Wishing You a Happy New Year!

Ultimate Choice wishes you a happy, healthy and safe new year and wants to thank you for the many positive comments and support we have received on our recognition award systems! 

Holiday Shopping and Recognition Awards

What does holiday shopping have to do with recognition awards?  It is the best time of the year to prove to recognition specialists that giving your employees a choice of any award they want it is a key to the success of your program. 

This holiday season sales are expected to be in excess of $655 billion.  Online Black Friday sales alone exceeded $3 billion!  So what did they buy and where did they buy it? You name it, anywhere and everywhere.  Certainly the national bricks and mortar retailers and their websites got the lion share of the sales, but many regional retailers had millions in sales as well.  In addition the online-only companies achieved huge sales as well, the foremost being Amazon.

Our point, when you plan an incentive program, it is virtually impossible to pick the handful of retailers or merchandise items that will appeal to your entire workforce, so why try.

Almost all incentive studies have shown that gift cards are the most popular and effective options within the safety incentive category. Over 80% of respondents to Incentive Magazine’s “Gift Card IQ” survey are currently using gift cards in their reward programs.

Some gift card suppliers would like YOU to choose which gift cards to offer in your incentive programs and will recommend what gift card brands would be most effective based on the unique composition of your employee base. That may be one way to do it, we however think you should give that option to your employees and let them choose the one they want.

As mentioned, it is virtually impossible to pick the handful of card brands that will appeal to all your employees.  Use a gift card system that will allow them to choose from a much larger list of brands that comprises over 95% of all retail sales.  Then you will have an incentive with far greater motivational appeal.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Should Gift Cards Be an Option in Years of Service Programs?

Believe it or not, the latest market research conducted by Incentive Magazine showed that close to 40% of all Years of Service programs use gift cards as some of their award options.

It wasn’t too long ago that you would never see gift cards in employee anniversary programs for several reasons.  First, the major recognition companies spent millions of dollars marketing their traditional awards such as company identified jewelry items, crystal, clocks, watches and the like.  Second they used very sophisticated training programs for their sales forces as well as for clients building a mystique that only deluxe trophy type merchandise would be proper to recognize an employee who remained at a company for a period of time usually in 5 year cycles  starting at 1, 3, or 5 years.  And lastly, they created excellent software platforms that made is very easy for a client to purchase a turnkey employee service award program.

So what changed?  How did gift cards start to become an option in these programs?  It certainly wasn’t because the companies that specialized in gift card systems spent millions in advertising, or marketing or a sales force that was trained to call on the clients. And it wasn’t because they built sophisticated electronic platforms to implement them.  It came about because clients were getting tired of paying very hefty premiums over retail price for these traditional trophy type items and hearing from employees that they were tired of being told an item as valued at $500, but they could see it every day online for a lot less.  Employees simply wanted more choice at a better value. 

With the age of the internet anyone could do a quick search to determine the value of an award, it didn’t take long for the employees to ask why the award that they understood cost $250 or $500 actually had a value of only $125 or $250.  That was the rule rather than the exception.

Gift cards are a part of Years of Service programs because it gives your employees what

they want without incremental cost to you.  If you are going to spend $250 or $500 on an award, wouldn’t it make sense to make sure that your employee receives as much of that budget as possible?  The traditional recognition companies will fight long and hard to keep you from putting gift cards in your program.  They know that once in, they will lose prized profit dollars year after year.  But do you really want to support their Taj Mahal corporate offices at the expense of your employees?

If you would be interested in how to use our gift card systems in your employees years of service programs please contact us at ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net.

Your Employees Make a Difference!

Shouldn’t the main focus of management be to maintain a work environment that keeps your employees coming back every morning?  Do you believe that the way you treat your employees is also your instruction to them on how to treat your customers?  As Richard Branson once said…

”It’s all about people, people, people!

No matter what industry a company is in,

its employees are its biggest competitive advantage.”

