Top 5 Recognition Program Fails You're Probably Making Right Now
Jeff Cates, CEO of Achievers, explores how frequent, meaningful recognition can transform workplace culture. He discusses leveraging data to boost engagement, the power of generative AI in creating unbiased recognition, and the 'flywheel effect' of real-time recognition in fostering a positive environment. Discover why moving beyond traditional reward-heavy programs is key to building a more connected and motivated workforce.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Jeff Cates, CEO of Achievers, a leading employee engagement platform.
Jeff delves into the transformative power of recognition in the workplace, exploring how organizations can drive culture change through frequent, meaningful recognition rather than relying solely on monetary rewards.
🎓 In this episode, Jeff discusses:
How leveraging data can enhance employee engagement and reduce attrition.
The role of generative AI in crafting impactful, bias-free recognition messages.
The 'flywheel effect' of recognition and how it fosters a positive organizational culture.
The importance of frequent, real-time recognition over traditional, reward-heavy programs.
DISCOVER WHAT EMOTIONAL SALARY MEANS – AND HOW YOU CAN MOTIVATE EMPLOYEES BEYOND PAY.
Great recognition is more than just a thank you program. By leveraging frequent and meaningful recognition, Achievers drives business results that matter to organizations like retention, productivity, and engagement. Our platform makes it easy for employees to recognize each other anywhere, whether in-office, remote, or on-the-go.
The Achievers Workforce Institute reveals that two-thirds of employees have one foot out the door in 2024. The top reason for job hunting? Better compensation. But money isn’t the whole story. Employees are seeking not only monetary salary, but emotional salary too.
Jeff Cates 0:00
And what happens is when organizations start to use recognition and focus more on recognition than using it as a reward passing tool, then it creates a flywheel effect, and the organization says, Oh, this is how we operate here. We recognize on our values, or we recognize close to the moment, or, you know, it can be light and not heavy, and that just starts to create this. Ah, this is just how we operate here, the more we can do to stimulate that flywheel and take the emphasis off of like heavy recognitions that are done once a year or tied to a big dollar amount, the more you actually drive culture change.
Chris Rainey 0:42
Jeff, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend? I'm doing great. Thanks. It's been a while. How's the family?
Jeff Cates 0:49
Family is doing really well. Yeah, my oldest is now officially in the in the job world, doing a sales role. And yeah, everybody's doing great. Just back from a Europe trip. Fantastic, amazing. So you're the opposite end of me. My daughter's fine, so I've got it all to come. Does it get
Chris Rainey 1:06
easier? The old adage, right? Small, small children, small problems, that is, that is absolutely true. Oh, really. So what's a big, big problems is that we usually
Jeff Cates 1:16
involves more things like cars, or, you know, other things like that, yeah. How have you been personally? Yeah, really. Well, thanks. Yeah, it's, it's been nice. In particular, having more people back in the office. I get a lot of energy around collaborating with folks and
Chris Rainey 1:32
seeing them grow and so that, that in particular has been a big boost, as I've seen, kind of the connections reform within our organization as we came out of covid. Yeah, I was speaking. This is really random that I share of you now, because before we get into the questions, but I want to share a story of you, which is pretty fun. You work with Deloitte, right? Yes, yeah. So I was having dinner with my aunt from Auntie Carroll, as she's known from Canada, and I want to tell you this, because it's really funny. And we were just talking about work and, like, as a whole family dinner, and she was like, Oh, I just got an email saying that I've got this many points, and then I can get redeem an iPad, these other things. And I was, Oh, that's really cool. Like, what is that? She's like, Yeah, we've got this really cool r&r program that we use. And I was, oh, what's the company? She was like, Oh, I think it's like, something called, like, achievers, but we've got our own brand internally for it. And this was, like, last week, and I knew having a show, so I was just really funny. I'm not saying as a plug for like, it's just more like, it's just funny how she wanted to tell us at dinner how excited she was about this, and I thought you'd enjoy that, because I was like, No way, because they've got a Dave, they've got their own name for it, right? I forgot what she said. They brand it internally, but it's just so funny how, like, this is a real life example of how that shows up. And she was really excited to tell us all, yeah, so I just wanted to share that would be radio is actually one of the larger challenges to the category, because in most cases, with like enterprise companies, they'll brand the program to whatever you know, whatever, whatever brand they want, yeah, often you don't necessarily know the achievers name, unless maybe yeah, or something like that. So it's always interesting when somebody knows the name. I love to do it with the airlines, like Air Canada as is a customer, so I'll get just talking to the stewards, and then they just light up, and then that's like a conversation starter for half an hour on a plane. Yeah? You know, it's fun. I think Carol knew it, because she works in the comp and Ben's team. Okay, yeah, so, so of course she knew you have a side. But for God, lush, the fact that she decided to tell the whole family, I just thought was a really funny just thought was a really funny, a really nice moment I wanted to share with you. So before we get started, because we've got lots to talk about, I wanted to get your read and thoughts on the current economic climate and how that's impacting employee experience. So start there as a foundation, and we can jump in to some of the other topics. Yeah, it's, it's a, I think it's an interesting economic climate, right?
Jeff Cates 4:05
Inflation has
curbed, curb quite a bit, running around 3% or so, but wage inflation is actually ahead of that. Wage inflation has actually gone up by over 20% since 2020 I mean, that's just super, super significant, and now is outpacing inflation, and so it creates this challenge, in particular for HR leaders of how do we not have inflation in the company or forced raising prices in markets that are often more competitive, while making sure that we're compensating people fairly and not having high attrition.
And in general, there seems to be, you can see it with the stock stock market wobble of recent
concerns of will, will we have sustained growth, or will there be a correction in the market? And that seems to be playing through to the.
