Recognition and Appreciation: Magic Ingredients for Employee Engagement and Investment

January 30, 2025

Doctor or engineer? The answer to that question helped shape the career of Diana Fayad, International Total Rewards Leader at GE Vernova, which employs approximately 75,000 in 100-plus countries. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, GE Vernova completed its spin-off from GE and officially began operations as a standalone company on 2024 April 2. Building on GE’s 130 years of experience, GE Vernova is committed to electrifying and decarbonising the world.

Diana spoke recently at a conference in Barcelona chaired by Farient Advisors‘ Partner Simon Patterson. They agreed to explore the importance of employee recognition and its role in company culture and talent retention, resulting in this interview. Diana’s lifelong experience at GE, and now GE Vernova, began after she graduated with a degree in engineering and was cemented when, several years ago, she made a pivotal change in her career journey.

diana fayad and simon patterson, interview graphic, signifying recognition

Simon: How did you get into this field of total rewards? What’s your background?

Diana: I wasn’t born in HR. I graduated from an engineering school. I then joined one of GE’s leadership programs, which takes young engineers into business in different areas and industries. It was my best career opportunity without pursuing an MBA or another advanced degree. That got me into commercial operation roles, including risk, contract management, and sales, but my real sense of purpose was aspiring toward human impact. I always wanted to be a doctor, but engineering studies were faster and shorter!

 

Simon: It sounds like a fascinating way of training yourself. How did you achieve the role that you are in now?

Diana: A few years into my commercial operation role at GE, I recognised my heart was not into sales and commercial as much as I thought, and I felt the need to pursue a more human-centered career. I was presented with options to rekindle that passion focused on entrepreneurship. An innovative HR leader at that time proposed I take on a mission to design a sales incentive plan. That was my bridge into the HR world.

 

Simon: What about that appealed to you?

Diana: It was an entrepreneurial project because I had to revamp, design, and bring a new incentive system to life. Having worked on the business side, I didn’t see the value of HR at first, but when I began better to understand the importance of HR to the organisation, I could see it was a key function to changing the corporate organisation—that’s what I wanted, to be part of that positive change.

 

Simon: You and I are talking today because you spoke at a recent conference about designing incentive plans and recognising performance, which I found fascinating. Tell us more about that.

Diana: Recognising an employee’s performance is powerful because it contributes enormously to keeping the best talent while being economical. I’m always curious about trends and statistics. There is strong data indicating that the number one reason people leave their jobs is their manager. How do we take managerial roles to a new level? That’s why recognition resonated so strongly. We simply don’t do enough of it. We don’t talk enough about it. We don’t train for it or even explain what it means. Recognition is underestimated.

 

Simon: How have you worked to implement some of these ideas? Can you give us some flavour of that?

Diana: Recognition platforms may exist in most companies, but what makes a strong recognition culture is how people use it. Recognition needs to be meaningful and impactful. Appreciation is another dimension. I started talking about recognition and appreciation within my HR community. In big companies, we cannot do things alone. We need to lead and influence as a team. My first step was to present these ideas at an external event and then adapt the talk to the audience—my team, the HR community, and our organisation and leadership. Role model the change, as it were. If HR starts by embracing a culture of recognition and appreciation and educating others, including managers and our client groups, it becomes easier to empower advocates.

 

Simon: Instead of becoming missionary sellers, you had a plan. What changes have been made if you could compare how someone might be viewed and recognised today versus five years ago?

Diana: It’s continuous improvement. Things don’t change 180 degrees in 24 hours. As we become more mindful about acknowledging peers and co-workers, we make more time for recognition and appreciation at events, and we can see the culture slowly shifting. Here is a parallel: Safety is a top priority in many industrial companies, so we start with a safety moment in every meeting. Recognition starts taking on that same dimension today. At the close of meetings, we take time to genuinely recognize someone or something because, behind that something, there is someone.


Simon: How do you distinguish between recognition and appreciation?

