50 Quotes for Employee Recognition

The quality of relations between an employer or management and employees decides the success of any organization. Nowadays, a company has to engage in best management practices to ensure these relationship needs to be well nurtured through timely and frequent employee recognition.

Failure to do so can lead to attrition and employee dissatisfaction. This has a cascade effect, that will end up leading to your organization wasting a lot of money on fresh recruitment and training new staff.

To avoid such expenses and loss of productivity, it’s vital to realize the importance of employee recognition. Here are some quotes for employee recognition by some of the greatest entrepreneurs, writers, and management experts in the world.

Employee recognition quotes and sayings

Personally, I believe every manager or business owner should bear these quotes in mind. They can boost staff morale and increase productivity.

1. “You don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they’ll surprise you with their results.” - General George Patton. American Army General

2. “Make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, has meaningful impact and is contributing to the good of the society.” - Larry Page. Cofounder. Google

3. “People are the most important thing. Business model and product will follow if you have the right people.” - Adam Neumann. Founder. WeWork

4. “What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you- what used to be your tail wind is now your head wind. You have to lean into that and figure out what to do, because complaining isn’t a strategy.” - Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon

5. “Treat your employee right so they won’t use your Internet to look for new jobs.” - Mark Zuckerberg. CEO, Facebook

6. “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customer.” - Dr. Stephen R. Covey. Author & Motivational Speaker

7. “If a man does his best, what else is there?” - General George Patton. American Army General

8. “The way your employees feel is the way your customers feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.” - Sybil F. Stershic. American Author

9. “Never push loyal people to the point where they don’t give a damn.” - Peter F. Drucker. Management Consultant

10. “Productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.” - Peter F. Drucker. Management Consultant

11. “If I had to run a company on three measures, those measures would be customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.” - Jack Welch. Ex-Chairman and CEO. GE

12. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments towards organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” - Andrew Carnegie. Businessman & Founder, Carnegie- Mellon University

13. “Every employee can affect your company’s brand, not just the frontline employees that are paid to talk to your customers.” - Tony Hsieh. CEO, Zappos

14. “Talent wins games but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” - Michael Jordan. American Basket Ball Player

15. “You need the right people with you. Not the best people.” - Jack Ma. Cofounder. Alibaba Group

16. “You know one person can make a difference and everyone should try.” - John F. Kennedy. Former President of USA

17. “You’ve got to get your team not only to understand the company brand but also to understand their personal brand.” Amber Hurdle, CEO, AHC

18. “Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without deep thought and hard work.” - JRD Tata. Indian Industrialist

19. “Essentially whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference is going to be talked about.” - Dhirubhai Ambani. Indian Business Magnate

20. “Treat your employees like an investment, not a cost.” - Dan Sullivan. American Senator

21. “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person- not just employees- are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees means satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” - Anne M. Mulcahy. Former CEO. Xerox

22. “One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” - Elbert Hubbard. American Writer

23. “Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” - John D. Rockefeller. Founder. Standard Oil Co

24. “I always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job. Because he’ll find an easier way to do it.” - Bill Gates. Founder. Microsoft

25. “Nothing we do is more important than hiring people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.” - Lawrence Bossidy. American author. Former COO, General Electric

26. “In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what matters to your people.” - Julie Bevacqua. CMO. QuickMobile

27. “You’ll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling. Not why it’s important in general but why you’re doing something important that no one else is going to get done.” - Peter Thiel. Cofounder. PayPal

28. “It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” - Warren Buffett. CEO. Berkshire Hathaway Corp & Management Expert

29. “Human resources isn’t a thing we do. It’s a thing that runs our business.” - Steve Wynn. CEO. Wynn Resorts Ltd

30. “Treating employees benevolently shouldn’t be viewed as an added cost that cuts into profit, but as a powerful energizer that can grow the enterprise into something far greater than the leader could envision.” - Howard Schultz. CEO. Starbucks

Famous employee recognition quotes by

Sir Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Group.

31. “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of the employees, they’ll take care of the clients.”

32. “If you get the right mix of people working for the company, it will have a far greater chance of success.”

33. “Success in business is all about people, people, and people. Whatever industry a company is in, its employees are its biggest competitive advantage.”

34. Your employees are your company’s real competitive advantage. They’re the ones making magic happen so long as their needs are being met.”

Steve Jobs. Founder. Apple Inc.

35. “We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.”

36. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

37. “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”‍

38. “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

39. “To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”

Mary Kay Ash. Founder. Mary Kay Cosmetics

40. “Everyone wants to be appreciated. So if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret.”

41. “We treat our people like royalty. If you honor and serve the people who work for you, they’ll honor and serve you.”

Lee Iacocca. Former Chairman. Chrysler & Former President. Ford

42. “Teamwork is how everyday people achieve remarkable goals.”

43. “Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all these things effectively, you can’t miss."

44. “In the end, all management can be reduced to three words: people, products and profits. People come first.”

45. “I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.”‍

Henry Ford. Founder. Ford Motors

46. “If everyone is moving forward then success takes care of itself.”

47. “One thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”

48. “Coming together is the beginning, keeping together is progress and working together is success.”

49. “It’s not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet, what else is he?”

50. “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”

Wrapping Up

These quotes by top business personalities, industry leaders, and other eminent personalities clearly indicate the importance of employees for an organization. These quotes would prove very useful for employee recognition at your company.