Just organizations being a lot more cautious on what new things they're buying or investments they're making. So it's just, it's a quite, it's just a time where the uncertainty in the future is just creating a lot more thoughtfulness in investing, with a thought to like, what, what might be on the other side? Yeah, and you mentioned a recent stock market. I think that hasn't given any more confidence over the last couple of days, right? It's been pretty crazy, and it seems like a lot of companies and people saw it coming, like it wasn't like unexpected, because you saw many different companies
Chris Rainey 5:43
lay off employees, or, you know, you've seen some of the top billionaires sell off their own stock just beforehand, that's not a coincidence, like, that's pretty you saw everyone did it exactly the same time, and then a week later, this happens. Seems like everyone saw it coming.
Jeff Cates 5:59
Yeah, I don't think that there's a ton of shock to how organizations are, like they can see their growth.
And of course, there's
the kind of Bellwether signals to suggest, like, what, what will the next 18 months look like, or just just a little more uncertain? Yeah. But you know, having said that, I think that things like the stock market are not necessarily at an apex yet. Of course, there's opportunity for growth. It's just, in general, a more cautious approach to how organizations are investing, and in particular for HR leaders, it's causing this like, hey, how do we help fuel our growth while not continuing to drive up wage inflation, which is often a significant portion of their EBITDA, yeah, what are you seeing impact that this is having on engagement in organizations? Well, it's interesting.
In covid, there was a very, very strong focus on the employee experience and many things like, you know, leaders showing up with cats in the background. Or, you know, discussions around, how are you doing? Was just much more prevalent coming out of covid in particular, with with the shareholder market, kind of looking more at not just growth, but also EBITDA.
It's almost created a bit of a pendulum swing of a very intense focus on employee experience and a lot of things that just made leaders be more transparent, almost back to, like a quick course correction of going back to the old way and really looking for ways to to cut costs. So that's been really interesting. I think there's been a carryover of many, many things like
recognition programs or mentorship programs or focus on engagement surveys, that I think will prevail and continue to have goodness. But there definitely is, in the leader's mind, what's most important to me. There's been a bit of a shift there.
Chris Rainey 8:00
Yeah, one of the data points that I saw, which I thought was pretty shocking, is the data from Gallup talking about how North America has lagged over the last three years with just 33%
of the workforce that are fully engaged, and just 15%
of those employees feel they're actually connected to their peers. That's right, yeah, so
Jeff Cates 8:21
over the last number of years, looking at the Gallup data, in particular, they've shown a steady decline in engagement. And in particular, what we're seeing is the Connect, connectivity to other people within the organization, has gone down significantly, and the outcome of that is when people don't feel connected to others within the organization. They have less sense of belonging. They report that they're significantly lower in productivity. Of course, they're more likely to treat the company,
more likely to be job hunting, more likely to rely on things like my wage,
over over, the other values that corporate, corporations or companies can provide in terms of helping them feel connected within the world, yeah, solar numbers are pretty shocking, right? Like you know, in terms of the impact in that same report, talking about that people feel 128%
Chris Rainey 9:21
more lonely, 107%
more anxious, 78% more likely to feel burned out, and 49% more stressed. So these, these are not this is something we need to pay attention to. Yeah, yeah. I think you know, part of that is
Jeff Cates 9:40
that high transient amount, you there's so much attrition, or in the early portion of covid, attrition rates were often well over 20% if you're in retail, it was like, you know, well over 50% so there's an element of shaking the snow globe there around who are the people around you? And, of course, there's an element of, are you coming into the office? And are you.
Spending white space time with others to actually create real, meaningful connections, but but the outcome of that, of not feeling connected to others, again, drives things up like the focus on on wage in fact, our achievers workforce Institute, we've been studying kind of recognition and reward trends for over a decade, and for the first time, at least, I think probably since we've started the work, wage has become the top reason why people are leaving. But then, if you dig deeper and you look at, if somebody is recognized on a frequent basis, does wage still have that significant effect and impact it. It does like so if I'm recognized more, I'm significantly more likely to stay at an organization that we ask people if you if you were seen and valued and recognized,
compared to a 20% price wage increase. Which one would you take? And I think the number is like something like 70% said that I would take the I feel recognized and valued,
recognized at an organization over the wage increase, which is just a good reminder to us that even when there's this pressure around wage it is not the it is not the Holy Grail. It's because something else is missing that we're not creating that connectivity, that sense of belonging. And so a reminder to go back and say, Are we doing the things that actually, you know, really drive emotional connection and make people feel like they're they're belong within an organization. I love that. And I think you refer to that sort of the emotional salary, yeah, right, that's right. It's so interesting because today I had someone who was sort of final stage interview,
Chris Rainey 11:51
and the reason they declined the job offer with us is exactly what you're referring to. They said that the company they felt valued. They felt that the companies invest in their success, and although they'll be make they would make more money by joining our business. That is really what the emotional connection to the team the manager. So that was literally that happened today
for me. And I was like, okay, and I was like, I'm really happy for you. I wish all the success, right? It's great to hear that. To be honest, it's actually a good thing to hear that as well. So that was just so interesting. You say that because today, I had the exact example where it was a higher salary, more benefits that we were offering, but it was that emotional salary and the emotional connections and the recognition that person was receiving, which is the reason why they declined my offer
as well, which so literally is super interesting to see that it's
Jeff Cates 12:50
quite a misconception, right? Because a lot of people that I speak to, when you ask that question, what's the main reason people leave? They typically say, oh, it's their manager, right? Sure. Yeah, is that close second? Like, what were some of the other reasons that you're saying? Yeah, yeah, usually that is what you see, right? Is the connection to a leader, or connection within a group, or
career advancement. Those are usually the things that kind of top the charts, if you will. But, ultimately, back to that, that manager, the manager, plays a key role in the environment. They facilitate within the team, and they play a key role in the Do I feel good about the contribution I'm making within the organization? Much of our focus, as much as we try to make sure that recognition and positive reinforcement is across the organization and not just tops down the the studies will show that the top contributor to do I feel recognized is the immediate people leader, and so a lot of things we do around nudging and trying to connect back to your employee engagement survey and connect the dots on that is really, how do we help guide the mindset of the manager? Because they're so critical to that sense of belonging and recognition with their their teams? Yeah. And let's face it, we're asking a lot of our managers, right? Yeah, right. So they can use all the help they can get. You know, even, even I'm guilty of it, especially when you have hybrid and distributed teams and you're not seeing that person, sometimes you can just forget, you know, I when we were in person at HR leaders, it was easy for me to see those people throughout the day and recognize them and have that conversation. But as you become more distributed, having things like nudges just to send you a quick reminder is huge, because you just, you're just not going to do it, because there's, you know, you don't, you're not, you're not interacting with people in the same way you used to. That's right, yeah, it's, it's actually been much more.
