For years
many of us have understood that employee recognition and awards have had a
great deal to do with employee engagement and results. Since the 1950’s the award industry has been
connecting the dots and motivating the relationship between the customer and
corporate employees. They were engaging employees to provide the best customer
service they could….and it worked for many clients
Yet,
employee engagement is now a field that is inundated with consultants and
solution providers whose approach to improving engagement runs the gamut of
satisfaction research, communications, real time measurement, new technology,
training, leadership coaching,
assessment, etc. The one thing that is
almost always left out of the equation by these suppliers is the rewards and
recognition system combined with the analytical tools to deploy it in an audit-able manner.
We pondered the “why
have rewards been left out of this equation” question for a long time. And in our opinion, the main reason that
these award companies missed the boat on this was because they put all their
eggs in the “making their money by selling the awards” basket. It was a simple matter of math. If the client had $3 million to spend on the
engagement problem, about 80% of it was spent on the awards after the fact, and
the other 20% on the communications, research, feedback and training. Even though these companies had highly
skilled professionals in these ancillary areas, they often priced them at cost
(or even lower) to be in a better position to compete for the award business. These
traditional firms are known in the trade as “incentive
companies.”
If the linchpin between employee engagement and customer
satisfaction is reward and recognition, the industry still has a long way to go
to inform corporate America of it.
Recent incentive industry research shows that over 70% of companies use the
award industry just for the awards. They
purchase the other needs of communications, feedback, training etc. from other
providers, or do it themselves.
If you need expertise
on how to drive employee engagement to achieve corporate results, you might try
an incentive company. They have been basing
their success on the successful achievements of these programs for years.
For
more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white
papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net
