Forbes recognizes I Love Rewards for our cost-saving initiatives and explains how other growing companies can learn how to maximize their ROI using their own employees.

What Forbes had to say about I Love Rewards:

Craft smart incentives. Rah-rah speeches will only get you so far with employees. At some point, they want to be compensated for their hard work–even if that means not taking home fatter salaries. ReThink Rewards! (sales: $12 million), which manages incentive programs, eats its own cooking. Founder and CEO Razor Suleman awards cost-conscious employees by paying them 10% of any savings they generate, be it through renegotiating a vendor contract or some new operational efficiency. The program saved $263,000 last year–which works out to a 10% return on investment, crows Suleman.

Click on the link to read the full article, “How To Take Your Business To The Next Level.”

Workplace Magazine featured sections from our Long Live Recognition Milestones white paper as well as quotes from Razor Suleman, CEO and founder, I Love Rewards. The lesson learned is that there is not a one size fits all solution for employee rewards, provide choice.

What they said about I Love Rewards:

Companies who wait risk losing their top talent and miss the opportunity to engage their employees, particularly those Generation Y employees who have grown up to expect easy recognition. Too many companies offer “too little too late” in terms of rewards and recognition!

“Still recognize the traditional milestones. However, now there are options that allow employees to decide what types of recognition, or gift items, they receive, said Razor Suleman, CEO and Founder, I Love Rewards.

Click here to read the full article, “Why wait 5 years.”

Get to know your candidates with open houses (and get them to know you!)

Open houses offer candidates a great opportunity to learn about the company’s business and culture, and allow you to assess whether they will be a good fit for your organization. They also allow you to see hundreds of candidates in a short amount of time –saving time and money. 

To get the most out of your open house and help build your employer brand, try these tactics:

• Create a presentation on the company for candidates as they wait for their interview
• Have team members meet and interact with candidates
• Give group tours of the workplace

I Love Rewards is putting this strategy into practice. We’re holding an I Love Rewards Careers Open House on November 10, 2009 and November 12, 2009. Interested candidates will have the opportunity to learn more about our company, meet the team, and attend an interview. For more information visit our careers page.

Tap into the power of social networking

Did you know? More than 70% of undergraduate students and IT pros in North America maintain a social networking profile.

Using social networks allow you to target specific demographics by tapping into industry-specific groups. For example, with LinkedIn, individuals select their industry type when creating their profile.  This provides HR with a list of potential candidates right off the bat, and gives access to employment history.

While using social networking for recruiting purposes is a hot topic, executives are often hesitant to fund a comprehensive social network recruiting strategy. We’ve found some great advice for HR managers on making a compelling business case from ere.net, a leading source on recruiting. Read the story here - The Many Benefits of Social Network Recruiting: Making a Compelling Business Case

Give your employee referral program a boost

There are two main reasons why employee referrals are and will continue to be the most effective way to recruit A Players. Number one, candidates referred by your employees are highly qualified; and number two, candidates referred by your employees come at a lower cost per hire.

To give your employee referral program a boost, create a reward program that incents employees to actively refer talent. Through experience we have found that the best way to get employees involved in the recruiting effort is to offer employees PIC rewards for each referral. PIC stands for positive, immediate and certain.

Why? Employees have no control over whether their referral gets hired and therefore, employers need to reward them for what employees do have control over – the initial referral. By offering them a reward for actively referring a candidate you ensure positive repeat behavior. Worried that employees will start referring any candidate in order to get a reward? The fact is, by referring a potential candidate, employees are essentially putting their stamp of approval on the individual. They are personally invested and are therefore less likely to refer unqualified candidates.

For more recruiting best practices read our blog post Rock Star Recruiting.

In late 2007, the Elite Window Fashions management team was searching for an innovative and effective way to drive sales for 2008. What they found was a program that not only drove sales, but also decreased days receivable outstanding and built customer loyalty.

Here’s a look at their program.

About Elite Window Fashions: Elite Window Fashions™ is a leading Canadian manufacturer of custom window covering products. What began in 1967 as a small vertical blinds shop has grown over the years expanding nation-wide.

Program: MoreRewards

How it works: Customers are recognized and rewarded when they sell Elite Window Fashions products with points, which they use to redeem for brand name products, gift certificates and experiences of their choice from an online catalog.

Program Launch: January 2008

ReThink Rewards sat down with Noah Zimner, Project Manager at Elite Window Fashions for a Q&A session about MoreRewards.

1. What made Elite Window Fashions seek out and launch an incentive program?

Elite had implemented other incentive programs in the past that all came and went without much effect. We used to give away electronics, trip vouchers, etc., but all of those programs and products were a huge administrative and organizational headache for us. We also could not easily track our customers’ participation and communicate with them very well on program details.