More complicated when you don't have that white space and that stimulus I just saw you do that, or I can thank you in the hallway, or, you know, do the pat on the back. It's actually become more complex when you don't have that connectivity with people, that physical connectivity with people, and so all the more reason that you need tools that actually help, kind of broadcast the recognition, but prompt you, prompt you to take actions. And I think that's that's a big area we're investing in, is where, where and how do you nudge behaviors
to drive action? So for example,
like, if we haven't seen somebody recognize a new employee. We know from the data that an individual is significantly more likely to say, I feel connected and get productive when they get recognized early, because it creates a sense of like, Oh, I'm settled and like, my manager sees me, right? And so if we don't see that occur, we can nudge on that say, Hey, we see you haven't done that in the first this is the reason why it's important go ahead and do that. And so I'm excited for where the technology can go to try to make that, those prompts as relevant as possible, and just put it in front of the person, because they're like, Oh yeah, of course, I want to do that. I just, I just hadn't thought about it. But now that you say that I'm going to do that, you saw maybe silly question, do you also provide guidance and, like, templates of how to give the recognition? I just, I just, yeah, random question, yeah, well, guide, guide on like, this is what makes a powerful recognition so often, often we'll work with organizations as well to do kind of personal training around that. It's actually kind of surprising. You just think, like, oh, that's just, like, intuitive, right? That's why. Yeah.
Many people would say no. Fact, I was talking to this executive from Google the other day, and he's an engineering background, and he said, Jeff, I I actually agonize over what words I'm going to use, because I want, I want to get it right, yeah, and when I put it on a wide platform, I also want to see other people see that I got it right, and so I put it in a word, and I crafted and and it was really, it was a bit of an eye opener for me, because there are ways that we can use things like Gen AI to help craft a message, and if that reduces your emotional strain on on what you're going to put out, then great. Then that's a good usage, usage of technology, whereas, kind of prior to that conversation I had, like, Ah, I don't do is that what we want, like a system that's auto generating the recognition. It just kind of feels a little hollow, but, but I think in that case there, there are many people that are just like, hey, I I just want to make sure that the words I use are going to have the impact, and maybe they don't have as much high emotional IQ. So how can we help prompt that? Yeah, another, another example of that is we're using our inclusion advisor. So it's a Gen AI engine, and when somebody types in the their content, they can
evoke basically the the the tool, and it will look at the content, and it will say, Hey, you should reword this the following way, because you're using a gender bias or an eight bias. And so not only does it reword, it also coaches the individual to say, the reason why you should change this is because, and so now they walk away from that experience even smarter. So not only did they deliver a better content? They also walked away even smarter on how they should engage with others, and that's really what we're striving for. Drive the actions prompt the actions that will drive better engagement between manager and employee, and where we can how do we educate on great leadership principles that help make the individual even more impactful in their life? Yeah? Yeah. I asked that because I was thinking back to my time as a manager. I was never coached on how to give feedback or how to recognize someone that wasn't something that you know. And to your point, I probably did avoid some conversations because I didn't have the words to have the conversation. So if you can help people with especially using generative AI now to be able to give them, you know, at least, a template that they can edit and make it their own, that's huge. And then to the DEI side in terms of the bias that, again, that's great, right? Because people don't realize they're using these words, you know, you're a rock star, you know, or, you know, wherever it may, may be that people those things are. I was going to ask you that that was one of my questions coming up is, you know, how, how are you know, how are you seeing generative AI is going to impact reward recognition as any other areas you're thinking about now of how you can use it? Yeah, one of the, one of the main challenges we often see in business reviews with our customers is they'll want to connect back the recognition frequency or maybe scent, or are people? Are people within groups? Are they recognizing each other? How does that impact business outcomes? Is it lowering attrition? Is it going to improve my employee engagement score? Is it going to improve my great place to work? Ranking?
Yeah, does it actually improve productivity? Does it increase safety?
