At Abenity we provide engagement solutions through employee perks and discount programs. As we’ve worked with dozens of companies across the U.S. there’s one key thing we’ve learned: Merely having a fancy system in place isn’t enough to engage your employees; engagement only truly happens when communication is both personal and intentional.

Voluntary benefits, such as employee discount programs, can aid in our quest towards quality employee engagement. However, these 3 simple mistakes can often get in our way and prevent engagement from happening:

Mistake #1: Failure To Focus On The Positive
In the wake of the economic downturn of the last few years many companies struggled to maintain consistent positive interaction with their staff. In the midst of layoffs, pay cuts, and cutbacks, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of good news emerging from the HR department. However, your voluntary benefit programs can provide that positive conversation topic with which to begin re-engaging employees. Naturally employee engagement cannot happen solely through perks and benefits, but it’s a good and safe place to begin, especially if you’re starting from scratch. If you fail to engage on this level you’re missing out one of the best opportunities to provide positive communication with employees.

Mistake #2: Leaving Employees Confused About Their Options
The complexities of everything from life insurance to retirement plan investing leaves many employees confused, and too many companies fail to effectively educate on these subjects. But one of the most practical ways to increase employee satisfaction and loyalty is through purposeful communication around your benefit opportunities. When your staff understands their choices they will be able to make more informed decisions and, as a result, appreciate the value of the benefits being offered.

Something we emphasize to Abenity Discount Program clients is that membership affords employees over $4,500 in available savings from thousands of retailers both locally and nationally. Employees must understand that in addition to their salary and health benefits they also have access to $4,500 in consumer savings through their employer. That’s an amazing statistic for an employer’s total compensation report as well as a powerful employee motivator! Determine a total compensation number by tallying up your entire benefits package to underscore the value of being employed at your organization.

Mistake #3: Missing Out On Communication Opportunities
In the past a simple leaflet passed out during an employee’s introduction program was thought to be a sufficient communication of employee benefits. However as technology has developed and grown, the landscape of benefit communication has changed drastically. It’s important to leverage all of your available resources, through printed flyers in the break-room, handouts, accessible intranet links, important email updates and when possible social media updates. And, don’t be afraid to look to your vendors to provide help in effectively communicating benefits. For example, for our clients, Abenity sends out weekly and monthly newsletters to employees to make sure they’re aware of new discount offers, and we’re always happy to create personalized marketing efforts for our clients in the name of increased engagement.

Share The News
Human Resources sits in the unique position as being the cheerleader for the employee. While motivation can come from many different avenues, the use of voluntary benefits is too often overlooked as an engagement tool. So take this opportunity to share some great news with your employees about their benefits program. As a result, your value as an employer can only increase!

What can you provide that is truly remarkable to your organization?

Your benefits and perks strategy is of greatest legitimacy to your employees when you operate them within a closed system.

At Abenity we manage discount programs for over 100 companies nationally. We’re not the only company out there that provides this service, but we believe we do it the best, and our aim towards exclusivity has a lot to do with it. We offer 100,000 local and national discounts to the clients we serve, and they are hidden behind the walled garden of username and password protection (among numerous other security protections). You have to be a member to access them, and you have to be an employee of one of our clients to be a member.

Why? Because our clients are offering Abenity as a benefit to their employees and they are doing so with the intention of building loyalty and being absolutely remarkable. With that being the case, our discount program can’t be big free-for-all coupon and affiliate marketing website like the bargain bin at the local discount superstore.

Your benefits and perks strategy is of greatest legitimacy to your employees when you operate them within a closed system. You can accomplish this in two ways:

Ensure the Benefits You Implement are Competitive, Varied and Unique
Most companies will start with the “standard” benefits package, including health insurance, life insurance and 401k plans. Go for the most competitive rates you can find and be gutsy with the costs you are willing to cover on behalf on the employee. Shop often and apprise your workers when changes are made to ensure them that you are pursuing the best possible options on their behalf.

Consider additional benefits such as tele-commuting, child care subsidies along with health and wellness programs to add to your repertoire of features that will set you apart as an unique employer. You are in the process of building a toolkit towards engagement, and within that toolbox are the items – large and small – you wield to successfully build loyalty. The adequate toolbox requires more than just a hammer to build a house; strive for diversity and select a full range of tools to accomplish the task.

