Thank you. Thanks. Gracias. Much obliged. Danke.

There are a million ways to say thank you. How do you say it to your employees and coworkers? Kathleen Kim at Inc.com recently posted some pretty basic guidelines for office recognition, and they’re worth a look. Her general gist: be personal, consider your delivery and foster a culture of appreciation and praise. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to agree with these simple rules, but the most important thing I may have taken away while reading the article was a study by Bersin & Associates, which reports that companies that excel in employee recognition are twelve times more likely to generate strong business results.

But how do you excel at employee recognition? Well, it begins with the advice from Kathleen Kim, but it goes much deeper. Bersin’s study points out that tenure-based recognition is simply not as effective as affirmation that is timely and consistent with your company’s current strategy and vision. By incorporating employee recognition in your company’s performance evaluations and compensations, you can help to weave recognition in the culture of the business.

No matter how you say it, the truth is that “thank you” goes a long way at the workplace.