And so often that keeps these, creates these like little projects that spin up to go do that analysis. But I think Gen AI, the more we can connect these different data sources, we can spit out those insights before you even ask the question like, did you know, or you just ran this campaign? Here's some really interesting insights out of that. And so I think we're going to be able to create that cause and effect much more easier and stimulate better thinking and ideas around that by just connecting the data sources. I'm, I'm pretty excited about that. There are other areas that we're investing around, things like external recognition. You know, if I'm if I'm recognizing somebody in the moment, because I'm whatever at a restaurant table, and I want to recognize, we can use things like Gen AI to help craft that message, because you're on a mobile phone and same thing, how do we, you know, you have precious few seconds while the person is feeling that goodwill? How can we use that to help enable that recognition in the moment, and make that really, really simple. So there's things like that we can use it to just improve a process. And as I said, that idea of like looking at content and helping people either create the content or educate them on how they'd be more impactful, those are all really exciting ways that we can use that technology, and I'm sure there's I've always as well, in terms of connecting the rewards, different types of rewards, to different people's preferences, totally, to really tailor, constantly tailored experience and make it feel more personalized and thoughtful. Yeah, we've done work around that too, yeah. So personalizing reward like you might be interested in lots of things that Amazon has led the charge on, but we can do that. And then, although our primary focus tends to be on like, how do we help make sure recognition is impactful? Because that's that tends to drive behaviors more so than reward. Sure. But nonetheless, you know, you want to make sure that people feel good about the program that they're in and the and the balance they've got points, and seeing the benefit of redeeming those and getting that benefit. So looking for ways to help make that streamline process and personalize to the individual, of course, is really useful. You know, another area that we've invested heavily in is kind of relevancy of content. This matters a little bit less in small organizations where they're really kind of, you kind of know everybody, but in large organizations, if you think of a typical high usage recognition program, you'll end up with a newsfeed, right with a recognition and any other things that you put into that newsfeed, and that can get a little overwhelming so you can filter it say, Oh, I, you know, I work in the following department, or I only want to see my team. But the downside to that is then you potentially are filtering out other things that you might want to see. And so we've invested in kind of relevancy technology, similar to what a LinkedIn or social media platforms, yeah, yeah. And so, so now it's like looking at your hrs feed, right? Like, who are you connected to? It's also looking at people like you are connected to other people. And it also allows the individual to say, Hey, I just had a great coffee talk with this person. I want to follow them and stay connected to them, so they can kind of force that in. And so for large organizations, what that means is you're not having to filter down, the technology will actually deliver relevant content to you, and that way, you you when you're on the platform, you're seeing things that really matter to you, but you're actually less likely to let things slip right. Our system will prompt you on, hey, here's a birthday coming up, or here's a work anniversary. If you get overloaded, then you're actually going to miss that. But if we can make the content really relevant. Then when you go on, you're like, Oh, I know, when I go into the system, I'm going to see things that really matter to me, and so therefore I'm more likely to go back into the system. Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about while you're talking about that, how do you ensure this doesn't get lost, all of these notifications and nudges in the sea of technology that we're just being thrown at employees? You know, I've got a Slack channel, I've got a whatsapp channel, I've got my teams, I've got my emails.
Chris Rainey 24:06
How do you ensure that it just doesn't become another,
Jeff Cates 24:10
another, something else that we have to log into as a manager, like, I'm gonna miss it. If that makes sense, that's a real problem. Yeah, for sure. You know, you see a lot of organizations really trying to put a lot of guardrails around communications. In particular email usually is the email is the big one of they'll be very, very strict on kind of what can go through the email system. The short of it is, we consume and we engage in different ways. And so what you want to do is really think about what are the patterns within your organization, of how they communicate and what's used frequently, what's with what are your common ways of exchanging ideas or recognizing people and then picking technology that can meld into that. So it's not like, Well, I only want to have recognition, for example,
in teams. I.
Yeah, teams is good for certain things, but
using teams potentially, for example, to go through a catalog on a redemption experience is probably not a great experience. And so pick technology that integrates in but still gives you a best of breed experience in the core areas. And so we've invested a lot in that, in terms of how do we integrate in the comms channels team, Slack, Google,
while also investing in things like native apps. If you want to use a native app as a portal and then have the right prompts through things like email, so the individual will choose how they engage and what they use as their comm platforms. What you want to do is make sure you're kind of blanketing that, but then being really thoughtful, am I sending relevant content? People don't have a problem consuming content when it's useful for them. What they get frustrated with is when they see stuff that's not relevant, and then they're like, Oh, why, you know, why are you sending this? And eventually they shut off. So put a burden on us to make sure that we're using technology to make sure we're delivering relevancy to you. Yeah, the customers that you're working with that having most success. Are they the ones using native or have they integrated it with the teams and the slack and they're seeing success through those core channels? Yeah, those that have particular integrated into the comms channels, like teams, they see a significant increase in usage. And that makes, makes sense, right? Because, yeah, yeah. So that stimulates, it's usually, often, am I stimulating the idea, oh, I should recognize or, even better, hey, you just came out of a meeting. It seems like it was a good meeting. Here's the number of people that were in the meeting. Do you want to recognize that team? I mean that's just, that's like, oh, okay, yeah, of course I do. Yeah. That's the, one of the things we've done with teams now, is, when you have a teams meeting, you can recognize that whole meeting group in the moment and then send a recognition through. And we're just making it simpler, right? We just like that often happens that was a great meeting. I want to recognize the team for like, that preparation they did, or whatever that might be, the more we can remove steps to facilitate the action, the more likely you're able to see that. So it's about having the stimulus in the right spots. It's about removing stages in the workflow to actually make sure that people take the action. But also like because you're showing up in the moment in the flow of work, it's more authentic because, you know, it's not just like a forced recognizing you for we've all had those moments where we've been recognizing this like, Oh, they've just that time of year, oh, you know, yeah, whereas when it shows up in the moment in the flow of work, actually offer a call or a meeting, etc. Like, okay, this is a real moment to be recognized as well, and it makes it 10 times more impactful. Yeah, the research shows that, and in general, just getting feedback of any sort, yes, better delivered close to the action. And we know that what gets recognized gets repeated, right? It's significantly more likely to influence somebody's behavior with positive reinforcement, then it is negative. So if I so put those two things together, I'm more likely to have impact when I give feedback close to the action, and I'm more likely to get repetitive rep, like repeat of the behavior when I use positive reinforcement. So 100% you want to create the stimulus as close as possible to the action. Take as much work out and of course, and what happens is, when organizations start to use recognition and focus more on recognition than using it as a reward passing tool, then it creates a flywheel effect, and the organization says, Oh, this is how we operate here. You know, we recognize on our values, or we recognize close to the moment, or, you know, it can be light, light and not heavy, and that just starts to create this. Ah, this is just how we operate here. The more we can do to stimulate that flywheel and take the emphasis off of like heavy, heavy recognitions that are done once a year or tied to a big dollar amount, the more you actually drive culture change.