When we heard what ReThink Rewards does, we knew that the type of incentive program we wanted to run for our customers was within reach. ReThink Rewards has taken what was once something that we shied away from and has made it into a manageable and workable solution. Their system also provides us with up-to-date user statistics, data, and easy ways of communicating information to our registered customers via email.

“Do what you do best and outsource the rest”, is a saying that has definitely come into play with the launch of Elite’s MoreRewards program.

2. How has More Rewards had an impact on your relationship with your suppliers and their purchasing decisions?

Elite sells through a cross-national network of independent dealers. In late 2007 our management team was trying to uncover the best way to drive sales for the 2008 year. Elite was without any incentive program at this time and it was then that we decided to implement MoreRewards. We decided to reward our customers with points whenever they sold our products.

After a few months of point accumulation we noticed that call volumes to Elite started to increase towards the end of each month, which is the same time we do our point uploads. Customers were calling to make sure that orders they placed that month would qualify for points. People were saving up and waiting to redeem for hot ticket items and were consciously selling more Elite blinds so they could earn more points for their online Wish List items.

As an unexpected side-effect, we also noticed that our days of receivables came down as customers were paying invoices earlier to get their points before each monthly deadline.

3. How does MoreRewards give you the competitive advantage in your industry?

The MoreRewards program provides our customers with the choice and the freedom to redeem for what they want when they want. Other incentive programs in our industry often place strict and difficult restrictions and deadlines on dealers to meet goals and sell product.

We are lucky to have a large community of loyal customers and MoreRewards is our way of saying thank you for purchasing our products. Our competitive edge is that we provide our customers with something in return, and in the process not only incent them to continue their purchasing habits, but encourage their behavior to sell MORE.

The latest American Workplace Insights Survey offers interesting insight into how employees feel about their boss. The way employees feel about their workplace greatly depends on how they feel about their boss, this survey can help bosses improve their workplace by strengthening their relationships with employees.

No boss envy, only worker appreciation

Key findings from the American Workplace Insights Survey:

• Employees don’t envy their bosses because they see the added pressure and stress their bosses feel due to current economic and business difficulties.
• Overall, the relationship between bosses and their workers continues to be strong. Here are some key findings:

  –  Satisfaction still depends on boss/employee relationship: Almost all workers (89%) still think their relationship with their boss is more important or as important to their job satisfaction.
  –  Accessibility unchanged: 87% of workers think their boss is just as accessible or more accessible as they were pre-recession.
 –  Respect has only marginally increased: Only 14% of workers have more respect for what their boss does every day since the recession began.

Strengthen relationships between managers and employees

Here are tips for bosses who are looking to strengthen their relationship with their workers. From the authors of the American Workplace Insights Survey.

• Exhibit loyalty: Acts of loyalty may occur every day but many go unnoticed by employees. Learn to delicately communicate how loyal you are to key employees and how earning their trust is important. Earn employee trust by openly communicating both good and bad news and making every attempt not to surprise any employee.
• Improve morale: Company morale goes hand-in-hand with motivation. Motivate staff through rewards and recognition of top work. Also conduct team-building exercises with staff to build stronger working relationships around the office.
• Communicate opportunities: Motivation also comes when an employee recognizes there are opportunities beyond their day-to-day job within a certain company. Be sure to communicate how the company can continue to help employees grow through special assignments, projects or learning opportunities.

The Globe and Mail features I Love Rewards as an exemplary case study of how start-ups can attain capital in hard times. I Love Rewards raised $8.7 M in capital during the recession and offers some best practices to other start-ups on how to raise money.

What they said about I Love Rewards:

In May, Toronto firm, which specializes in Web-based employee rewards programs designed to boost staff retention and engagement, secured $5.7-million (U.S.) in funding from an investment group led by Wellesley, Mass.-based venture capital firm GrandBanks Capital.

“My vision is to build the most successful Web-based rewards company in the world … and capital is the fuel to grow,” Mr. Suleman explains.

Growth capital, although harder to acquire, is still available - and despite a difficult economic climate, many of the time-honored tactics for securing it still apply.
Having already completed that series “A” round of venture capital funding, I Love Rewards, which boasts annualized revenue of $12-million and is predicting revenue growth of at least 200 per cent over the next two years, leveraged the contact list of those initial investors and used a networking opportunity in New York to cast a wider venture capital net.

“There’s credibility in who you take money from and that opens up a lot of doors,” Mr. Suleman says. “I got in front of V.C. [venture capital] firms that most Canadian entrepreneurs will never get the opportunity to present to.”

Click the link to read the full article, “Deep pockets still available despite downturn”