If you haven't checked out Corporateinklings, the blog of our 2007 Top Small Workplace Corporate Ink, a Massachusetts-based PR firm that specializes in the technology industry, I urge you to do so today.  There you'll find honest voices of most employees of this small business – including the Founder and President, Amy Bermar.  I tweeted earlier this week about a post that employee Corinne Federici wrote about converting social media pessimists with some new Google data on executives' use of the Internet and search engines.

Yesterday Bermar wrote about the importance of thank-you notes for job applicants – especially recent college grads and other Millennials – who feel they're the best fit for a company.  She makes a great point, particularly since a handwritten note has become somewhat of a lost art with the advent of 24/7 connectedness via technology.

Bermar's post got me thinking about other ways that thank-yous are used – not just to acknowledge or recognize, but to impact organizations' bottom line in tangible ways.  I remembered this article that appeared in Inc. magazine last fall, in which Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group (one of Inc. editor Bo Burlingham's Small Giants) said that one of the time- and cost-efficent and yet powerful ways he caters to existing customers is to write them personal thank-you notes.

But thank-yous can be used in other ways, and can go in all directions across various stakeholders.  They can be powerful tools for building employee engagement and a more satisfied customer base.  Consider these examples from our website:

• Supervisor to reports.  In a recent guest feature, workplace consultant Allison O'Neill talked about turning all those times you merely think, "I must remember to thank so-and-so" into reality.  She advises on how you can do this one-on-one and in a group setting.
• Employees to other employees.  One of our first Success Stories, on Wisconsin-based Sargento Foods, illustrates one of their employee engagement practices – workers using "praise cards" to thank fellow employees for helping to remedy production issues or otherwise going above and beyond.
• Employees to leadership.  One of our most recent Success Stories, on 2008 Top Small Workplace Decagon Devices in Washington state, relates how the company's explanation of their debt-free standing in a down economy prompted an employee to praise management's operations strategy.  While impossible to predict in terms of frequency, leadership should use this valuable feedback to gauge progress against the firm's mission and goals.
• Customer to company.  I wrote our Success Story on iRobot, whose CEO, Colin Angle, we named a Best Boss in 2005, and one of my favorite moments in it is where we heard the joy from the employees we talked to as a result of soldiers' emails and letters to the company thanking them for their products that literally save lives – their PackBots in use in the Middle East.  In your business, similar types of thank-yous could spur practices around customer focus groups or even user-generated marketing content.

So as you think about your employee engagement strategies, don't discount the power of a seemingly simple gesture of thanks, no matter the source or the recipient.

How do thank-yous factor into your workplace team building activities and customer relations?