The hidden gems are already on the payroll

There is someone in your workplace who can calm an angry customer, explain a complicated problem and find the document everyone else insists has disappeared.

If they did this on a stage, wearing a small microphone, we would call them an exceptional communicator.

Because they do it beside the stationery cupboard, we call them Sue and ask whether there are any more envelopes.

This week, a small proposal: let's notice what familiarity has made almost invisible.

The Big Idea

We are surprisingly good at admiring qualities at a distance.

We celebrate the composure of a famous leader, the insight of a bestselling author, the persistence of an athlete. We buy books about their habits. We share their quotations. Occasionally, we pay to hear them explain that listening is important.

Meanwhile, a colleague has been listening carefully to people for fourteen years. We mostly notice when they are on annual leave.

The quality is there. The publicity department is missing.

Think of the person who asks the question that saves everyone three weeks of unnecessary work. The receptionist who knows when somebody needs a little patience. The colleague who disagrees without humiliating anyone. The person who makes a new starter feel that accepting the job was a good decision.

These are substantial abilities. Yet once we become accustomed to them, we can start treating them as features of the building. The heating comes on. The doors open. Someone quietly makes the place bearable.

Perhaps the most revealing question about a workplace is: whose contribution becomes visible only when they stop making it?

There is a gentle seasonal prompt here. In the Christian tradition woven through this country's calendar, All Saints' Day falls on 1 November, followed by All Souls' Day on 2 November. These days make room for remembering lives beyond the names everyone knows: goodness without celebrity, and people whose significance cannot be measured by how widely they were recognised.

You don't have to share the faith to recognise the wisdom of widening the circle of remembrance.

Most of us have been shaped by people who will never have a biography written about them. A teacher who spotted something. A neighbour who turned up. A colleague who made a difficult year manageable without ever announcing that this was what they were doing.

Some are no longer here to thank. Some are answering emails three desks away.

So this week, by all means applaud the stars. Then look around for the people whose excellence has become so familiar that you have stopped calling it excellence.

And make the appreciation specific.

“You're brilliant” is pleasant. “You made sure the newest person in that meeting was heard” tells someone that their contribution has actually been seen.

If you manage people, let that recognition reach the decisions about credit, workload and opportunity, too. Being dependable should lead to something better than receiving everybody else's unfinished tasks.