On the flip side of what we just discussed, what are some of the big mistakes that you see companies make when it comes to reward or recognition? Yeah, some of the larger ones is leaders delegating down, you know, like I don't need to recognize, you know, I give a paycheck that's for other people. So your top programs are the ones that have high, high adoption. I was mentioning Air Canada, they have, like 90% of their managers are on on a monthly basis. So, or Cineplex is similar, they measure on that. Or Zurich they measure on, are the managers actually taking the action, because they've done the work to say, I can see that high recognition set from a manager significantly improves engagement. And has shown in some cases it's either attrition or productivity. And they're like, We want more of that, so they now measure against that. So one is.
Is wreck. You know, measure, measure the things that you want to drive action. Number two is find ways to like, anchor into the technology, right? Be in the flow of work. Not all people operate in the same way. So that was what we were just talking about. Third is, don't over anchor on reward. Often organizations will look at an RNR system and say it's a reward and recognition system. It shouldn't be that. It should be a recognition system that might have reward I'm not saying that you you know, it's a powerful tool to be able to say, hey, I want to give, you know, a large amount, because you just did the stellar project for me. Great. That's awesome. You know, it's often more impactful than than a increase in pay that just gets lost on the pay stub. Um, so it they can be good for that. But you don't want to have your your core day to day positive reinforcement be gated by their reward budget. And so if you can actually remove like, visibility of reward, you certainly want to do that. But two, you want to be very thoughtful around how are you using reward spend? Most programs that use small amounts of reward tied to kind of your values based recognition have significant higher usage and have higher impact from that. Again, you might still want to have your CEO awards or your sales Awards where you want to have a larger denomination, and that's fine. You know that you know that you want to think about that as a separate strategy, but your core, like positive reinforcement don't overshadow reward on recognition or effectively, what you do is you throttle it and you take the power away of the words used in recognition, because you're you're anchoring it around reward. So that's another mistake that you see companies make. So the first one was sort of delegating it, thinking, I don't need to do that. That's the role of my role model. Role model to behave if you want measure, measure what matters, measure the frequency of the activity, and hold people accountable to that, but also like measure against the outcomes. Know that like this is driving this in your engagement survey, because then it creates this, like this is why we do what we do, and then make sure you're in the flow of work. Often, an organization will just put it off to the side. It's just a thing. It's another app, fully integrated. Think strategically around how are you using positive reinforcement across the different people problems you've got? And then finally, don't, don't have the program be anchored around reward. Try to remove that as much as you can, so that you're really anchoring around the words used that actually really touch hearts, touching wallets matters, but it actually matters less than you would think, and that's we talked about that earlier in the research, that people are more likely to stay an organization and even take a lower pay if they feel connected, valued and recognized for the things they do, what will be your advice around communication and how you roll this out in an organization to make it, make it a success? You know, I'm sure like, what channels work best? What have you seen that companies do that have really worked best? Is it events? Is it, you know, a webinar to the whole company. Is it email marketing? Is it billboards? Like, what is the best way to communicate this to get most engagement from people? Yeah, the the you know, often we'll have new customers come in and they'll, they'll meet with somebody you know, like in Air Canada, or like a Zurich, and they just seem so like, oh, we use it for Dei, and we use it for employee referral, and we use it for performance management, and they kind of get overwhelmed with that, like, oh my gosh, you know, we're so far back, you know, we're so far behind. We're coming from, like, a, you know, a rewards based culture,
and that's okay, like you often that using recognition strategically to drive outcomes. It's a build process. You know, start in one spot and then start to build behaviors and then continue to build across. Don't feel like you need to do everything in at the same time. So a crawl, walk, run approach in terms of communicating with within organizations. You know, often it's tied around whatever problem matters to you. So it could be like, we really want to see values aligned. It's using positive reinforcement systems. Is one of the most powerful things, if not the most powerful thing you can do to drive values alignment. Because effectively, every time somebody sends a recognition, they're like, Okay, what are the values? Oh, did I see that behavior? Or to see that either. So they're actually internalizing the values, like they're thinking about them, right? And then they're actually doing something against that. And then everybody else is seeing that. They're saying, oh, that's what that value means, especially if they're seeing it from leaders that like, oh, that's what Be bold means, or that's what win with customers needs, right? So
anger and whatever the problem is that matters most to you, because that's going to have most sustained energy. And then again, as long as you're as long as you're communicating with consistency and thinking about where those prompts are occurring,
you know that that'll create the flywheel. And then you can say, Okay, now, how else do I use this? Or how do I, how do I help drive more behavior and pockets within the organization? That's a big part of what.
