16 April, 2021
Hyper Personalization of EX through Rewards
Gone are the days when employee rewards and recognition programs comprised of a generic list of perks for all. Organizations today are fully aware of the importance of having a holistic, tailored employee benefits experience to engage their workforce. In today’s personalization-driven economy, technology has transformed consumer experiences, which are driven by targeted offerings and relevant customer interactions. Employees now have also come to expect the same level of personalization within their workplace. Given the generally declining attention span of millennial workers, an employee rewards program must be extremely relevant and tailored to unique preferences to ensure high adoption. Additionally, pandemic related disruptions in full swing, employees are looking to employers to help them with cope with new economic, social and health related issues.
Hyper Personalization of Total Rewards
The hyper-personalization of EX through rewards involves giving employees the ability to craft their own experiences within their organization. This can mean the following:
- The freedom to choose rewards
Having the ability to choose your own benefits or rewards from a host of relevant, compelling options is essential for employees to engage with the rewards program. Many organizations offer digital rewards in the form of e-vouchers or a vast e-commerce catalog. These can fail to generate interest either because they offer dated options or because there are too many options to choose from, which causes indecision. According to the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, 23 percent respondents reported that they did not know what rewards their workers value. Having a specially curated catalog that reflects your employee’s demographic preferences can help overcome this challenge.
- Timely and relevant recognition
Recognition is an important prerequisite to make employees feel seen, acknowledged and motivated to give their best. Timely recognition can take place through an employee recognition software, which can create nudges and reminders for recognition. Thus, if a notification goes out to an employee’s team on their work anniversary, say, or to the higher management after they win a nomination, it can spark timely recognition and enhance connection. In fact, this latest study by Gallup shows that the most meaningful recognition comes from a manager or a high-level leader like the CEO.
Regular feedback in the form of pulse surveys is an important way to get employee opinion on important aspects of EX, such as work timing preferences, infrastructural challenges, team connect, benefits preferences and more. An employee engagement platform can help collate critical data relating to attrition and engagement, as well as translate it in a simple, actionable format for HR and other management leaders. Given that improved retention is a key goal of employee engagement, it’s important to remember this statistic from Gallup which states that highly engaged business units achieve 59% less turnover in low-turnover organizations, hence there is a strong need to measure and manage engagement.
Frequent interactions regarding the rewards framework can increase the chances of reward redemption. Reminders relating to reward points or notifications regarding recommended benefits based on earlier purchases can make employees feel positive about their employer brand and feel taken care of.
- Intuitive Rewards Framework
Using technology to create an intuitive rewards framework, including a mobile app with consumer grade features like a mood-o-meter, AI based chatbot, achievement records, recognition data, social wall and the like in a gamified environment can prove instrumental in the successful adoption of any employee rewards program.
The modern, multi-generational workforce has a unique set of needs, and the younger generation is leaving digital prints of their voice everywhere- right from discussions on collaboration platforms to their redemption behavior on benefits platforms. Organizations must intelligently tune into these sources of data, apart from just the direct survey data and continue to refine and upgrade the rewards experience. Data and technology, if used correctly, can provide an integrated, dynamic and hyper-personalized EX to employees at scale.