Safelite: Employee Recognition Program

Bob Jesenovec, Dec 10, 2018

Safelite:

Memorable Moments Employee Recognition (& Retention) Program

Situation: 

In surveying the competitive landscape, Safelite observed a disconcerting pattern of behavior, that companies, including themselves, were losing good, highly trained people to other companies.

In answer to this dilemma, Safelite reached out and asked Leaderpromos to propose a solution that would keep their employees happy, engaged and not open to being lured away by another company.

Challenge:

This was a unique situation for Leaderpromos, as we were not being asked to solve a current, or an ongoing issue, but rather, to be proactive and prevent an issue from occurring in the future.

After some initial research and meetings with various departments, Leaderpromos observed that Safelite’s people in the field weren’t getting the one-on-one connection, or receiving the same reinforcement, as those in the corporate environment. Feeling somewhat disengaged, these were the people that seemed to be at the highest risk of being lured away by another company.

Leaderpromos needed to find a way to reach these employees and to let them know that they were appreciated and that Safelite cares about them.

Another requirement was that our strategy would have to accomplish that goal without adding head-count, overwhelming their internal resources or dramatically increasing the budget.

Strategy: 

To accomplish this, we decided to focus on key milestones that occurred both annually and throughout the career of each employee and recognize them with appreciation gifts.

Once we had the outline and the program began to take form, it then needed a suitable name- Safelite was drawn to and decided on "Memorable Moments". Once the moments were defined, we then had to determine what the recognition for each moment would look like, as well as which of those would be personalized and involve the manager, versus those that could be completely automated using out technology platforms. 

For example, such moments as an employee’s anniversary of hire or birthday have fixed, known dates, and can be set to automatically be fulfilled with the appropriate gift. Other moments, such as getting married or having a baby, are not annual reoccurring events and would need to be triggered manually. Although once initiated, the fulfillment would also then be automated.

When it was time for product selection, we utilized demographics to determine such characteristics as the average age, gender, income level and region of the field employees in order to select appreciation gifts that would most appeal to them. The goal was for the employees to receive gifts that they genuinely appreciated.

In lieu of the typical, form letter, the option of including a hand-written, personalized note from the employee’s manager was added as another touch point. Additionally, rather than just handing it to them or placing a gift on the employee’s desk, these recognition gifts would be delivered to their home, to reinforce the “From our family, to yours” sentiment.

Since employees would receive these Memorable Moments packages throughout the year, another feature that we proposed was the use of custom packaging. We wanted to create the same visual impact and excitement one has when seeing a package from Amazon on their doorstep.  

Outcome: 

Other than the cost of goods and shipping, the Memorable Moments program incurs no exorbitant costs and runs for the most part, as an independent system. 

The Memorable Moments program utilizes automated workflows and performs seamlessly from the initial request through fulfillment and doesn’t require vast amounts of hands-on attention.

In order to gauge the quality of the experience, a survey was also made available to the Memorable Moments recipients. Some of the feedback received mentioned that they (the recipients) felt more like they “…have a career - not just a job”. That they were “A part of something that was making a difference”, working with a company that “…appreciates team member contributions.” and were “…not just an anonymous person hired to fill a role.”

Do to the somewhat ambiguity of this initiative (trying to prevent possibly losing valuable people to another company), it’s difficult to define success with precise metrics or SMART goals.

Although, perhaps the most telling statistic we can provide is that after implementing the Memorable Moments program, not a single person has left Safelite to go work for another company since the program launched in 2017.