Ultimately successful companies not only know that their employees matter, they act on that principle in very simple ways:

They Know That Every Job is Relevent

If you can’t explain why each job matters, you probably shouldn’t have it in the first place. 

And you need to know how to explain how each job function contributes to the success of the company as a whole

Make Sure Each Employee Knows Why Their Job Is Significant

It’s the job of management to explain to everyone why their job matters and how it impacts the business. Connect the dots for them; make it easy for them to understand their company from the top of the organization to the outside customer.

When Employees Know Their Job Matters, They Do a Better Job. 

It’s difficult to pick up a magazine about human resources and not see an article about the importance of employee engagement.  Employees often become engaged simply when they know how important their performance is to the success of the company 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Compare Open & Closed Loop Recognition & Reward Cards

Companies purchasing gift cards for recognition, loyalty, and goal achievement often debate the advantages of purchasing and awarding open loop cards vs. closed loop gift cards.

Open loop payment cards are prepaid cards carrying the MasterCard, American Express, Discover, or Visa logo. These cards may be used like cash wherever credit cards are accepted.

Closed loop payment cards are those limited to a specific vendor and can only be spent at the merchant listed on the card.  Starbucks and Amazon gift cards, for example, are “closed” because they are only accepted at those specific merchants. 

At first glance, it appears that open loop cards are the best solution as they offer the widest range of purchasing options.  But before you make that decision, consider these open loop attributes:

n  Often impose a per card fee above the face value – can be as much as $5.95 per card;

n  Often expire and/or decline in value after 6 or 12 months if full balance is not used;

n  Often impose fees when the card is swiped, when you check your balance via customer service, and other situations included in the “fine print” on the card;

n  Often result in a decline at the merchant location if cardholder does not know the exact balance and the merchant cannot tell the cardholder how much remains on the card;

n  Can be confusing at checkout if the cardholder wants to use an additional method of payment for any outstanding balance on his/her purchase (i.e. a “split tender” transaction).

Closed loop merchant cards, while restricting the cardholder to a speciic merchant, have no declining values and rarely impose expiration dates.  In addition, the merchant can "read" the card and tell the cardholder the exact balance that remains.  The user experience is usually much smoother with closed loop cards than with open loop.

How about a solution that offers the best of both worlds? Award of Choice gives each recipient the open loop flexibility of hundreds of merchants with the ease of closed loop gift card use. One Award of Choice opens the door to over 500 closed loop gift card brands including those that are requested most – WalMart, Target, Amazon, Starbucks, Best Buy, Costco, etc.  With no fees, no expirations, and no minimums, Award of Choice combines the best of closed loop and open loop cards -- offering hundreds of merchant choices, favorable economics, and a great user experience.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Reward Managers and Have More Engaged Employees

Managers and supervisors are essential players in any type of employee reward and recognition plan.  In fact a study conducted by Dale Carnegie Training few years ago showed that an employee’s relationship with their direct supervisor is one of the top drivers of employee engagement.

However, it is our experience that while many corporations today have a reward and recognition program in place to recognize the achievements of employees, too few have specific initiatives in place to reward managers for how well they manage and support the recognition system all together.

As supervisors and managers are often involved in the design, implementation performance metrics, measurement and feedback of the programs, they can be reluctant to insert themselves in the reward phase, but that can be counter-productive.

They should be involved, they need to recognized for how engaged they are.  Their enthusiasm will spread to their employees.

• Train them so they understand not only how to explain the program to their reports but
  
  to be excited about its success. 
• Specifically define management engagement and include it as a goal for each manage
• Develop specific performance metrics that encourage managers to encourage engagement
• Give them the authority to make decisions and set the direction of their areas of responsibility
• Be available as a sounding board to help them determine the right course of action.
• Formally reward them with tangible program awards and with greater responsibility when appropriate

Formally recognizing managers or supervisors sends a strong message that giving proper credit and recognition is not a task reserved for a select few, but something the organization values from the top down.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

RVOLPC

RVOLPC is an acronym coined by Dr. Brooks Mitchell of the University of Wyoming and founder of Snowfly, an incentive company specializing in gamification.  RVOLPC stands for Readily Verifiable On-Line Price Comparison. 

