A New Incentive Platform

The company's P.R.I.D.E. technology platform was built with flexibility in mind, says Dave Schroeder, president of LoyalNation. "It can be personalized for the manager, to fit the leadership style, but at the same time enable roll-up at the corporate level," he says. "Who's being awarded for what and by whom? A lot of recognition and rewards goes on at the grassroots [level], and that's not only inefficient, but not necessarily in alignment with corporate goals."

One client is a large bank with a big branch network that had a recognition system originally designed to send e-mails with general messages like "good job" and "thank you," Schroeder says. "That's meaningful, it's good to give that kind of recognition, but from an enterprise level, that left the question of thanks for what?" If the client sees it isn't seeing recognition messages as a priority—the cross-selling of credit cards to banking customers, for example—it learns that it needs to communicate to managers that this is a priority, Schroeder says.

"Everything we do is a database on the back end," he says. "We're taking that data, looking at it, and trying to create new insight that we can pass to our clients. [Companies are] demanding more of their people, not just in production but in creative thought and making good decisions," he adds. "That always comes back to culture development and getting the right people fully engaged."

Social Recognition

The growth of social media like Facebook offers incentive planners another tool, Schroeder says. "We are really excited about the great things going on around social media and figuring out how businesses can operationalize that to improve their own results, through communication and recognition," he says.

Pointing to depersonalizing environments like huge call centers, or dealer networks spread across the country, Schroeder says that by building a private social network into a firm's recognition program, "you can create bonds and ties between people. You have the opportunity to say thank you in an efficient manner. Just as you'd give somebody recognition and post a thank you on a Facebook wall, you can now do that in a closed corporate environment. It's incredibly powerful on a peer-to-peer as well as a manager-to-employee level."

For a recognition program, that means that a manager can give public praise without calling the group together—which is impractical for day-to-day recognition with a group of more than a few dozen—or sending out a mass e-mail. "As your manager or your peer, I can say thank you to you or give you recognition [in a way in which] the person sitting next to you, or across the hall, or across the country can see it and add a comment, say congratulations, or thanks a lot."

Rather than read e-mails and send out "reply all" chains, co-workers can go to the private social network's wall and see what is happening. "It creates opportunity to build exponentially on this recognition and reinforce behaviors you're looking for in your employee group," Schroeder says, adding, "the old one-to-one employee recognition program is meaningful, it is powerful, and this takes nothing away from how important it is to have your manager say thank you directly to you."

Aside from recognition, the private social network is a great communications tool, Schroeder says.

"We have a client with employees who are on the road 60 to 70 percent of the time, doing consulting and sales calls," he says. "This creates a terrific environment to share ideas to stay connected [and facilitate the] exchange of ideas and the social networking that is so difficult in that environment.

"Social networking takes us a leap forward. It is a great environment for people to ask questions, and for subject matter experts or people who have more experience to chime in, on a real-time basis," he adds. "It allows a free flow of information, and it's totally exposed, so management can watch what's happening and make sure that dialog is moving on the correct path. Another place where we've seen it work great is in dealer networks. Now you can have distributors comment on products and add ideas. Now you can engage them in a dialog that supports the sales process and product development going forward. And if your distributors are talking about your brand, that's always a good thing."

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus