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Leadership & Employee Engagement

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At Incentivesmart, we see it as our mission to build more rewarding relationships between employees and their employers.

Research has shown that when people feel rewarded and engaged by their employer, their performance increases, staff turnover decreases, and their organisations are more likely to see higher net income and above average profit.

Using our proprietary points-based rewards system, we create employee rewards programmes that make people feel appreciated and encouraged, help employers more effectively connect to their workforce, and ultimately increase employee engagement and performance.

Gallup

Leadership & Employee Engagement

Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability.

Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability.

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The Case for EngagementAnyone that’s experienced being an employee can probably recall a period of negative engagement. When you feel unappreciated or out of the loop, you’ll probably feel like putting less effort in to your job and to assisting colleagues. You’re also in danger of becoming actively disengaged and bringing other colleagues along with you.

28% of employees experienced a high level of job related stress in ‘high engagement’ companies versus 39% of employees in low engagement companies. - Aon Hewitt. (2012). Global employee engagement database. London: Aon Hewitt.

Conversely, evidence shows that positively engaged employees make for a more successful business. In a study conducted by Engage for Success, companies in the top 25% of positive engagement had twice the annual net profit than average. Engaged employees also have fewer absences, and stick around for longer. Companies with high levels of engagement show staff turnover rate 40% less than companies with low engagement.

T H E C A S E F O R E N G A G E M E N T

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Our methodology when it comes to helping to grow profitable businesses is a chain of four key pillars. Based on the service profit chain (Harvard business review 1994) and our years of experience helping businesses increase engagement, each of the pillars simultaneously enhances and benefits from the others.

Not all of the pillars need to be perfect to have a successful business, nor do they need to be faultless before deciding to improve the next one in the chain. To absolutely maximise commercial success and increase your profit however, all four pillars should be firmly in place and consistently managed.

Lasting company values are driven from the top, and great leaders lead by example. They effectively communicate the business’ mission and purpose to employees at every level, and live the values daily.

Great leaders balance challenge and support, giving enough support that employees feel empowered and stable, but the right amount of challenge to encourage high performance.

Committed and productive employees feel empowered and supported, but have enough challenge in their roles to be encouraged to perform at a high level. They know the values of the business because they naturally live them on a day-to-day basis, and feel appreciated and rewarded.

The most committed employees become advocates of your brand, even singing the businesses praises to friends and family.

An internal service quality created by great leaders and committed employees will filter along the chain and engage your sales channel.

Whether internal or external, your sales channel are usually the face of your business to customers. An engaged sales channel are educated about your products, identify with your values, and are motivated to communicate these to your customers when selling the products.

All these ingredients should help to create a loyal customer base, who return to you time and time again because you offer products that exceed their expectations and have values they identify with.

The best customers become brand evangelists and consistently recommend your products to peers, doing your marketing for you!

T H E C A S E F O R E N G A G E M E N TT H E C A S E F O R E N G A G E M E N T

INCENTIVESMART PROFIT METHODOLOGY.

Great Leaders. Committed Employees. Engaged Sales Channel. Loyal Customers.

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Salary

Environment

Rewards & Recognition

Communication & Education

Consistency

Survival

Security

Satisfaction

Belonging

Self-Motivation

Evangelism

T H E C A S E F O R E N G A G E M E N TT H E C A S E F O R E N G A G E M E N T

Salary – Does employee’s salary meet their living needs? Is the renumeration fair compared to their value on the job market?

Environment – The company culture and values, a positive atmosphere, transparent job design, and a comfortable workspace.

Benefits – Additional benefits of your workplace, pensions, healthcare, discounts etc. Typically offered to all employees regardless of performance.

Rewards & Recognition – Targeted rewards based on performance or behaviour. Encourages great performance and targeted positive behaviours.

Communication & Education – Truely open and honest communication from the top down creates trust. Consistent education of values reinforces them.

Consistency – Creates evangelism and brand advocates who are rarely disloyal and promote your business.

Research shows that only 29% of employees describe themselves as engaged, 52% not engaged, and worst of all 19% are actively disengaged from their jobs (fig. 1). Engaged employees are more productive and more likely to stay in the business, whereas actively disengaged employees are unhappy in their jobs and risk passing that unhappiness on to other employees.

fig. 1

fig. 2

Incentivesmart use the ‘engagement pyramid’ (fig. 2) to demonstrate the various elements that help to create highly engaged employees, paving the way for brand evangelism.

Starting with salary as a base requirement, a positive and comfortable working environment helps improve job security. Benefits can help with satisfaction, but they are typically offered to all employees regardless of performance and don’t encourage any specific behaviours (see benefits vs rewards, page 13).

Rewards and recognition can target positive behaviours, and a rewards programme can help with communication across the business.

THE ENGAGEMENT PYRAMID.COMMIT TED EMPLOYEES.

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Designing an Effective Rewards Programme

The first step in designing an effective rewards programme, as with many other things, is to define success. What are you trying to improve in your organisation? Increasing positive engagement is the main goal with an employee engagement programme, but what specific problems are the pain points in your organisation? Do you need to increase communication to and from your employees? Do your employees need better education of policies and procedures? Would you like your workforce to feel more empowered and to submit their own ideas for improving?

As part of their programme, Vodafone identified they needed to increase communication and ensure that employees were educated on the latest products and updates.

STEP 1 – DEFINE SUCCESS.

D E S I G N I N G A R E W A R D S P R O G R A M M E

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Once you’ve identified what you want to see an improvement in, you can decide what behaviours you want to encourage, and then set up the rewards to suit. The Incentivesmart system offers an array of modules with different ways of awarding points, such as peer nominations, employee referrals, and quizzes.

To ensure any engagement programme gets off to a strong start, getting the programme launch right is essential. The launch will be most users’ first impression of the programme, and getting them on board and excited for the scheme can be a powerful boost to engagement in itself.

Most programmes will usually start before launch with a teaser, things like posters around the workplace or postcards and emails sent out to future members. When the launch comes, a printed welcome pack with a personalised invitation and an initial points gift (e.g. welcome cheque) is a great way to get people on board. Some programmes further boost buy-in by planning internal launch events.

Constant contact is essential to ensure the longevity of an engagement programme, and to encourage long-term improvement. Without consistent programme marketing, you run the risk of having a programme that has a strong launch, and then gradually burns out. Of course as participation lowers, the programme becomes exponentially less effective, and can even have a negative effect on employee engagement overall.

Most employee engagement programmes Incentivesmart run send out monthly emails to keep users engaged, and use promotions throughout the year to maintain interest. There are also smart email notifications that let users know when they have been awarded points, and with the ‘favourites’ module users can be encouraged to keep going if they are close to achieving one of their favourite reward goals.

As part of their effort to increase employee communication, Simply Education used the ideas module to gather suggestions from employees, and the nomination module for peers to celebrate each other for living the Simply Exceptional values.

STEP 2 – IDENTIFY BEHAVIOURS.

STEP 3 – L AUNCH THE CAMPAIGN.

STEP 4 – REGUL AR PROGRAMME MARKETING.

It’s important at this stage to recognise the difference between perks and rewards. Perks are benefits that are applied to every employee, regardless of engagement or participation. Rewards are gifted to employees that are performing at a higher level than average, or particularly embodying the values you’re trying to promote. On the engagement pyramid, rewards and recognition are shown to promote a sense of belonging, as well as encouraging more of the behaviour you’re rewarding.

PERKS VS REWARDS.Miele’s ‘Inspired performance’ programme uses the Incentivesmart rewards catalogue to offer employees an abundance of choice for their rewards. Employees are awarded points for their performance, which they can then redeem on rewards such as travel, experiences, hampers, or consumer electronics.

D E S I G N I N G A R E W A R D S P R O G R A M M ED E S I G N I N G A R E W A R D S P R O G R A M M E

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next steps: talk to us!At Incentivesmart, we have over 15 years of experience setting up and managing successful employee engagement programmes for all types of organisation. With an average customer lifetime of 8 years and counting, we like to think we do it pretty well!

Get in touch to talk about your engagement challenges and how we can help solve them, or even to book in a demo of our points-based engagement platform.

N E X T S T E P S : T A L K T O U S !

After successfully launching an engagement programme, it is important to regularly review and ensure that you are seeing an improvement in the goals set out at the beginning of the process.

The Incentivesmart platform has robust reporting and analytics tools to be able to pull out any data from the programme to compare to your KPIs. You can also publish incentivised quizzes using and surveys through the platform to get a better idea of how your employees are feeling.

STEP 5 – REVIEW.

D E S I G N I N G A R E W A R D S P R O G R A M M E

P H O N E :

0845 003 8765W E B S I T E :

www.incentivesmart.com

16www.incentivesmart.com

Moulsoe Business Centre Cranfield Rd, Newport Pagnell MK16 0FJ

0845 003 8765