How are "real thanks" and "thanks of the week" different?

One feels sincere and not scripted and the other well is company policy?

Company culture and company policy aren't the same thing

Then why does the Company usually have five to seven cultural values they plaster on the wall and form the basis of employee reviews? Feels like Company policy to me.

I've definitely experienced similar, mostly when thanks are rolled up above team level into large all-hands type meetings though. In those cases you'll get senior managers polling everyone to submit some thanks so that their team isn't under-represented in case it looks like they're not pulling their weight.

At first glance, I definitely like the ideas to encourage positivity and gratitude. But I had the same worries as you: if things go wrong these same ideas could get twisted into toxic popularity contests and "pieces of flair" mandatory fun. People could start comparing how many kudos each employee profile has, then start pushily soliciting them, and then "kudos inflation" happens...

Maybe things Just Work so long as you avoid hiring jerks, and people feel secure enough in their jobs that they don't see the need to anxiously compete with their teammates. (Some company cultures definitely go the opposite direction, favoring cold-blooded ambition over prosocial cooperation.)

You can’t, so you assume that all thanks are “performative” (insincere). The action thus becomes indicative of adherence to group norms for the performer, so more of a culture-fit test for the person giving thanks. There could also be an in-group acknowledgement by being thanked if the performative culture gets really strong.

Something like this only works if your leadership team believes in it. If they give and receive feedback through the same system, align incentives to keep it going. Then this kind of feedback will thrive.

/++ are spontaneous. Any time your colleague makes a great presentation, does you a favour, you /++ them.

If there are regular weekly kudos, it'd be a team-specific thing.

/++ were really common before a couple of years ago, but I get the vague feeling it's usage is declining. It used to report the accumulated number of pluses you got... So you could tell who have been the really helpful folks (or really tenured folks) out there, and for great contributions, you'd really want to chime in to a wave of ++s to show your appreciation.

Without the numbers, usage seems to have declined a bit, since there isn't the satisfaction of seeing a colleague's karma go up by, say, 10pts after a great presentation.

Still, it's a great culture tool, and something I'd want to spread at my next employer's if I leave the company.

All these company games just seem like a way to get people to do more work. In addition to doing your regular work, you now have pressure to score really high cudo points on your presentation. Can't just throw together some bullet points. Will need to work the weekend coming up with some awesome graphics.

So, cynic inside me thinking this is just another metric to game in office games..

Yeah I think this is a good idea but ignores that every piece of positive feedback is potentially negative feedback for someone else.

We have all probably experienced working really hard on something that isn't very visible and receiving very little credit for. We have also probably experienced working on a flashy but relatively simple feature and getting lots of praise for it.

It would be a good way to quantify small things like answering questions, giving good code reviews, etc. that can go unnoticed.