Ensure the Perks You Provide are Not Available to the General Public
We run into the challenge of non-exclusivity in our business often. Many competitors in the discount space operate in an open arena, essentially letting anyone in. When looking for providers to fulfill the various needs of your engagement strategy look for services that are truly going to respect your need to offer exclusive means for engagement with your employees. Sadly many business-to-business services in the human resources sector are content with affiliate marketing and referrals as a means to stay in business, while ignoring the larger need of providing true strategies for engagement to the employer.

If your employees are your greatest asset, are you building an effective walled garden that will help them thrive as an employee?

The walled garden has become an analogy in the context of modern technology for a platform or service that relies on its closed nature to restrict access from the general public. For instance, a mobile operator like Verizon operates a wireless network which cannot be accessed by non-Verizon phones. Facebook is a walled garden that stores massive archives of content, messages and media hidden behind password protected login screens. But the walled garden of technology has both positive and negative connotations. Apple took considerable heat for several years for not allowing music to be downloaded and played on any service except iTunes and proprietary devices like the iPod.

Employers, too, are walled gardens.

Software developers and programmers across the globe clamor to work at Google. Why? Well sure, it’s the world’s number one search engine and most popular site on the Internet. But among other reasons, they have one of the most comprehensive and elaborate employee benefits programs in the world that promotes loyalty. Beyond the standard health & wellness programs, 401k offerings and vacation days is a long list of perks that reads more like the selling points for an exclusive country club membership: first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses, child care, bike repairs, on-site oil changes and the list goes on.

The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees’ way. We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that is... just about anything a hardworking employee might want. Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both. - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

As an employer, Google has created an effective walled garden with a world class employee loyalty and engagement strategy. The remarkable nature of being a Google employee is transmitted in the way their employee benefits package is presented. It’s rare. It’s exclusive. It says to the employee, “You are our greatest asset, and without you we cannot be Google”.

If your employees are your greatest asset, are you building an effective walled garden that will help them thrive as an employee? Are your inspiring a sense of loyalty that will make them think twice about jumping ship? ]]> http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/5195/feed 0 http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/5195 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AbenityLoyaltyEngagementStrategies/~3/ZL2lqqbbCMI/5176 http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/5176#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:34:48 +0000 Matt Burns http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/?p=5176 What makes the backstage pass special? A fine dining experience at a five star restaurant memorable?

Why is our attention captured when we watch a superior, world class athlete dominate the competition event after event at the Olympic games?

One word: Rarity.

We are captivated by the hard-to-get, the unattainable and the just-out-of-reach. Exclusivity makes us feel special, draws us in and snaps us to attention. When something is rare it piques our interest in a way the common and ordinary does not.

As an employer, and as a company leader, you are caught in the constant battle to become remarkable in the eyes of your employees.

A McDonald’s hamburger, tasty as it may be, doesn’t really inspire rarity. Billions served is what their sign says. They’ve given up on counting patties. Perhaps they ran out of room for digits on their sign, but the McDonald’s hamburger is so common it has become ubiquitous. There’s value in ubiquity, but ubiquity (in and of itself) doesn’t inspired loyalty. If McDonald’s is closed, or the line is too long, I’m just as happy going down the street to the nearest Burger King or Hardee’s to satisfy my craving for grilled meat.

Personally, I’m happier still finding a Chick-Fil-A where I know I’m going to be greeted with a smile and a “It was my pleasure serving you today”.

Rarity inspires loyalty.

Seth Godin the renowned marketeer talks at length in his book Purple Cow about the need for companies and services to strive towards being remarkable. In a market saturated with needs that are already met and products that have already been purchased, one must be remarkable – different, unique, rare – to stand out. In a herd of brown cows the purple cow stands out.

As an employer, and as a company leader, you are caught in the constant battle to become remarkable in the eyes of your employees. To be less than remarkable results in turnover and a stagnant workforce. Each dissatisfied employee is, in fact, one successful job interview away from leaving you.

How rare are you as an employer? And what are you doing to be the best place to work in your business?