Our CS teams would be doing is like taking the data to organizations and saying, Hey, what are the people problems you might have? Oh, we're really focusing on performance management,
or we really want to emphasize inclusion. Great. We're having a problem hiring. We need to get more employee referrals, and we'll look at those and say, Okay, how can you use positive reinforcement, or things like micro rewarding to help drive those behaviors. And again, don't try to do them all at one time. Pick the things that matter most to the company and then put energy behind that. We'll also bring in data to say, here's how you're doing against other organizations in terms of usage recognition received,
and we'll look at your benchmark data within your company and say, Look, these organizations, these departments are very active, and these departments aren't. How do we help, you know, get that group, you know, focus more training, or more emphasis from the leaders, the role model. And so that's a big part of what really drives high usage is looking, you know, tackling the biggest problems that matter to the company, but then dialog around what other people's strategies do we have? How do we use positive reinforcement to it and shedding light on that to help you get thinking and bringing playbooks from other organizations to say, here's how other organizations did. They communicated this way. They launched this way. They use these words, you know, how can we take playbooks from other organizations, bring that to you and say, Great, awesome. How do I just, like, you know, rinse and repeat that thing? And that's how you move really fast in terms of driving more of a culture of positive reinforcement recognition when you work with companies, do typically start with a smaller group and then roll out, or is it a big bang approach, like, what's best? Yeah, it's a bit of both. But, you know, essentially, you know, high usage recognition system, as opposed to a reward system.
High recognition system is essentially a communications tool. It's a it's a feedback tool. And so if you want to create a
an environment where people recognize each other. You want to create, you want to open that up broadly everyone, yeah, recognition doesn't happen, yeah. So some will see people. Organizations will do that. You know. It's often like the, you know, an IT department will say, Look, we, we know we have a problem. It shows up in the engagement survey. We, you know, we're turning to technology. McDonald's is a good example of this. And so, like, we're going to start it, we're not going to wait for the broader organization, because that'll take forever and they get started and but in general, that that will quickly turn to, okay, great. Now how do you, how do you roll that out? In fact, one of the things that we're seeing as a trend is organizations in US, Canada, Australia, UK, that are maybe a bit further ahead in terms of using technology to, like, really drive high frequency recognition. Now what's happening is the data starting to come in and saying, Wow, why are their engagement scores higher? Why are their engagement scores areas higher, right? Or why is there attrition lower? And then they start to delve into it. Or people move within the global organization and say, Hey, I can't operate without that tool. And so now companies are saying, how do we create one program for the globe? And so we're seeing a lot of that now standardization. It might have started in one region, might have started in one department, but as you start to see the impact, it quickly starts to like balloon past that. The best programs, though, are the ones that start at least within, like a region or cross company, because it is a Connect. It's a platform, it's a networking platform. So the more people you have on it, the more likely you're going to create behavior patterns it'd be interesting to understand, like the link between that and like organizational network analysis, of creating the stickiness of building communities and relationships, yeah, and how recognition, because, without a platform like that, you're also, you know, you may, may not even meet or interact with people that that work in a different country or a different continent. Is there any research? Is that around? Yeah, 100% so a couple of really interesting areas here. We do social networking graphs basically say, like, who's connecting with who? Yes, yeah, who are your who are your super connectors, right? And so we've used that to be able to help identify,
where are the people that have the most influence, social influence within the organization. So that's really interesting. And in some cases, I think it was GM. They wanted to look at they've kind of this champion concept culture. And so they said, we have these champions, but are these the right people? And so then they looked at the social graph data, like, who, who's connected with whom, and who's actually influencing whom, and that allowed them to go back and say, That's the people we want. And like, how do we anchor around that? And so that that that's super, super powerful. You can also see, you know, often your engagement survey, you'll have a question around, do.
Our teams working well together. You can look at the recognition data and say, you can see these teams are recognizing each other, but these teams are not like there's friction here or there's a gap here, right? So it helps help you connect. Where? Where do we where is it critical that we have high
connectivity
and collaboration. And you can say it looks like this area is actually weak, and this is an area that's critical, like, how do we go, like, figure out how we get those teams kind of working better together? So it's really interesting. Another fascinating area that we, we've been doing research on is skills based,
very big in HR right now.
Yeah, yeah, skills marketplaces. Well, the challenge often with these, these
skills assessments is their self, self assessed. And we see this on LinkedIn, especially with males over or over females. Oh yeah, I'm good at that. Oh yeah, I'm good at that, right? So the quality of the skills assessment is as good as like the assessor. But what you have with a positive reinforcement system, in particular, when you got high frequency, is you got like, you know, now, millions of data points of positive reinforcement of somebody saying this person helped in the following year, this person's really good at and so we've now been extracting that to say whether what, how can we tell when somebody has a skill or a proficiency in a certain area, and then, how can then, how can we use that to help influence like a performance management discussion or or a career advancement conversation? Ultimately, I think by by taking that data and melding it in with other data, will be a powerful source, but when you connect it with multiple things, we'll make it even more powerful. This is a big area for workday, so workday selected us as their recognition provider. We're really excited about that, not only to serve the 10,000 plus workmates around the world, but because we think that we can take things like that, that information, and merge it with what they've got, and we can help influence better like hiring patterns or career advancement strategies when we when we work together with organizations like theirs, yeah, that's super interesting to be able to use other people's feedback to potentially infer skills, as opposed to us to saying, Yeah, I'm Good. And then, yeah. And then, as you said, matching it with the other data sources that we already have is very interesting, yeah. So you already, so I'm assuming you already have that capability,
yeah, to use, yeah, to Now, the trick is, what we're getting is a better as we're doing the analysis, we're saying, okay, we can see that the systems are good at helping you understand these types of traits, but it made these things don't then tend to get captured by positive reinforcement. So we're getting a better understanding of what are the things more likely you can use the tool for to flag you on competencies, and what just does positive reinforcement do less of a job. So there's lots to learn around that, but it's, it's early days, but it's but it's fun, another area, just slight tangent to that, we're starting to see
the impact of positive reinforcement or recognition, or even micro rewarding or rewarding,
be carried over into other other areas of kind of the people realm, to have impact. So for example, with Workday they have their performance management module, which is intended to create more
fluid discussions between managers and employees giving feedback. Right? We know from the data that you're better to give feedback closer to the moment. People don't want to wait for six months to find out something. And so if somebody, an employee or the employer, says, I want to pull the recognition from the system into the Performance Management conversation, they can do that. And what that does is it decreases manager bias, and it decreases recency bias, right? Like, oh, I got this meeting coming up. What am I going to say? What did I see last week? And so what happens is, they give feedback, but it's, it's, it's based on a short period of time, and it's what they personally observed. But when you can push the recognition of others into that, they're like, oh, yeah, that's right. Back in September, you worked on that big project. I see that you were recognized that, you know, or I can see that people are really recognizing you for playing a key role in the following, you know. I just want to, you know, I just want to double down on that so we can force that into that, that dialog. We can help remove those biases.
