Incentive - August 2008 - (Page 24) COVER STORY “An engaged employee performs better. They stay longer and they’re your best recruiters. They go above and beyond.” –Steve Church, Avnet Avnet: Building ground-up support for recognition stand that [those drivers] are different by region. There are some that are common, Avnet is different from Amgen in a number but some of the things that drive engageof ways. A distributor of electronic compoment in Europe and Asia are different than nents, computer products and software, as they are in North America.” well as technology products and services for Church admits that Avnet’s recognition more than 300 leading manufacturers, Avnet programs have not, until now, been global. does not invent or manufacture “There was no consistency and no uniforproducts, although it does put some mity,” he says. He found “some products together for clients. But it is managers are very good at it and largely a middleman, a supply-chain spedo it in the regular course of their cialist. Headquartered in Phoenix, the work, and some managers don’t do $15.7 billion firm has more than 300 it at all. Some managers do it by offices in 70 countries around the globe. sending flowers to the employee’s Compared to Amgen, Avnet is rolling home or telling them they can take out its global recognition program using their wife out to dinner, some do it a slower, more step-by-step approach. by recognizing people at a staff At the beginning of the year, says meeting, some do it by walking Church, Avnet’s chief HR development around and shaking people’s hands, officer, the company had just expanded looking them in the eyes and saying its North American program beyond ‘thank you,’ and some managers do length-of-service and birthday awards it by giving away gift cards.” to include a Web-based, peer-to-peer The problem, Church adds, is recognition program that lets employees that Avnet does not “know to what send “thank you” messages to other extent this is taking place. It’s all sort of ad hoc, and because of that, employees. And it was preparing to roll we don’t know how much we’re those programs out globally. The next step is to allow managers to give out gift doing and we can’t measure it, we cards in nominal amounts—probably don’t know how much money we’re Electronics distributor Avnet is taking a step-by-step approach to up to $100, he says. “We’re going to spending on recognition.” Most building a recognition program run that for a while and see how it importantly, he adds, the company goes,” Church says, adding, “I already know as extremely important, but we view it in couldn’t measure return-on-investment. what’s going to happen: Our managers are the context of driving performance manAs for that, Avnet uses Watson Wyatt to going to say, ‘This is awesome, what else can agement and driving engagement,” he run its employee engagement surveys and adds. “That’s what we’re really trying to we do with this?’” another company to compile global cusCulturally, that’s how Avnet works, accomplish.” tomer satisfaction data. “We want to look Church says. “We start with something that In fact, this is something Avnet has been at the relationship between engaged we believe will work everywhere, we let peo- working on for as much as five years, employees and loyal customers,” Church Church says. “We’re pretty far down the ple use it and see the value of it.” Then the says. In a service business, the model is company will expand the program, building road: We’ve trained all of our managers, that “engaged employees get you loyal cusout more features as demand arises, rather they understand why it’s important, they tomers, and we want to test that out, as know what the drivers of engagement are. than launching the program in one fell well as drive behavior.” We also have done a lot of work to underswoop, as Amgen did. That said, once the Send comments to ljakobson@incentivemag.com Incentive concept is accepted within the company, Avnet tends to add features quickly. Another “one of the areas where we differ a little bit is we don’t really look at this whole topic as trying to create a recognition culture,” says Church. “Avnet already has a culture, and it’s a performance- and values-based culture. We view recognition 24 | | August 2008 | incentivemag.com http://incentivemag.com
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