If your goal is strong loyalty and engagement, and as an employer it should be, then you need to be the best. Much of this is accomplished through a comprehensive employee engagement strategy. Everything you do in the name of employee retention, from benefits to casual Fridays, is a step towards achieving loyalty through emotional investment. ]]> http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/5176/feed 0 http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/5176 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AbenityLoyaltyEngagementStrategies/~3/xQsSGV0N9i4/4527 http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/archives/4527#comments Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:18:17 +0000 Matt Burns http://www.abenity.com/celebrate/?p=4527 It’s an old analogy: The roots support the tree, but if the roots are bad the tree will eventually topple.

We’ve been talking to clients recently about the need for a good foundation – a good root system – to incorporate effective employee engagement strategies into organizations. Every HR team wants to have a loyal workforce, but how do you get there? We’ve documented seven strategies that influence the root system of effective employee engagement and we’re going to take a look at all of them in coming weeks.

But to start, what’s the most important first step? Planting the seeds of engagement with honesty.

It’s easy to toss around phrases like engagement and loyalty... but by defining your motivations you can move forward with engagement strategies that are genuine and sincere.

Whether you’re about to make significant overhauls to the way you engage your employees, or if your system is just in need of some small tweaks, taking an honest look at your methodology is a good place to start. Going back to a roots and tree analogy, you want to plant with honesty. Honesty is the soil in which you cultivate true employee loyalty.

Hokey analogies aside, you need to take a good deep look at what it is you’re really trying to accomplish, and what your goals are for employee engagement.

Do you hope to cut costs or increase your bottom line? Do you simply have a love for your employees? Are there personal reasons you want to tackle this challenge, or is this an objective that has been handed down to you?

Is engaging your employees simply the right thing to do?

These are all reasons that shape your motivations for putting more focus on employee engagement strategies.

The purpose behind this honest assessment is that you need to make employee engagement more than just a buzzword in your department. It’s easy to toss around phrases like “engagement” and “loyalty” without having a true understanding of your intentions – they just happen to sound good in HR culture. Only you can drill down to the important question of why in the context of your own company.

We can tell you that an engaged workforce is a more effective workforce. A loyal team increases your bottom line and protects you from dangerous external influences. And a positive work environment is an environment that lends well towards success, on both a corporate and individual level.

Your goal here is to define your motivations, as recognizing your motivations helps you move forward with genuine sincerity. Of all the areas of responsibility for Human Resources, the activities of employee engagement are at the greatest risk of appearing insincere. Perceived insincerity defeats the whole objective.

But when you have defined and know your reasons for pursuing an engaged employee base, your attitude changes immediately. You are propelled forward with a level of genuine focus that makes your pursuit of employee loyalty both defined and effective.

Stop for a moment and make an honest assessment about your employee engagement goals. Write them down, analyze them, discuss them with your team and create a strategy that stays true to these intentions.

So here are three cornerstones to think about in your pursuit of increasing employee loyalty:

Your employees rely on executive leadership and human resources to set the vision from the top down. You are a road-map to organizational success, but unless it’s communicated it will not be understood and acted upon. Financial goals, strategic objectives and corporate milestones mean nothing unless they make it out of the boardroom, and HR is equipped to be the propellant to make sure this happens effectively.

But even more important than goals and strategies is a company mission that can be easily embraced. Few college graduates entering the workforce arrive their first day on the job hoping to “Increase profit margin by 30% in Q3″. But too often these are the types of success measurements we give them. The mission therefore gives context and is the emotional connection between lives changed and dollars earned.

Your employees want to be part of something bigger than themselves – communicate that vision to them in a way that compels them to be on board.

Do your employees understand their sphere of influence and levels of responsibility in their career? Or do they feel unguided in ill-defined jobs? Employees need a strong balance of guidance and autonomy. Clear definition needs to be given around roles, responsibilities and expectations so that “success” isn’t a murky, unachievable buzzword. But every employee, according to their strengths, will go about executing on roles and responsibilities in different ways that are natural to them. Meaning, don’t give so much definition that an employee feels handcuffed and forced to do their job in a way that’s uncomfortable or unnatural to them.

Highly motivated employees will want to manage their career as if it were their own business, achieving and even over-achieving company goals in their own way. Finding that comfortable balance between guidance and autonomy will free your workforce to truly succeed.

The powerful psychology of being rewarded and recognized for a job well done cannot be underestimated and sets a foundation for continued success and development. Whether the rewards are financial or emotional, it’s important to place as much emphasis on recognizing the accomplishment as you have the struggle towards the objective.

