Most everyone has received a bad gift in their lifetime. In most instances, it’s not too difficult to react with “it’s the thought that counts,” but what if the sender is someone who’s supposed to know and understand your taste? Or worse, what if that person is being paid to know you and understand your strengths and weaknesses, such as your manager at work? This may force you to question your worth to that person and, in the case of a superior missing the mark, possibly reconsider your employment.
Indeed, half of the executives polled in a recent Deloitte survey said improving corporate culture was an “urgent” objective for their business in the face of challenging retention rates. As a response, many companies have correctly chosen to integrate awards and recognition programs as a way to drive high performance, which have been proven to increase job performance and satisfaction more efficiently than pure merit-pay incentives.
However, the big miss by most leaders is an understanding of how to build a rewards program that will appeal to their unique workforce. Instead, what if leaders knew exactly what forms of recognition would be most appreciated by each employee?
For T-Mobile, this is exactly the kind of strategy that was used by managers and employees to spread recognition when their colleagues deserved a nod. An interactive program was custom-designed to link every employee in the organization together onto a single platform, complete with individual employee profiles that scripted basic information along with that person’s interests and specific rewards that would be most appreciated.
What began as simple printable PDF “thank-you” certificates gradually evolved into more elaborate displays, and quickly became a widespread mode for employees to spread recognition across the company. There was no need to search out the employee and arrange a set of flowers, game tickets or company-branded accessories to arrive at their cubicle. Just a hyperlink in the employee’s profile that guided the sender in the right direction!
With a near-identical program, Hewlett-Packard showed just how quickly an interactive, engaging program can catch on. According to HP more than 100,000 cards and certificates were sent throughout the company by its 40,000 employees in one fiscal quarter.
Programs with this level of detail will trump the stale and genericized programs that can actually be counter-productive, and even the smallest yet poignant gestures will boost feelings of appreciation for the 65 percent of American employees who leave work on a daily basis feeling as if their hard work is going unnoticed, according to a Gallup poll.
Moving beyond employee recognition, most corporations also spend significant amounts of time and effort to engage their workforce about business-related topics, whether promoting the culture, informing about company news, discussing market trends, or spreading notifications about upcoming social functions.
The solution is not to force employees to read, nor is it to cut back on messaging which is an integral part of building corporate cohesion. Rather, businesses should view each employee as a reader with unique tastes and interests, and play to that with more reader-friendly delivery systems.
Kevin Kruse, author of “Employee Engagement 2.0” looked at 28 prior studies on employee engagement and found that decreasing employee engagement translates to real declines in business outcomes, including service, quality, retention, and revenue. He also found that safety, retention, and absenteeism are also greatly affected by low employment engagement.
Meet ‘em on their turf! That’s a mantra you should consider strongly especially as millennials take up a greater percentage of your employee base.
Increased engagement should also nurture the workforce’s sense of ‘ownership’ over their work and the company’s success or failure. Above all else, interactive programs are a firm reinforcement that messages can be shared clearly and effectively down from top-to-bottom, which holds a great deal of importance in times of change and new direction.
Consider the case of Starbucks, which toiled for years with face-to-face instruction to educate their retail employees. Starbucks, as a brand, wants employees to have an extensive knowledge about their coffee and tea products and to promote a certain humanitarian image with regard to the ethical treatments of their farmers in countries of South America, Africa and South Asia.
All of this macro-branding can be hard to impress upon a new employee worried predominately about doing their job at the counter, but through an interactive digital program, new employees are immersed visually in the fields of Colombia and India and narrated through voice-over and video-recorded interviews about the importance of the company’s cultivation process. With this and practical training seminars presented through the program, employees engage in an interactive board game to apply what they’ve learned in hypothetical scenarios, advancing through the game via correct response.
Meet ‘em on their turf is the mantra. Interactive is the lynchpin of new-age corporate communications. Combined they can bring employees and leadership closer together. For many corporations the transition is already in motion, don’t get left behind.
Chad Langford is the business development manager and a founding partner at Stepframe.
