CRAIG BRENNAN - Chairman, QuickMobile
Often, simply empowering staff to be their own morale builders can create a boost in productivity, teamwork and engagement. A few months ago, we revamped our ‘Appy Hours’ monthly town halls into exciting events executed by different departments each month. Here are a few things this type of event accomplishes.
1. Creates stronger ties. When teams have to plan something for the whole company, you’d be amazed how quickly everyone comes together to collaborate on ideas or ask others for help to make their Appy Hour more outstanding than the last one. It’s this kind of camaraderie and competition that bonds people together when the stuff that isn’t fun comes up.
2. Employees get to do something different. Those planning Appy Hour get to be creative and work on something outside of their day jobs, which can rejuvenate their excitement for their work and your organization. We’ve seen our developers execute creative selfie contests, the marketing division teach the basics of poker and the sales team bring out old-school carnival games.
3. It’s a chance to walk your talk. As a mobile event app development company, it’s a natural fit for our product to be incorporated into our internal events. The planning team gets to go through the process of developing an app, while everyone else gets to experience using the product like our customers do. This creates excitement while allowing us to test new features.
4. Senior management participation. This is a great way for senior management to interact with everyone in the company in a more playful/relaxed way. It breaks down barriers between departments and helps to build collaboration across the company.
MICHAEL FERGUSSON - CEO, Ayogo
Give your team the power to incent each other! At Ayogo we have a peer-reward program (we happen to use Bonus.ly, but you could imagine different ways to do the same thing – for instance, we used to have a simple “praise box” in the lunchroom). Each person on the team is given a monthly allowance of “micro-bonuses” to give out, and they can give them out to anyone, any time, for any reason. The goal is to have the recognition be totally immediate, driven by the team in the flow of their work. At Ayogo, these micro-bonuses ($1, usually) accumulate in an account, and recipients can then redeem them for small tokens: gift cards, donations or our own Ayogo swag.
In practice, our recognition uses hashtags to emphasize the trait demonstrated, and varies from project-specific help (Ian gave Mavis $2 for awesome work on that proposal #leadership) to shout-outs for making our office a better place (Adam gave Fay $1 for ensuring a cookie-fuelled office by baking and buying #problem-solving) and everything in between.
One of the really interesting side effects is that reporting tools allow managers to observe who is getting praise and for what, so we have insight into what the team thinks is important and opportunities to “amplify” a particular reward or milestone. Just last week we saw in the report that there were three Ayogis who had each reached the milestone of receiving 10 bonuses in a specific trait. This gave their manager the opportunity to “amplify” with a special gift and shout-out that was unique to them. It’s one thing to say the company “values leadership”; it’s another to say a particular employee is being recognized for these 10 instances where they demonstrated that quality to their co-workers.
ADAM HOLLANDER | CEO, FantasySalesTeam
The first question I would have is, “Why don’t you feel traditional incentives are right for your team?” You’re hitting on a point that’s being talked about more and more: each individual is motivated differently.
What excites and engages one person – role, gender, pay scale or other factors – may not do the same for someone else. The first thing you need to determine is what does motivate your employees.
At FantasySalesTeam we’ve worked with hundreds of companies to implement more engaging and productive incentive programs and contests. We’ve discovered a few important things that generally come into play, almost regardless of company size or industry.
First, team-based competition tends to motivate more people than individual-based goals do. It’s important to create a culture where employees are invested in the success of those around them.
Second, from a prizes/incentives perspective, sometimes the lowest-cost items can feel the most rewarding. It comes back to determining what motivates your team. Sometimes trophies or lunch with a manager can mean a lot more than cash or other more traditional rewards.
