Is it worth investing in software to help with employee recognition? Let’s see what an expert has to say. Below is a Q&A session with Steve Sonnenberg, Founder and CEO of Awardco. Steve grew up learning about employee recognition from his father and has helped some of the largest companies in the world reimagine recognition. His strategy and platform has helped create positive change in hundreds of company cultures.
What is at the core of the Awardco platform?
We want everyone to recognize. Recognize the good in everyone around us, even if, as people, we sometimes fall short or are less than perfect. Recognize the potential in others and in ourselves. Once you start recognizing the potential in people they start to live up to it and it’s amazing to see.
Founder & CEO at Awardco
As people feel valued they will give more and more, creating a cycle of recognition, great work, recognizing that great work, more great work, on and on. This cycle can become like a powerful engine that drives positive company culture—which is something I think we’re all striving for at our companies. If not, we should be.
We also want to make that recognition process easy. Easy for users, easy for admins. You get a client success manager that will walk you through the process and offer customizations that work for your company. You can create programs that incentivize the things you value most at your company, because it’s not the same for everyone.
Why is employee recognition important?
It’s probably the easiest thing you can do to improve metrics at your company. Recognition improves engagement, in fact it doubles it. In turn, engagement increases productivity and that trickles down into so many other things.
A Gallup study found that when employees are recognized regularly there are less safety incidents and fewer quality defects. The quality you’re offering your customers goes up, causing them to be more loyal and engaged.
Plus, companies with a lot of recognition see less turnover, which saves you time and money, because the hiring and onboarding process taps a lot of resources. All these things lead to higher profitability in companies that recognize more.
If it makes such a difference, why don’t people do it more?
While showing gratitude is something that comes naturally to many people, it can get lost in the day-to-day shuffle at work. There are so many other things to accomplish and tasks to complete that you really need to make recognition a priority.
We’re all humans and we forget. Using a platform like Awardco puts recognition at the forefront of people’s mind. You can see the recognitions come through in the platform or on a Slack or Teams channel and it reminds you to recognize people more.
We also automate things like birthdays and work anniversaries so no one gets forgotten. If you have hundreds of employees it can be almost impossible to remember significant dates, but Awardco does it for you. By doing this you know people are getting recognized at least twice a year, which isn’t enough, but it’s a great start.
What other features does Awardco have?
In addition to recognition, we think it’s important to celebrate! Everyone loves a celebration. One service we offer is MemoryBooks, a collection of recognitions and images from peers that celebrate a service anniversary. When someone’s anniversary is coming up emails are automatically sent to their team members asking them to contribute kind words and photos. It’s super easy to write a quick note and submit it. Then they’re all put into a digital book that the employee can look over whenever they want. It is a nice reminder of what they’ve done in the last year.
We also recently launched the Earn feature, which we’re very excited about. Now employers can incentivize specific tasks or goals and employees have more control over earning points. For example, if you decide to have a fitness program or you need everyone to take a survey you can add those to your Awardco programs. Once an employee finishes a task they go in and claim their points. Ten points for a survey, 50 points for hitting a quarterly goal, etc. It’s simple, but it allows you to incentivize the things that are important to you as a company. And it really works, even if you’re just offering a few points, employees feel more motivated to do some of those mundane things or to really push for their goals.
How do you make employee rewards more, well, rewarding?
We believe in choice and rewarding people in a way that means something to them. We have the largest rewards network thanks to our unique partnership with Amazon Business, Priceline, and other major companies. Once an employee gets points they can go into the platform and redeem those points for nearly anything you can find on Amazon, tickets to an event, a gift card, or even donate their points to charity. So now, instead of being handed a mug or blanket or some other generic gift for the holidays, they can choose to go on vacation, buy something for their house, go out to dinner, or pay it forward to a local charity. And like we mentioned, most anything you can get on Amazon is available.
This is helpful for HR teams who no longer have to hear complaints from people who didn’t get something they wanted, but it also creates a connection between employee and employer. If I get tickets to go to a concert, I’m going to associate those positive feelings with it being a gift from my workplace. If I can take my wife out to her favorite restaurant, it helps make up for all the time I spend at work…just kidding, but it works well since some people value experiences above anything else while other people want tangible things.
We also do it without markups on the items, with free or low shipping, so the value goes to the employee getting the reward.
Does Awardco help with remote workers?
Definitely. Remote work is here to stay for a lot of people and there can be apprehension about keeping everyone on a team connected. We’ve found that Awardco, especially with Slack and Teams integrations, keeps up relationships among coworkers. You can see who is doing what and when someone is recognized you can comment on it. Recognitions are generally sent digitally so it’s easy for remote workers. As a side note, we also have printed options for those who aren’t remote or don’t work on a computer.
Is there anything else you want to say about recognition?
We talk a lot about numbers, productivity, and profits, but it’s really about people. Recognition doesn’t just impact people at work, it affects how they feel about themselves and how they show up in the world. I really believe it creates an overall culture of goodness.
As you recognize the good you train your brain to see more good everywhere, including in yourself. Both the person giving and receiving the recognitions get a little boost and after a while, it becomes second-nature to appreciate everything good around you.
How can companies get in touch with Awardco?
We would love to show you our platform. Book a demo to learn more or contact us at marketing@awardco.com.
About Awardco
Awardco provides a powerful and flexible software to manage all your recognition programs in one central location. Our reward network provides access to millions of products from Amazon, hotels through Priceline, gift cards for countless businesses, tickets to events, and custom company-branded items. There’s no limit to what your employees can choose. Awardco gives admins flexibility and support while giving employees the rewards and recognition they really want.
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