Have employees changed in how they want to be appreciated? An empirical comparison

Purpose Significant cultural changes have occurred in workplaces over the past decade, including the increase in employees working remotely, a shift in the generational composition of employees and differing values of younger employees. Previous research has documented the various ways employees prefer to be shown appreciation. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether significant differences exist in how the current workforce want to be appreciated in comparison to the employees assessed prior to these cultural factors occurring. Design/methodology/approach The Motivating By Appreciation Inventory, an online assessment which identifies how individual employees prefer to be appreciated, was used. Results from the initial 100,000 employees to take the inventory (from 2011–2017) were compared with 80,005 employees’ results obtained in 2023–2024. Findings Similar patterns were obtained for both groups of employees. Words of Affirmation continued to be the most preferred appreciation language (by 44%–46% of employees), followed by Quality Time (26%–27%) and Acts of Service (20%–22%). Tangible Gifts was the least preferred language of appreciation in both groups (6%–9%). Research limitations/implications The vast majority of participants were US employees. Therefore, to generalize the findings to other cultures may be inappropriate. Practical implications Employees continue to desire to be shown appreciation in different ways. If HR professionals want their actions to have impact, they should implement practices and strategies which use the various appreciation languages valued by their team mebers. Originality/value No other research comparing large groups of employees regarding their appreciation preferences is known to exist.