After years of study within the behavioral sciences field and firsthand experience in implementing incentive programs, Dr. Mitchell soon learned (as we have) that the traditional merchandise awards used in the incentive industry are extremely overpriced and the companies that use them run the risk of having unhappy participants, which can result in de-motivation.

With RVOLPC it is easy for your employees to compare prices of your awards on-line and

determine the real value.  Even with points based applications where the reward company attempts to hide the pricing, it’s not too difficult for an industrious web surfer to uncover the price.  Rest assured that not long after that all the employees know about it as well.  Do you think they will be satisfied with a wide screen TV that cost them (you) $2000, when they see it all day at Best Buy for $699?

There are definitely negative consequences of having an incentive or recognition award that is priced higher than even the highest retail are.

Your employees start to question many things about the program value.  They see the company wasting money at a time when budgets could be scarce.

With more and more millennials now in the workforce, the use of technology is almost inbred.  They are more than comfortable on the web, and can easily become disgruntled when think their company is wasting money.

Overpriced merchandise awards are a fact in the award industry. You can see them in any loyalty program you participate in.  If you are bound to use some of these types of merchandise systems in your incentive or recognition effort (especially long term years of service programs) you might want to consider giving your employees a gift card option.  Your merchandise award supplier will fight you on this with a lot of hocus-pocus about trophy value, but your employees know better.  When employees have a choice of gift cards over merchandise awards, they choose merchandise over 90% of the time.  

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Does Higher Employee Engagement Really Produce Better Bottom Line Results?

In October 2012, the Employee Engagement Alliance created a stock index (ECSI) to attempt to show a connection between a company’s performance in the stock market and employee engagement.  Engaging the services of McBassi & Co (an HR analytics expert) the EEA developed the ECSI based on McBassi’s Good Company Index which tracks several hundred public companies based on their levels of customer, employee and community engagement collected from about a dozen different sources.

From the Good Company Index list of companies, the EEA extracts about 45 each year to form their ECSI.  Traditionally it turns over about 40% of that list as it calculates new scores.  The methodology for the Good Company Index can be found here.

The current ECSI showed it outperformed the S&P by 21.4% over four years. Obviously from this perspective, you may want to conclude that the companies with higher employment engagement, as measured by McBassi, had great bottom line results than those that don’t.  However the stock market has volatility based on a number of various factors.

 

Is this a case of the tail wagging the dog?  Maybe.  Is this empirical proof that recognition and employee engagement produces better bottom line results?  No.  Are ECSI companies cherry picked to skew the outcomes?  Probably not.  

Or is this the case of the cart before the horse?  Possibly.  And while we are certainly not experts in analyzing the methods or strategies used to develop the ECSI, we are pleased that the EEA has made the attempt to connect the dots between employee engagement budgets and bottom line results. 

As one of these articles mentions “Companies that ignore stocks selected based on environmental, social and governance factors (ESG sector) do so at their peril…Good corporate governance plays a winning hand in capital allocation and is critical to corporate longevity.”  

From our experience we know that highly motivated and satisfied employees will produce dramatic results.  And that employee recognition is the cornerstone of a highly satisfied employee. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

The Tug-of-War Between Recognition and Engagement

The incentive industry has been struggling with putting teeth into employee recognition programs for many years.  Most of the large performance improvement companies of today were founded to create and manage incentive programs to increase sales for their clients.  But in the last two or three decades, the entire landscape of the business awards industry changed.  Executives realized that if merchandise and travel awards could motivate their sales force as well as their channel partners to increase sales and profits, many of the same techniques and strategies could be used to motivate their non-sales personnel to better performance as well.

