Incentive - March 2008 - (Page 29)

CASE STUDY outstanding recognition to employees. And managers’ scores on the “recognition competence” section of AEIS’ 360degree assessment were one measure by which the program’s success was judged, along with results of employee satisfaction surveys and the usage of the online recognition tools. In designing the Max! program, AEIS was able to draw heavily on the expertise of its parent company, Maritz, and not solely to create the best program possible. For Max! had a second purpose—he was e-mail headers and wall banners to Post-it notes, Valentine’s Day chocolates and the launch celebration’s sparkling grape juice bottles. Max! also has a more threedimensional existence: An actor has been hired to wear the Max! costume (complete with blue face paint) at special events like the annual sales conference, and managers wear Max! capes when handing out awards at AEIS monthly town hall meetings. “We wanted to bring the spirit of recognition to life,” says Deanna Baker, “We continuously communicated, ‘Use your points.’ That was extremely important.” –Deanna Baker, vice president of employee development and human resources, AEIS to form the basis of a cutting-edge AEIS vice president of employee developrecognition platform that would give ment and human resources, adding that AEIS a presence in the rapidly growing the company has a youngish employee employee recognition market. population for which the character was If case studies of programs with appropriate. measurable success rates are as Max! was everywhere, says Hubert, important to selling incentive programs as Incentive’s readers’ thirst for them suggests, the results of Max’s first year means the AEIS sales team’s job has gotten a little easier. A year after implementing the program, the firm’s employee satisfaction scores jumped from 3.2 to 4.25, and every single employee issued points to peers, with fully 65 percent giving out 100 percent of their points. Virtually all of the rest gave out between 50 percent While an actor dressed as Max! was brought in for some high-profile Max! was incorporated in many incentive programs, including one to and 70 percent of their points. events, managers generally played the role by donning the red cape boost sales, where the actor announced vacation prize winners’ names That level of participation is, according to Hubert, “Better than what we see with a lot of clients, because the program managers “commuitems like case studies, competitive but we would like to see even more” of nicated the heck out of it.” Adds Baker: intelligence and employee referrals. the points used. “We continuously communicated, ‘Use For instance, a special Travel Max!— your points.’ That was extremely impordressed in sunglasses and a colorful Superhero tant. People really do want to feel valued.” sweater instead of a suit, and with the The comic-book-esque Max!—who is sort Using those points, which are delivered briefcase replaced with a suitcase—was of a Superman who forgot to drop Clark in an e-mail certificate that is cc’ed to the unveiled at the AEIS 2006 sales conferKent’s business shirt, tie and briefcase—is winner’s immediate manager, who is in ence. A live-action Max! character gave featured on virtually all program commuturn encouraged to publicly reinforce the away two or three vacation prizes at the nications, including the launch video, good behavior that led to the award, was 2006 and 2007 sales conferences. incentivemag.com the key to the program achieving its goals of increasing employee satisfaction, helping management embrace formal and informal recognition, and keeping employees focused on AEIS’ performance goals. More broadly, of course, those goals supported larger goals of improving employee engagement and performance, increasing retention, and improving customer satisfaction. AEIS invested a great deal in the Max! program, both in terms of time and energy spent to create and regularly reinforce Max! ideals and goals, and also in dollars allocated. Points were distributed via Max!-logoed AEIS DirectSpend cards, which are redeemable at popular and specialty entertainment, retail and travel establishments, but not, for example, to pay a utility bill. The $85,000-plus budget came out to $376 per employee, well above the industry average of 0.5 percent of the salary and benefits budget. Beyond peer-to-peer recognition, the Max! program incorporated rewards at service anniversaries and holidays, for activities such as lead generation and successful sales goal achievement, and for | March 2008 | Incentive | 29 http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - March 2008

Incentive - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Delivering on Diversity In The News Cover Story: Leveraging Diversity in the Workplace Incentive Interview: Paul Levesque on Why Awards Fail Case Study: AEIS’ Max!-imum Incentive Program Mine Employees’ Creativity with Innovation Incentives Incentive Must-Reads The Third Annual Gift Card Roundtable My Turn: Motivation or Bribery? Everybody Get Together In Her Shoes: Why Bosses Should Be Flexible Incentive Primer: Passport Problem-Solving potentials Here and Now Is CES Electronics Heaven? China and Crystal: More Than a Pretty Face Travel News Florida: What’s New on the Beach? Smooth Sailing for Incentive Cruising Come To Hawaii And Take It Fast Last Word: But Enough About You

Incentive - March 2008

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