Think long term about an employee’s tenure at your organization, and invest in their future. Through ongoing training, personal development, and requests for feedback you are planting seeds for the future. Your investment in them in turn invests them in you.

The key ingredient to increasing loyalty in your organization is employee engagement which seeks to invest your workers emotionally in your organization. Of course emotional engagement starts with a business mission that your employees are excited about – an objective that inspires them to be a champion for your brand and motivates them to bring their A-game each day. But beyond that you drill down to the day-in-day-out tactics that make up the realm of loyalty and recognition efforts by human resources.

When you lose an employee it costs your organization. Think about the hours and dollars that go into interviewing and rehiring, correcting operational inefficiencies, filling gaps left behind, the missed opportunities, and the irreplaceable talent. It’s the misery that you find yourself in when you end up on the losing side in the battle for employee retention.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 16.2% of American workers voluntarily quit their jobs in 2010, and that in the midst of one of the worst economies our country has ever seen! Compare that to a study conducted by SHRM (the Society for Human Resources Management) that estimated that it costs $3,500 to replace just one $8.00 per hour employee after you factor in costs like recruiting, interviewing and hiring, reduced productivity and so forth.

Improving employee morale and motivation is difficult to accomplish and intangible at best. But perhaps the most emotional connection you have to your employees is one that you can impact directly, and that is their pocketbook. And no, this doesn’t just have to happen through salary increases and bonuses.

At Abenity we manage discount programs for over 100 companies nationally, connecting employees to savings at everyday retailers like Target, Amazon.com and Costco. Impacting the pocketbook is something we have a little experience in; it’s knowledge you can translate directly to your employee retention plan. Is a brilliantly executed employee discount program the answer to your turnover woes? Of course not, but it’s one of the tools in your toolkit to inspire and motivate your team members.

So how would we leverage an Abenity discount program towards employee retention? Here are just a few ideas:

1. Log in to your Abenity Back-Office to use the discount program as an employee incentive and only give access to the employees who accomplish specific goals or criteria.
2. On the other end of the spectrum, consider pre-registering all employees through our Member Import feature so everyone has immediate access to the program.
3. And, if voluntary participation is what you prefer, then simply use the discounts as another corporate perk that they have the option to access as an employee benefit.

On top of your engagement strategy, consider increasing your brand’s exposure by truly customizing your discount program. When you associate your discount program directly with your corporate brand, your employees will look to you as the provider of that program and value the savings, opportunities and resources that you provide through it.

Editor’s Note: Abenity is proud to manage the employee discount program for MD Anderson, one of the top medical facilities in the world leading the fight to beat cancer. This guest post outlines some of the challenges MD Anderson faced running their own employee discount program prior to switching to Abenity.

I work for MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and coordinate employee recognition and work-life programs. We have 18,000 employees as well as an active retirees association. Our goal is to be an Employer of Choice so that we can attract the best and brightest people and remain consistently at the top of the list of cancer hospitals. In order to reach that goal we need to provide our employees and their family members with a comprehensive set of programs that addresses their work-life needs.

Setting up a corporate discount program was a priority for us but also a major challenge because, as a member institution of the University of Texas System, we fall under state regulations. One of the regulations is a “no solicitation” policy. After years of consideration, the University of Texas System created a new policy that specifically stated that each member could create an employee discount program as long as it was approved by our President. Even with that permission, we still faced internal hurdles such as questions from our legal and compliance department as well as an ethics review. The UT System policy had other guidelines; one of which was that we could not hire a third party provider to coordinate our discounts program.

Without a vendor to advise us or provide examples based on their expertise, our staff had to do all the research and groundwork to get the program underway. Our legal department, which was already stretched thin with cooperative agreements and contracts, had to budget time for interpretation of the policy, and our IT department had to develop the forms and database for the vendor information from scratch.

On the marketing side, we also needed to create a memorable name for the program, which we called the iDEAL Discount and Services program. We wanted to stress that this was an online program that was available 24 hours a day. We also made sure that it resided on our internet rather than our intranet so that family members and retirees could easily check the website for the latest discounts. However, this prevents the site from seeming “exclusive” to our employees, which can damage the perception of the value of the program.