But for one simple reason, the incentive companies ran into a roadblock and it wasn’t as easy to sell these new programs (commonly referred to employee recognition).  Sales programs had a built-in a measurement and an ROI.  That isn’t true for the employee recognition efforts where the goal was more loosely defined and based on satisfaction levels, rather than clear cut bottom line performance.  And executives wanted to see more results they could take to the bank. Recognition budgets were a hard line budget item with no or little ROI.  Sales programs were implemented based on incremental performance, often without the constraints of the budgetary process. 

So now, over a half century after the large incentive houses were selling millions of dollars of sales incentive programs, the other award companies are competing to convince the C-suite to spend more and more on their non-sales personnel, and it seems to be working.  Now they have another interesting quandary, the recognition programs have been overtaken by the employee engagement programs.  And it appears that some of the same issues exist…how to justify the expense to senior management.

This  Recognition & Recognition Network article of the same title as this blog provides a comparison and insight into  the 

world of recognition / engagement and how it has changed and grown.  Essentially, all the employee performance gurus (read research, training, communications, employee satisfaction consultants) and everyone else who wants to have a piece of this pie have now taken over the recognition industry called it engagement and simply moved “recognition” out of it to stand alone as an integral piece. 

In reading the article, there are two perspectives we feel need further examination.  First, the three “industry leaders” as mentioned amount to only a fraction of the sales revenues of the top three full service performance improvement companies who that are still with us, and still selling “recognition programs” so the lines of “leaders” are blurred.  And second, the distinctions between recognition and engagement programs offered appear to be without any empirical evidence to justify the distinctions…and the lines between recognition are still somewhat blurred as well. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Unspent Recognition Budgets Don't Improve Performance.

You don't have to throw your remaining 2016 recognition budget down the drain.  Here's how you can use it in 2017.

If you have incentive dollars that are as yet unspent, be sure to use them! Often unspent funds can be “found” by the budget police looking for ways to cut back next year. So adopt a “use it or lose it” attitude and protect your employees from missing out on recognition and reward resources. Anticipate future needs and use those dollars to secure awards that will neither expire, decline in value, nor become outdated. 

When your first 2017 recognition event rolls around, you’ll be happy you did. If your organization is mandating budget cuts and perhaps suggesting that recognition is one of the “best” areas to reduce or eliminate, do not allow your reward and incentive programs to fall prey to those cuts! 

Statistics gathered from an actual program with a life-cycle of 10 years reflect that engaged employees will perform better in ANY market condition. In an up market, a recognition and incentive program will help exceed performance; and in a flat market, a reward program will help you maintain your performance. In a down market, taking care of your employees helps you protect your position and lets your key stakeholders know that you are grateful to them for sticking it out during the rough ride. 

At Ultimate Choice, we can suggest ways to ECONOMICALLY recognize and engage employees with our gift cards solutions that do not expire or decline in value. As always, we impose no program or per card fees, no expiration, and no minimums. Each employee gets his CHOICE of what is personally most enjoyable, meaningful and engaging.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Did You Know This About Employee Recognition?

We’ve all seen surveys that address employee satisfaction relevant to job performance.  While we are always hesitant to report on these surveys for a variety of reasons, collectively they can form a solid impression when addressing specific subjects.   In the case of employee recognition, following is another set of statistics recently released through the Employee Engagement Alliance.  Without knowing the methodology employed in conducting the survey or specific definition of terms used, in general the results might be something you may to consider:   

• The number one reason employees leave their job is because they feel underappreciated
• Employees who are highly satisfied with the job are 12% more productive
• Sales reps with high job satisfaction levels produce 37% more sales
• Peer to peer recognition produces a 41% improvement on customer satisfaction
• Companies with formalized recognition programs have 31% less voluntary turnover than those who don’t have one
• Peer to peer recognition has a 37% greater positive impact on financial results than manager only recognition
• 85% of companies that spend at least 1% of payroll on a recognition program report a positive effect on engagement
• Thanks and praise tops financial incentives for 67% of employees
• Less than 15% of companies provide managers the tools or information they need to implement effective employee recognition systems

You all heard the expression about how ‘figures can lie’, etc.  Research is often conducted by companies as a way to enhance their selling proposition with “facts” that support their positions, making their products and services easier to sell. We are not a research company, and we have no way to validate the above points.  But the one thing we do know is that employee recognition does work and will produce positive results.  We do know that a satisfied employee base is a powerful influence on the success of a company.  We have seen through the implementation of hundreds of recognition programs that it works. 

