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What if you can measure team interactions and use that data to give memorable recognition and rewards to your hybrid team? What if you could build a culture that gives employees the one thing they’re begging for: consistent and authentic recognition?
Today we interview Dan Kasper, CEO of Wishlist, where he shares how to give memorable recognition to employees.
Wishlist is an app with both a marketplace and social media feed that allows employers and employees to give recognition and rewards that go beyond earning plaques and badges. To illustrate, employees can choose personalized and memorable experiences as rewards that they earn through receiving workplace recognition.
Pandemic Fueled Change Between Organizations and Employees
In the HR space, the work landscape has completely shifted since the Pandemic. As a result, business leaders need to consider how they are investing in their culture and question if their rewards and recognition systems are up-to-date.
After the pandemic, concerns sparked about employee well being as employees continually reported feeling unappreciated, unsupported and alone. 91% of employees working from home reported experiencing moderate to extreme stress. Also, 69% of workers claimed that the past few years alone have been some of the most stressful times that they’ve experienced in their professional career (including major events like 9/11 and even the 2008 recession.)
Because of this, we’re seeing trends like employers playing an expanded role in their employees’ financial, physical and mental well being. At the same time, companies are also scrambling to adapt to this new era of work. Consequently, the pandemic spurred a new transition in which employees and employers are negotiating what they want the future of work to look like.
One of those areas is recognition and rewards. Before the Pandemic, employers had to work extremely hard to build their culture in person. Eventually, as employees began working remotely, that in-person company culture got left behind – including some recognition solutions. Due to the quick remote transition, recognition solutions that have worked in the past are starting to fall behind and create gaps within organizations.
Traditional recognition solutions such as earning “points” for receiving recognition that would be monetized as badges, gift cards or swag. However, this solution is becoming less meaningful for today’s purpose-focused demographic that would prefer meaningful experiences. Because of this, employers need to reconsider the true impact of those traditional solutions and look into impact-focused recognition and rewards.
Work Reward Ideas
Recognition and rewards are about incentivizing behavior. The leaders that truly recognize the uniqueness of each employee understand how one reward won’t be as meaningful across their company.
Instead of offering plaques and trophies, Wishlist offers experiences that are more meaningful to your employees that also help build your employer brand.
For Example:
- Company swag and apparel
- Horseback riding
- Skiing in the mountains
- Spa day
- Executive Coaching
- Learning a second language
- Travel opportunities
- Driving Ferrari’s
- Skydiving
- Brewery Tours
As a result, using these rewards create stories for your employees and build memories on behalf of the employer that go beyond monetary rewards. When it comes to rewards, it’s so important to make sure that they align with the uniqueness of each person.
Tracking Workplace Recognition
The Wishlist system is designed for individuals, colleagues, executives–anyone within an organization–to mention, highlight, praise, or simply acknowledge another person, event, or gesture that adds value. This results in the accumulation of rich data concerning organizational trends. Meaningful business trends can be mined from the recognition program information. Wishlist analytics looks into:
- How does your company’s recognition and rewards impact your culture?
- How is the recognition and rewards program saving money on turnover?
- Who is high-performing? Who is a flight risk? Also, who is not engaged?
Typical wishlist metrics include the following–
Individual Insights: See over time how well you are recognizing others compared to your industry.
Identify Underperforming Leaders: Instantly see how often leaders are recognizing their team members and if they are recognizing team members evenly.
Employee Net Promoter Score: Measure Company Culture and Happiness as a likelihood that employees would recommend working there.
Team Interactions: See how your teams are interacting through collaboration mapping.
Inclusivity Score: See the relationship between sales and account management and interactions between departments
Which Employees are (or aren’t) Being Recognized: See who might be a flight risk and may need more recognition.
Wishlist Case Study:
One Bay Area Company with 1400 employees started using Wishlist after almost a decade of not updating their rewards and recognition strategy. They wanted to know how to give memorable recognition to employees and they wanted to leverage Power of Choice. Additionally, they wanted to use rewards that would be more meaningful than gift cards to fit their diverse team. Since implementing Wishlist, 68% of their team has been rewarded, and they have a 60% weekly engagement rate. Also their Employee Net Promoter Score went from 27% to 52% since the launch of Wishlist.
About Dan Kasper
Dan is a growth architect and innovator with a passion for building high-performing teams and deriving long-term results by leveraging the power of technology and challenging the status-quo.
Dan served for six years in the United States Navy as an Officer within Special Operations (EOD) with deployments to the Middle East with SEAL Team Five.
After leaving Active Duty, Dan began working for Airbnb where he initiated and executed global expansion for the Trust and Safety teams in the Americas and Asia Pacific.
He is currently the CEO of Wishlist, an HR technology Organization which helps build cohesive cultures and engagement within workforces.
Outside of work, Dan chases any and all adventures that give him a chance to tell an unforgettable story.
To learn more about how to give memorable recognition to employees, download this episode now.
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