Five Ways Social Media Has Helped Employee Recognition

Some would say that social media has become the greatest channel of communications ever invented.  It’s only been in existence since the mid 90’s and it’s mindboggling how it has taken over our lives from a social and a business standpoint.  To say it is ubiquitous is an understatement.  Whatever it may be, it has had an enormous impact on the recognition and reward business.

Here are some very important ways social media has transformed recognition since it showed up:

Program Consolidation
In the old days large scale award systems were run on main frame computers and were complex and unwieldly.  Remember the six foot stacks of computer printouts on your desk?  The time and cost to implement one was exorbitant.  Today using excellent software designed by many reward companies, these programs are run over laptops and on phones.  The programs are more consolidated and can handle multiple initiatives and manage all the usage data.

Instant Feedback
One of the most important elements of any reward or incentive program is feedback, the sooner the feedback the better.  Millennials don’t remember when we had to wait 30-45 days for the monthly reports to see how we were doing in our incentive program.  We live in a culture of instant feedback, and it was brought to us by social media.  This has become the standard. 

Instant Rewards

With the advent of electronic gift cards, a recognition manager can purchase a gift card code, email it to an award winner, the award winner can then take the code to a retail website like Amazon and redeem it for something they really want.  That can take thirty minutes or less.  Rewards have never been so easy to issue, and to be able to do that ten years ago would be unthinkable.

Comprehensive Providers
Traditionally the very large full service reward suppliers were the only ones who acted as strategic partners with clients to create things like ROI plans, marketing plans and on-theme messaging as basic services.  Now, even one-man shops with the experience can do it. The award field is wide open to all types of new and exciting creativity

Daily Recognition
In the past it was very difficult to manage and award individuals in the short term.  Today it can be done at a mouse click. Social media has increased our sheer daily engagement with each other and allowed organizations to keep them more engaged with employees on a daily basis.

Recruiting and Onboarding
Social media sites (for good or bad) have made our job activity viewable by anyone in our networks.  Recognition and achievement have become a major influence in work life; job hunters can get frank accounts of how well a company recognizes employees (a top driver of satisfaction).  From a hiring perspective recognition and rewards can be a chief consideration from day one.

Communication

The obvious advantage of social media is communications.  From start to finish it is the heart of recognition and engagement.  It makes personal actions more visible leaving fewer excuses for a lack of appreciation. With social media your communications can increase exponentially while communication cost decrease on the same scale.

Unquestionably social media and its attending technology have changed the landscape of the recognition and reward industry.  In the time it took me to write this post, I have sent out over 6000 emails to prospective customers about a new product we have.

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

Employee Motivation Lessons from the Military

Unlike Hollywood’s depiction of motivation in the military (the harsh drill sergeant) the armed services have developed much more sophisticated ways to motivate improved performance.  Not many would argue that collectively the US Military is the best in the world.  It's also no wonder that those who have served often go on to successful careers as leaders in many industries.

What lessons can we learn from how the military communicates and trains its leaders and troops? 

The military has known for years that their  personnel are motivated by recognition.  In the 1700’s it was Napoleon who coined the phrase:

“A soldier will fight long and hard

                                                for a bit of colored ribbon.”

                                                                     

After researching several articles on the subject, here are just a few of the ideas on motivation and leadership that we found:

• Your focus should always be on leadership and team building
• Your concern and interest in your employees has to be real.  If you can’t muster true empathy and pride in the people who work for you, you won’t go as far as you think you should
• Always put your employees needs first
• Empower your employees to perform at their highest levels, take roadblocks and needless regulations out of the way.
• Make sure that what you ask your employees is attainable and then tell them the how and the why 
• Effectively communicate your vision and objectives through as many different objectives as you can.
• Manage by walking around and showing genuine interest in your people
• Make recognition and appreciation a constant
• Respect those who report to you as individuals and you cannot take them for granted

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

Employee Engagement Drives Significant Corporate Benefit

The Gallup’s most recent State of the American Workplace report paints a fairly clear picture or how important employee engagement is to company success. 

When compared to organizations with lower levels of employee engagement, those with higher levels of engagement typically experience these type results:

• 41% lower absenteeism
• 24% lower turnover (high turnover industries)
• 59% lower turnover (low turnover industries)
• 28% less shrinkage
• 70% fewer employee safety incidents
• 58% fewer patient safety incidents
• 40% fewer quality incidents (defects)
• 17% higher productivity
• 20% higher sales
• 21% higher profitability

As the majority of employee engagement is based on employee satisfaction, and employee appreciation and recognition is a key component of satisfied employees, it is also fair to say that employee recognition and awards are key in increasing performance.  For years, the C-Suite constantly asked for the return on investment of recognition and reward dollars.  Is it not also fair to say that employee rewards systems can drive bottom line results and the increase in profits noted by the stats above?

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

The Linchpin Between Employee Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

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