Kerry Wekelo, CEO of Actualize Consulting and author of the Gratitude Infusion, has earned the Healthiest Company Award as well as three corporate culture awards: Top Company Culture by Entrepreneur Magazine, Top Workplace by the Washington Post, and a Great Place to Work Certification by Great Place to Work. Can practicing gratitude really do all that?

Wekelo found gratitude to be instrumental in effective communication, personal wellness, healthy work/life balance, solving conflict, and encouraging team connection. Once she infused gratitude into her leadership operations, clients noticed employees were happy to show up to work, put extensive effort into doing their job well, and were excited to innovate day after day.

Actualize Consulting was recognized by clients to be “purposeful, positive, and proactive” and that their influence on “making the world a better place has grown exponentially, at a time when it is more important than ever.”

Their goal was that this simple practice of gratitude would quickly make the company more purposeful and a more meaningful place to work. Leading with gratitude meant expressing it as often as they felt inspired to do.

Wekelo mentions the Spread Gratitude Outward exercise which invites each participant to spend two minutes freely sharing with a partner what they are grateful for, without interruption. This allows participants to experience how easily we can change our perspective and find things to be grateful for.

What may seem simple can be applied both personally and, in the workplace, to create a thriving organizational culture. A genuine culture of positivity can be far reaching into areas that are difficult to reach.

When facing a challenge or conflict, Wekelo developed the 3P Method which entails Pausing to Pivot to a Positive. Here is how it works:

Leading the conversation with gratitude can help leaders diffuse tense situations and shift dynamics more easily creating genuine relationships with team members and co-workers. The proof was in how people felt. The principals focus on movement, breathing, handling challenges, nourishment, communicating, and engaging in an activity you love each day.

According to neuroscientist Glenn Fox, “Gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief; this may explain in part how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time. Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us.”

Instead of focusing on the formula to get employees to produce more or handle conflict better it’s best to adopt gratitude as a way of life.

“Gratitude is related to 23% lower levels of stress hormones, increases self-esteem, enhances willpower, strengthens relationships, deepens spirituality, boosts creativity and improves academic performance.” – The Psychology of Gratitude, leading psychologist, Robert A. Emmons

The real proof comes from the US Department of Labor that states, “The number one reason people give on third-party exit interviews is they don’t feel appreciated by their manager for their specific contributions”. I can personally attest to this. When I don’t feel appreciated at a job, I am actively searching for another one. It is the fastest thing to motivate me or the quickest thing to take the wind from my sails.

So how can HR convince leaders to adopt a position of gratitude with their team? Remembering that even though it’s free and countless psychologists have provided data to back the power of gratitude to reduce stress, enhance employee engagement, and foster morale reluctance from leadership is to be expected. It can be uncomfortable to share compliments for some of us – whether given or received.

Making culture shifts can be especially difficult as it will require your leaders to grow their interpersonal skills, but if there is conflict, civility issues, and poor engagement records, this is necessary growth. And if you do what you always have done, there won’t be a change.

It starts with pivoting the priorities from profit to employee’s goals, careers, and well-being. Happy people produce great work and that’s what will make you bottomline flourish and your HR woes subside. It really is that simple. The reluctance from leadership will be temporary until they see positive results from your role modeling.

According to Joel Wong and Joshua Brown’s 12-week study on gratitude’s effect on mental health, they asked participants to write gratitude letters each week to improve their gratitude “muscle” and the results were greater than they expected, even after four weeks.

This indicates that expressing and noticing gratitude is a practice that gets easier the more you do it. Here are different practices of receiving gratitude, according to the Gratitude Infusion, which can be a practice to get comfortable with:

1. Self-Appreciation: recognizing what you bring to the table.
2. Seeing all forms of gratitude like a smile on someone’s face, a walk you take in the park or other small acts in your day can increase your awareness of abundance.
3. Acknowledging gratitude is equally as valuable by saying “Thank you, I accept.” This can increase positive reciprocity.

One easy way to begin is to start or end your own meetings with an icebreaker of gratitude. Leading by example is the best way to prove the benefits. Have the team say why they are grateful for those in the meeting and ensure everyone is mentioned. When this was practiced, Wekelo says people often commented that they didn’t even know others were grateful for their efforts.

Keep in mind, what works for one person may not work for someone else. It’s important, when we give this feedback, to focus on the receiver. While some employees like to be publicly acknowledged, others may need individual doses to keep them motivated. For those that have reluctance towards embracing gratitude staying focused on the results like driving motivation and employee engagement can help.

Gratitude may seem like a wasted effort until you see how necessary it is for employee engagement, productivity, and motivation. At HRInsidr, we say “it’s never about the work, it’s always about the people.” This is the top issue employers get wrong. I’ve seen it in countless offices, executive teams, and from leaders who don’t understand the cause of poor metrics or the cause of dwindling profits. Employers fail to make the connection between these results and the people who work for them. Without their people, they wouldn’t have any results at all. They suffer because employers don’t use solutions that drive human behavior.

Solutions like gratitude don’t take an advanced course, or thousands of dollars in a new training program. It starts with recognition of what we offer each other and what we appreciate about the values we, as human beings, bring to the workplace. Cultivating a positive workplace in this divisive and polarized landscape can increase your results like nothing else, just takes practice.