Organizations leveraging AI to analyze the language of their recognition moments can unlock insights about employees’ well-being needs.
By Maggie Mancini
Employee motivation, engagement, and morale are on the decline. After years of rapidly shifting workplace dynamics—the pandemic, the subsequent rise in resignations, and ongoing economic uncertainty—research has signaled that reinforcing strong organizational culture is key to getting employees back on track. In fact, analysis from Workhuman finds employees who feel recognition is a strong part of their company culture are up to 91% more likely to thrive and 40% less likely to feel stressed than those who do not.
It’s clear: Recognition, when done right, can have a significant impact on employee engagement, performance, and well-being. But how? During a conversation at Workhuman Live 2025, Brenda Pohlman, practice leader at Workhuman, explains that the company has several pillars of recognition that they anchor around.
“Reach, frequency, and value are fundamental to the recognition experience,” Pohlman shares. “It’s important to ensure that eligibility is incredibly broad, and that all employees in the organization feel inspired to participate. We need recognition to be happening everywhere in the organization for it to have an impact.”
On top of that, recognition experiences need to be occurring frequently across the organization, Pohlman says. If an employee is recognized for their contribution at the beginning of the year and then not again, they may not remember the moment when it comes time to fill out an annual engagement survey, she explains. It’s also crucial for recognition moments to be meaningful.
“We think about value in terms of the value of the experience relative to the connection that’s being built between the employees involved, the giver and the receiver,” Pohlman says. “There’s also value from a monetary perspective. While the monetary component isn’t the most important piece, it’s the thing that gives the experience a little bit of juice and a little bit of staying power.”
When it comes to enhancing employee well-being through a culture of recognition, there are both micro-benefits and macro-benefits, Pohlman says. Leveraging AI to analyze recognition data provides insights about well-being in an organization that leaders have never had access to before, she explains.
“For example, we can evaluate the language in recognition messages shared between colleagues to find the sentiment that speaks to a lack of well-being, burnout, high stress levels, long working hours, or lack of work-life balance,” she says. “That’s powerful for an HR leader to have.”
Workhuman is currently working with a customer to analyze the language in their recognition messages, Pohlman adds. Through that analysis, the company has seen a pattern between people who receive recognition that includes language pointing to burnout. These employees are being recognized for situations where they’ve sacrificed personal time and worked extra hours. Workhuman is able to predict that those employees are more likely to be absent in the future, she says.
“Not only are we able to use that language to see sentiment in the organization, but we’re able to see predictive analytics telling us other things that could be going on in the future that we wouldn’t have had any way to understand without that data.”
For companies looking to integrate well-being into their total rewards strategy, surveying and asking employees what they need is a great approach, Pohlman says, as is using a recognition platform and analyzing the data is creates to understand employees’ well-being needs.
“Employees see the correlation between recognition and well-being very directly,” Pohlman says. “This isn’t an anomaly for them. In fact, Workhuman’s research with Gallup finds that employees who say that recognition is an important part of their culture are four times more likely to agree that the organization cares about their well-being. These two are very linked.”
If employees feel seen, valued, and appreciated for the work they do, they likely have a stronger sense of well-being. And while Workhuman has found that the strongest emotional response employees have to recognition generally comes from their direct manager, peer-to-peer recognition is crucial too, Pohlman says.
“At the core of these recognition moments, on a micro level, it’s about connection. It’s about someone saying, ‘I see you. I see the good work you do. Here’s how your work makes a difference to me or your team or the company.’ And that’s powerful as a booster of employee well-being.” — Brenda Pohlman, Workhuman
While there’s a bigger emotional weight to receiving recognition from a direct supervisor, recognition between colleagues plays a major role in supporting the volume of recognition needed to transform company culture. It can also improve employee engagement, as receiving recognition from different sources can enhance feelings of belonging.
Gallup released a study earlier this year saying that employee engagement levels are lower than they’ve been in 10 years. Among the key reasons? Fewer employees believe there’s someone at work who cares about them. In that way, sharing a moment of recognition with a colleague is really important, Pohlman adds.
“At the core of these recognition moments, on a micro level, it’s about connection,” Pohlman says. “It’s about someone saying, ‘I see you. I see the good work you do. Here’s how your work makes a difference to me or your team or the company.’ And that’s powerful as a booster of employee well-being.”