A third-party provider would have been able to write the disclaimers, research best practices with other institutions, create and maintain the website, create, as well as collect and review forms from potential vendors. More importantly, a third party vendor would be able to contact vendors to ask them for a discount. This is something, as a state institution, that we cannot do. Because we can’t solicit vendors, we rely on them to stumble upon our site which is both inefficient and impractical.

Regardless of who is in charge of the employee discount program, employees should not perceive a vendor’s inclusion in the program as an endorsement, safeguard or guarantee on the quality of the workmanship or any other consumer protection by the employer.

In this climate of tight budgets and shrinking salary merit pools an effective discount program can truly add value for our employees. Third party vendors can do this much more efficiently and quickly than in-house programs as well as minimize exposure or the perception of a conflict of interest between the employer and any contract vendors. Having said all this, we were allowed to include a third party discount vendor, Abenity, on our list of discount providers. This allows our employees to have access to major discounts while we still run the overall program as required.

Editor’s Note: In 2006 Belmont University, a private liberal arts college in Nashville, TN, asked Abenity to manage their employee discount program. This is their story about how they transitioned from a self-managed program to a full service employee discount program run by Abenity.

Belmont University’s old employee discount program was anything but efficient. We had a home-grown system which consisted of contacting local vendors and asking if they would be interested in offering Belmont employees a discount. Once Human Resources verified the offer, the discount was placed on our internal Employee Discount List.

This process seemed to work initially. However, we soon noticed that vendors often discontinued offers without notice, and employees would become frustrated when they tried to use an advertised discount and it wouldn’t be accepted. It appeared to employees that Human Resources didn’t know what they were doing and the entire employee discount program was a constant form of irritation for our team.

Our employee discount offering got a whole lot simpler once we outsourced our program. By using an external provider our employees have access to a much wider offering of discounts numbering into the thousands for both local and national vendors. Our employee discount provider takes care of contacting vendors and arranging for discounts and they also handle the communication of offers to our employees. Human Resources’ involvement is minimal but the benefit to our employees is great.

Human Resources does not have to worry about keeping an updated employee discount listing anymore – Abenity does that for us! When employees call asking about employee discounts we send them straight to the Abenity website and I never have to worry about it being outdated. Employees like having the regular e-mail notifications from Abenity of new offerings and highlighted discounts. Having Abenity is a win-win proposition for us.

When you decide to manage an employee discount program in-house, there are some challenges you will face, the biggest of which is the time it will take to create and administer the program. You’ll want to think about the following as you consider the “do it yourself” route.

First, you’ll need to determine how to design your employee discount program. This will be based upon the goal and purpose of the program within your organization. It’s a good idea to create a policy that will establish the basic ground rules for the program. Consider the following questions to define the scope of your program: What types of discounts will be included? What products or services will be restricted or prohibited? How will discount offers be obtained? Will you solicit businesses directly for discounts or obtain them through employee referrals or business interest? How will discounts be evaluated for inclusion in the program?

A business application and review process is necessary to ensure that your employee discount program includes discounts that are appropriate in nature and provide value for your employees. You will need a way to obtain pertinent information on discount offers, including contact information for the business, the discount being offered, ordering/purchasing instructions, any limits or exclusions, expiration dates, proof of employment requirements, etc. If you plan to offer a large number of discounts, you may want to implement an online application form to assist with collecting this information.

Once the discount information is obtained, it will need to be reviewed for approval or disapproval into your program. This may include confirming that the discount complies with your policy and that the nature of the business, products, and services are appropriate. It may also include conducting an initial screening of the business, such as a Better Business Bureau search, regarding the reliability/reputation of the organization. In addition, you may need to follow up with the business if there is missing or incomplete information. After the discount has been reviewed, the business will need to be notified of approval or disapproval into your program.

Once discounts are approved, they need to be made available to your employees. One way to do this is to create a website where all discount offers will be posted. You will need to decide what information to post and in what format (e.g., discount flyer, website link, short description). You may require the business providing the discount to submit information in your required format.

Regardless of what method is chosen, all information posted will need to be checked for accuracy. A point person will need to be assigned to maintain the website and ensure that all discount links are working and are up-to-date. New discounts will need to be added, expired discounts will need to be removed, and existing discounts will need to be updated as offers change.

Bottom line – all of these things take time. To some extent, you can control how much time it will take to manage your program by limiting the design and administration of your discount program. Keep the things above in mind as you decide how to best implement an employee discount program in your organization.