Who Gets Seen at Work? Rethinking Recognition for a Changing Workforce

Recognition has traditionally been associated with rewards, awards, annual celebrations and moments of appreciation. But as workforce expectations evolve, engagement remains a concern, and AI changes how work gets done, recognition is taking on a wider role within organisations.

The conversation is increasingly about what organisations recognise, who gets recognised and whether those choices reinforce the culture and behaviours they want to build.

These questions shaped the People Matters × Vantage Circle leadership roundtable, "Recognition by Design: Building the System That Powers Performance and Culture", held at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram.

The closed-door conversation brought together senior HR leaders to examine recognition through four lenses: Leadership & Accountability, AI & Tech Enablement, Culture & Inclusion, and Performance Impact. Governance ran across each of these areas.

Led by Pallav Popli, Chief Revenue Officer and Employee Engagement Evangelist at Vantage Circle, the session took an interactive approach. Leaders were asked to take positions on some of the practical choices organisations face when designing recognition programmes, before working in groups to build their own recognition systems.

Recognition has to connect behaviour with performance

One of the first discussions focused on a familiar question: should recognition primarily reward results or behaviour?

Most leaders leaned towards results, but the discussion quickly moved into the relationship between the two.

A leader pointed out that business outcomes matter, while also emphasising that the way those outcomes are achieved matters just as much. Strong results cannot automatically justify behaviour that goes against organisational values.

As the discussion evolved, Pallav captured the idea simply: “The route to the result goes through behaviour.”

That distinction matters for organisations trying to use recognition to shape culture. If recognition only follows the outcome, employees may not always understand which behaviours contributed to it. Connecting recognition to both makes the expectation clearer.

The group also discussed another overlooked category: consistent performers. Top performers often receive attention, while employees who reliably deliver over time can remain less visible.

Making recognition part of leadership accountability

The conversation then moved from recognition programmes to managers and leaders.

One of the challenges discussed was how organisations can make recognition part of leadership expectations rather than leaving it to individual managers.

During the group design exercise, one team proposed embedding recognition into behavioural competencies and performance evaluations. Managers could be assessed on how consistently they recognise their teams, supported by measures such as recognition coverage, time taken to recognise and employee feedback.

The idea was to create visibility around who is being recognised and how often. This could also help organisations identify patterns where recognition is concentrated among a small number of employees.

The group suggested that leaders who consistently demonstrate recognition should themselves be recognised, creating reinforcement at the leadership level.

AI can make less visible work easier to recognise

Technology brought another dimension to the discussion.

AI was seen as having a role in identifying contributions that managers may not always see, particularly in large or distributed organisations. One group explored how AI could draw from workforce data, performance systems, objectives and customer feedback to surface contributions across different parts of the workforce.

That could include employees in warehouses, logistics, stores and other roles that may have less visibility with senior leaders.

The conversation also acknowledged the other side of the equation. AI can help identify patterns and reduce some forms of human bias, but it can also reproduce bias if the data, policies or instructions behind the system are biased.

As one leader noted during the discussion, “AI is a tool. The outcome depends on the policy, the context and the instructions you give it.”

That leaves governance as an important part of any technology-enabled recognition system.

Recognition still depends on human judgement

The role of technology also brought the conversation back to something more fundamental: recognition is experienced by people.

One leader argued that recognition cannot be reduced entirely to data and measurement. Human judgement, emotion and context still influence whether recognition feels meaningful.

Another participant raised the risk of favouritism when recognition becomes too dependent on individual managers and their personal perceptions.

The discussion therefore moved towards a balance. Data can provide visibility and help identify patterns. Human judgement remains important in understanding context and making recognition personal.

The same tension emerged around personalisation and consistency. Leaders saw value in recognising people in ways that are meaningful to them, while ensuring that personal relationships or manager preferences do not determine who gets recognised.

From discussion to design

The most practical part of the session came when leaders moved into groups for a 30-minute design challenge.

Each table worked on a different aspect of recognition, covering leadership accountability, AI and technology, culture and inclusion, and performance impact. Governance remained a common consideration.

One group focused on translating values into observable behaviours at different levels of the organisation. For individual contributors, this included behaviours such as integrity and accountability. For team leaders, the focus moved towards transparency and communication. At the manager level, delegation, trust and inclusion became central.

Another group explored how AI could help bring less-visible contributors into the recognition system.

The leadership and accountability group focused on embedding recognition into competency dictionaries, KRAs and performance conversations. It also proposed measuring recognition coverage and employee perceptions of manager recognition.

The exercise shifted the conversation from what recognition should look like to how it would actually operate inside an organisation.

What organisations choose to recognise matters

The discussions throughout the evening pointed to a broader role for recognition within the employee experience.

Recognition can make organisational values more visible. It can help managers reinforce behaviours. It can give less-visible contributions greater visibility. It can also provide organisations with signals about how culture is being experienced across teams.

The challenge is making those connections deliberate.

As one leader put it, “Recognition is not just about the reward. It is about what you want people to repeat.”

For organisations reviewing their recognition strategy, that may be the more useful starting point. Look at the behaviours being recognised, who is receiving recognition, where gaps exist and what happens after the recognition is given.

Because the real measure of recognition lies in what it helps an organisation build.