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Just Say Thanks

We are constantly amazed at how far the employee recognition industry has come from the early days of presenting someone with crystal bowl for 25 years of continuous service.

And we at Ultimate Choice are happy it has; we have been able to build a multi-million dollar enterprise because of it.  But it also amazes us of how complex  the entire employee recognition industry has become.  When HR professionals embark on building an engaged employee culture with reward and recognition as a component, they can be bombarded with more award ideas and systems than they can be expected to consider.  Does the research, the training, the in depth communications strategies, the sophisticated feedback methods all combine to make employee recognition more multifaceted than it really needs to be? 

When you get right down to it, shouldn’t it just be as easy as saying Thank You? 

• Do you thank at least one employee a day on average?
• When was the last time your manager said thanks to you?
• When was the last time senior management said thanks to anyone, not in an email?
• When was the last time you wrote a quick hand-written note to someone for doing a good job?
• When is the last time you received one?
• When you recognize someone do you also tell their supervisor?
• Do you look forward to thanking someone, or do you consider it a chore? 

When you foster a culture of gratitude, it can be a game changer for sustainably better performance. 

Organizations aren’t necessary stingy with saying thanks, the problem is that employees do something all the time and no one knows about it.  All you need to do is create a simple process for any individual in any location to feed a suggestion for recognition of a peer up the management chain, and then have a quick and easy process to make it happen

Many organizations over-engineer their recognition programs.  Making a genuine connection with someone who has done something you appreciate is a powerful management tool.  Don’t neglect it…

Just Say Thanks!

And remember...

"the more personal the thank you is, the more value it has."

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Kiss Recognition – Simplify Your Employee Recognition

What do you think about the recommendation to the International Organization for Standardization to create formal standards on employee engagement?  It was recently accepted BY the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to the OSI and could be approved as early as 2017. Employee recognition will undoubtedly be included in the standards in some way. 

As all the talk of employee engagement swirls around us, just remember that recognition is a very key element and the more complex you make RECOGNITION, the less likely it will remain the simplistic HR practice that is should be.

If you want your employee recognition program to be successful and sustaining here are some very basic simple things to do:

Keep the tenants of the behavioral model in focus: 

• Tell then what you want them to do
• Measure their performance
• Tell them how they did
• Recognize them for doing it with something that they want 

Oftentimes employee recognition doesn’t need to be any more complex than that.  For a short paper that will give you some great tips and show you some essentials for building the simplest recognition program, please click here.

Oh, and remember the most fundamental thing!

JUST DO IT!  

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Primary Objectives of Gift Card Award Programs

The “2016 Gift Card IQ” research conducted by Incentive magazine was recently released.  Following are the results to the question of “What are your primary objectives for using gift cards? 

Following is a recap of that research and a comparison of those same questions to 2015.

Answers	2016	2015
Boost Morale	65.7%	61.7%
Improve Performance	47.6%	56.0%
Build Employee Trust/Loyalty	44.8%	42.9%
Increase or Maintain Sales	33.6%	34.9%
Foster Teamwork	31.5%	23.4%
Build Customer Loyalty	30.1%	26.3%
Improve Customer Service	23.8%	28.6%
Start or Maintain Business Relationships	16.8%	20.6%
Improve Safety	9.8%	12.0%
Create New Markets	9.1%	6.3%
Improve Employee Health	8.4%	10.3%
Other	7.0%	4.0%

If you are sourcing your own gifts cards and want to view a gift card system that has $ for $ pricing with NO FEE and allows your participant to redeem for over 500 of the most popular brands of gift cards in the country, please let usknow.

 Here's just a few of the over 500 gift card brands that we use in our systems.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net