Unknown Speaker 44:40
And
Jeff Cates 44:41
with Workday, they've got their own way of like, soliciting feedback for the performance management an individual can say, well, I feel really good what I said about Chris. I like other people to see that. They can click on that and it will push over to the recognition feed. Oh, okay, and all my mechanics, yeah, exactly. So it's that.
Thoughtfulness of when somebody takes first of all, when when you've got data or insights, surface it in the areas that are most likely to have impact, so that could stay on the recognition fee. But it's even more powerful if you put it into performance conversation and and if I give you data in one place, if I can that can be used somewhere else, like that. That positive message I just gave cool make it really easy for that message to transfer over to the other areas that will be powerful. So I'm really excited about where we can go with that, and in particular with organizations like Workday as we look at like, wow, how could you use micro rewarding for development discussions or Time and Attendance is a big thing for hospitals. Maybe you don't want to monetize or reward people for not Asians that maybe that's not you know what you do want to do? You want to recognize the people that cover those shifts. Yeah. So how can we integrate into that time and attendance with positive reinforcement or streaks or micro rewarding those people? And so I'm really excited about as we start to think about how the systems can come together and to take the behavior drivers of a system like ours to help compliance problems be even better and more rewarding, I think that's that's really exciting. Yeah, I think we just get just the beginning of the capability
Chris Rainey 46:13
of that of all the conversations you have,
what you say is the biggest misconception people have about recognition that you come across. The biggest one is when they hear recognition. They hear reward.
Jeff Cates 46:29
And I
my background, my background. HP, Apple and Intuit, these are some of the best companies in the world that you know. HP,
Hewlett and Packard were the early pioneers in modern management practices. Much of the valley came from their their management philosophies.
Intuit is like, you know, almost every country we were in, we were a top, great place to work, and that truly was because the DNA within the organizations around people development leaders, and yet, the tool that we had, I remember this, is it was a great reward passing tool. Could say, Hey, you showed up at that trade show. You didn't need to do that, or you came on the weekend, or the booth wasn't working, and, you know, you jumped in and did that, and I want to reward you for that. And
that was great, you know, I could just easily, in the moment, send you $100 whatever, but, but it was more about the reward, oh, I give you $300 and what I was seeing was somebody would say, well, you gave me $300 but that person got $500 and it actually became negative, or, well, you know, I attended that event last year, and last year I got $300 but this year, you know, I only got $250 like, what does that tell me? What are you trying to tell me? I'm like, dang, I wasn't trying to tell you that at all, so that it's a loser, right? It's like there's a famous Tiktok and a video, I'm not sure if you've seen it, where a CEO talks about the fact that one year he gave his employees, like, a 500 pounds Christmas bonus. And it was like, it was the worst mistake you ever made. Because what they what do they expect next year? Because if you give them 500 pound again, they're like, Oh, you don't get any extra performance from it. That's right. And I have to increase it every single year. So it's like, it's like, the worst thing he's ever done. Because, like, really is, yeah, and so. So, back to your question. It's when organizations are thinking reward and that, like everything, oh, oh, this department, you know, they're really high pay. They're not going to care about recognition. It is so wrong. It is so wrong. Humans are wired to want to know that they're doing good, that they're having an impact, that somebody values them, giving them $500 does not really drive that. It drives I got $500
what am I next time? Yeah, and so yes, you do want to use that in certain areas. Let you spend all these hours. I didn't pay you for it. Sure, totally, I'm not. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't think about large reward in certain areas. But if you, if you overshadow the power is in the words we use. It's not in the dollars attached to it. And you can coach people against that, like that's the behavior you want, that's the flywheel you want. That's how you create great cultures. It's not, it's not in just being a reward passing system, yeah, and that, like leaping past that, that really is, is it's just fundamental. And I coming actually into achievers. I thought I was supporting an organization that would, you know, have a tool like what I had at Intuit. And then when I got in and I had a chance to actually spend time with customers, and I've got the top programs, it was like, oh, man, this is like, you just have to flip the bit. And it's driving behaviors of constant positive reinforcement that's.
