaving in a way that is long-term sustainable and responsible.
Our desire to be at the forefront of innovation is really strong, and we are just treading that careful path as we go through. We are finding more and more ways, I think, to help our people be the best version of themselves through AI. We are not spending time on administration or trying to manually analyse data. That is the area where I think is the most obvious place.
If we can free people up from some of the things that used to take hours and hours and allow them to spend time on thinking and strategy, then our products and our service and our partnership with our clients can gain depth. We do not want less people; we want people that are thinking more broadly. I think those people in the industry that think that AI will just help them reduce their headcount are short-sighted.
Closing Thoughts
Ordever’s perspective reinforces that even as workplace technology evolves, the fundamental need for genuine appreciation remains central to a thriving employee experience. For HR and business leaders, the message is clear: recognition, when implemented consistently and supported by the right tools, is a strategic imperative, not just a feel-good initiative.