Diana: Let’s say there is an achievement. We’ve closed a deal with a customer. It’s something we’ve always wanted. We got there. We succeeded. We will recognise the person or team who drove that initiative. An accomplishment drives recognition. Appreciation is more about who you are and less about what you do. You and I have been working on this article for a month. Instead of just saying to you, “Simon, the article is a great achievement, and your contributions were so valuable”. Let me show my appreciation by shifting my focus to you as a person rather than the deliverable. “Simon, I enjoyed working with you, our connection over the last month, and what I learned from you. Working with you was such a pleasure, and I thank you for that.”

 

Simon: Is it more powerful to recognise an employee and then pay them something simultaneously?

Diana: It’s a good question. On the contrary, I don’t think recognition is more powerful if it has a financial aspect. At least for me, recognition and appreciation create a powerful impact regardless of any associated financial reward.

 

Simon: Can you share that experience?

Diana: When I was still in the commercial world, I was first based in Dubai, working for a business covering the Middle East and Africa. I then had the opportunity to move to France and work for a different business. My team organised a farewell during my last week in Dubai, and I was given two gifts. The first gift was an iPad—It was 2012, and iPads were new—and a small book where they had all written personalised messages. It’s now 2025, and while my iPad was lost in my different moves, the book is still in my living room where I’m sitting today, and I still go back from time to time and read through those energising and heartfelt messages.

 

Simon: Farient, as an organisation, is exploring the role of compensation in culture. Do you think how much people earn is irrelevant, or is it a baseline? What’s your view of the intersection between pay and culture?

Diana: The world of total rewards has evolved rapidly in recent years. Compensation is important, but it cannot be the only lever. In the past, compensation and benefits focused much more on financial matters. Now, the spectrum of total rewards is much broader and includes as many intangibles as financial elements. That’s also why the function name shifted from “C&B” to “Total Rewards”.

Fair and equitable equity is another key compensation principle and requires alignment to the market, fairness, and objective criteria. For example, I’m being paid fairly for where I live; I’m being paid fairly for the job I do; I’m being paid fairly compared to all others. This is the baseline of compensation.

 

Simon: One of my clients draws talent from around the world, and while they all come to one place, they have quite different starting places. Americans usually have been paid a lot more than individuals who originate elsewhere, for example. So, should everyone be paid equally if the job is the same wherever one originated? In other words, talent is talent is talent, or is it? What has been your experience?

Diana: This topic comes up in many different forums. Market-driven, geographically driven, skills- or impact-based compensation. There are variables. When I first heard about skills or impact compensation, I thought, “Whoa, this is an interesting idea:” Professionals should be paid according to their jobs and the value they bring to the company, irrespective of their location. My deeper thought into the matter made me question the concept and realise that, to be fair, compensation can only be relative. What drives compensation is the cost of living and the economic situation of the country where professionals live; otherwise, we will either create situations where professionals cannot afford comfortable living standards or we will inflate our overall base cost to a level that is not affordable nor sustainable for companies to thrive financially. The actual “value” of a financial package is what it means for the lives of our employees and their families.

What we can consider rewarding is skills in different ways and differentiating through bonuses. Whoever has a higher impact would have higher bonus and promotion rates. There is a way to achieve this without changing the compensation philosophy. There are ways to accomplish the same objective without changing the principle of compensation, which should remain market-aligned.

 

Simon: This raises the question of pay “transparency” and the initiatives taking shape in the EU. I’m astonished at the level of detail the EU is looking for. Do you have to deal with this in your role, and how has it affected the transparency issue?

Diana: The April 2023 EU directive introduced obligations for employers to enhance pay transparency and facilitate the enforcement of the right to equal pay. The regulations are set to take effect in 2026, with our obligations for disclosure in 2027 on 2026 data, so we are preparing ourselves to be ready. In general, whether it is a mandate or not, greater transparency is good.

 

Simon: The other area we should touch on is the impact of technology and, specifically, artificial intelligence. How has AI affected your work?

Diana: We’re at the very beginning of adoption and reflecting on what is most needed. We are thinking about how to use this technology strategically and where it matters. One example is to minimise and automate all administrative work and apply that time and energy to more analytical work. How can we be more thoughtful about how to deliver value to employees through our use of technology? Our goal today is to work smarter and be purposeful because resources are lean. At the same time, we are committed to recognising our people for their contributions and making them feel appreciated.

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