My department is pretty siloed, so I don't offhand know who all normally works closely with whom. I don't consult the org chart when I see people praise or than

My department is pretty siloed, so I don't offhand know who all normally works closely with whom. I don't consult the org chart when I see people praise or thank each other, either, so I don't have a good sense of how much public praise in my department is intra-team puffery. I can say, though, that I've (so far) never used that channel to thank anyone on my own team. On my own small team, my manager already knows when someone has been especially helpful to someone else. I use that chat in part to make things visible to external managers who otherwise might not know. > And management sees those who are visible, even if it is not fair. I admit that even in the best circumstances this could create some bias, but I don't think it has to be that severe. Managers should have other, better sources of information than that which should weigh more heavily than that. > It can quickly get artificial Yeah. I think keeping it low stakes and not treating it as some kind of informal metric is important for preserving some level of authenticity. Truthfully, though, I don't really find myself evaluating the authenticity of exchanges of gratitude between others. I just know that when I use it, I'm genuinely thankful to whomever I'm thanking, and so far I feel like the thanks I've received have also been genuine. > a bit depressing for the people who don't really appear there. That's true. I've even felt a bit of that myself. But I think ultimately it's imperative for organizations (especially managers, but to a lesser extent basically everyone) to try to ensure that all kinds of people feel appreciated for their work, including people who are introverts and people whose work is solitary or unsexy maintenance work. And that means that recognition can't just be formulaic or systematic or happen in only one place. Ideally, feeling underappreciated or left out in a certain system of recognition/thanks would be something you'd bring to your manager during a 1:1. And they could try to answer it by making your impact visible in some other way, like organizing a presentation or a demo of your work, or writing up some kind of report on it and sharing it somewhere, or just DMing you every now and then and letting you know that they had a conversation with so-and-so about how whatever you did was nice, helpful, vital, or whatever, or (hopefully!) arrange something more substantial like a promotion, raise, or bonus. I like our gratitude chat at work but I wouldn't begrudge anyone still feeling underappreciated for whatever reason or saying that it doesn't do much for them.