Chris Rainey 50:00
Really what's a game changer? Okay, so what are the best practices to do that? Back to your your question of, like, how do you get started? Or what's the best ways? Start with the problems that are the most important to you, because those matter to the company. You're gonna put energy behind it, and then build off of that. Build off of that, get your managers involved. You know, the role model, the behaviors. Measure what matters. Think about, how do you inject the positive reinforcement in the areas within your organization or in the technology that stimulates the behavior? I've told the story on the show many times, people listening, but I'll tell it to you because it's relevant to what you just said in the company I worked for for 10 years, whenever I would get a deal, it would come up on a screen on every single floor in the business. But what I remember the most is my boss Andy every foot for 10 years, every time I got a deal, he came down to shake my hand every single time that meant and in front, in front of the whole room, right? That meant more to me than my commission on or on all of those sales. And I vividly remember moments of that. I don't remember the money at the time, but I would know I've just got a deal. At some point, he's going to come down and congratulate me, and that that was way more important to me than the couple 100 pounds commission that I made on that deal, and he did that for every single person. And I was always like, wow. Like, that's a lot of time, like, that's a lot of time invested to come down every single time someone gets a deal. And never he understood it. Back then, I was like, why is he doing this? He's a CEO at a company. Oh, and now I look back and go, it really showed not only, you know, not everyone wants a public display of gratitude, but for me, personally, I felt valued. I felt seen. I felt like I'm making a contribution to the business, and it's the CEO himself shaking my hands that meant way more. So I just want to share that with you, like that's something that and when I became a manager, I did the same thing because I it was something I role modeled that every time someone got a deal, I was like, I'm taking a moment know how busy we are to be like, congratulate and then the whole team would then correct, congratulate the individual. And it becomes even more powerful to be able to do that, and it becomes part of the culture. Even when I'm not around, the rest of the team will take a second to say, amazing deal. Well done, etc, as well. So yeah, I just wanted to share that, because that's huge. I think intuitively, we all have those stories, right? We all have that. We can look back on that and say, like, what was really impactful for me, or, like, what really fired me up? Yeah, why? When I, when I was I? When was I at my best? Or when was I at a team when I was my best? I think in most cases, you'd always look back, and you would say it's those types of stories that actually correct. I remember I was, I was trying to build this software, add Intuit, and
Jeff Cates 52:51
I happen to have, like the QuickBooks franchise, but I also had the accounting, accounting tools, and I can see how these two things could be connected. But it required us to create this bridge software that would allow the data to go from one place to the other. And it I felt like, sis of us, like, like, I work hard on it. I convinced people why we need to build this. And then something would happen, people would change, and I'd have to go back and do it all over again. And I was just, I was really beat down. I knew it was the right thing. I knew was strategically important. I knew we could create, like, significant value for our customers, but it was so hard internally, just getting this thing over the line. And I remember going to Brad Smith, the CEO, and I was explaining it, and he's like, look, I don't necessarily understand what you're saying, because I'm not deep enough in that, but I know you, Jeff, and I know that if you think it's important. And I see the passion you got for it, like you just have to, it's the right thing, and you just got to, you know, just just muscle on and, like, those words, just like, refilled my tank, right? And eventually, and it truly was so powerful, but it's just those words. And I just walked out of that. I was, like, inflated back up again, and away I went. It. He could have given me $1,000 he could have given me five I could have given $10,000 like, I just want to show that I recognize you for I wouldn't it would have done nothing. It's the words that he said that, like, you know, inflated me and then gave me the, you know, the tenacity to kind of follow through. Yeah, Jeff, I feel like we could talk for another hour, but I gotta let you go. So at some point I'm still like, literally, the time's just flown by. We've been having so much fun having a chat. Is there anything we've missed, you know, you know our audience are, you know, citroes from the world, leading global brands. Is there a message we've missed that you want to let know, or that we haven't covered? We covered a lot, a
couple of things. One would be like, really, you know, it's super important right now, with wage inflation going up and in general, just this push of we not, you know, we must manage OpEx. We must, like, think about EBITDA. EBITDA percentage. Now is the time that organizations should really.
Really be thinking about, how are you spending your money, especially your discretionary and is it truly driving impact? And is there a better way, can you decouple the heavy reward and really focus on the more powerful positive reinforcement? Now is the time to think about it, because organizations are being pushed to do more with less, and yet the expectations from employees are you care about me and if you and if I'm not, especially if I'm not in the office, I feel less connectivity in the organization. I'm more likely to feel lonely. I'm more likely to feel isolated. I'm more likely to not feel connected my manager. So it's it's super critical right now, we really think about what are the behaviors within the organization we want to support and stimulate that are going to drive outcomes. And then secondly, don't feel like you need to do it all at the same time. Just start in the areas that matter. You can learn from other organizations. Conferences like what you all run, are opportunities to come together and share and learn from others. There's a ton of research around cause and effect and like, what, what's actually happening when somebody gets positive, positive reinforcement, or even your reward strategy achievers. Workforce Institute is our think tank arm, you know, reach out to us. We're happy to share the white
Chris Rainey 56:16
that like the reports and what we're seeing from other organizations, and just help you build the case for change if you're not there already, amazing. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on the show for everyone listening. I'll include the links below to the achievers, workforce Institute, also to any of the recent reports and research that you put out there, all available there, right? Where's the best place to connect with you? If anyone wants to reach out, say hi. Yeah, LinkedIn is fine. Jeff Kates,
Jeff Cates 56:44
that's a great way to connect. And yeah, I I'm very passionate about the the power of positive reinforcement recognition.
I joined achievers because of the mission to change the way the world works. And so anyways, that we can kind of help lift the tide for all boats. Just really fires me up. It's what I live for. So anyways, I can help organizations. I'm more than happy to do so amazing. Well, listen, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. I've had a lot of fun, and let's not wait another year to connect.
Chris Rainey 57:15
I see you again soon. Thanks a lot. Bye.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.