Are you thinking about rewarding your employees with Blueboard experiences? We’re here to make your job easy.
This morning we hosted an interactive webinar where we covered strategies for launching Blueboard at your company with our CEO and Co-founder, Taylor Smith.
We highlighted areas that people commonly get stuck in when communicating Blueboard’s value with authority. To navigate the buying process we discussed using data points and influence through the new Blueboard Method framework. Check out our video recording below!
Our favorite part of the webinar was discussing the three areas where employee recognition programs typically get stuck, they include: Prioritization, Executive Buy-In, and Budget.
1. How to Prioritize Employee Recognition:
Why do we need to prioritize? Employee recognition can typically get neglected in favor of other initiatives getting stacked on your plate.
Does this sound familiar? “Blueboard sounds great! We’ll get to that next year once we finish our HRIS implementation and get through open enrollment.”
Employee recognition can get deprioritized for one or two common reasons:
- Decision makers overestimate the amount of effort required to roll out a high-performing program
- Decision makers underestimate the impact that employee recognition programs can have
But according to Gallup, out of the three major drivers of employee engagement (Leadership & Communication, Learning & Development, and employee Recognition) recognition takes the least amount of effort and resources, yet delivers the biggest impact.
How Blueboard Can Help:
In the webinar, Taylor spoke to our comprehensive Buyer’s Guide as tool for helping to prioritize employee recognition amongst your other list of to-dos. Get your copy online here.
In the guide, learn why effective employee engagement is important to your business, understand the difference between employee recognition and company perks, and read through what elements make an employee recognition program truly effective and meaningful.
2) How to Get Executive Buy-in:
Why is executive buy-in a challenge? Sometimes employee recognition and/or Blueboard isn’t communicated effectively to leadership, meaning your boss, VP of Talent, CFO or CEO doesn’t give you the attention you’re seeking.
Ring a bell? “Blueboard sounds fluffy. Are experiences really better than cash? What is the ROI on this? Will it fix our retention problem?”
Harnessing executive buy-in requires you share your awesome vision of what an employee recognition program looks and feels like.
Many leaders think of employee recognition as a checkbox item – not something to be improved and optimized. One way to shake them out of this mindset is to create and share your vision of what awesome employee recognition looks like:
- Maybe your ideal version of employee recognition feels genuinely awesome to give and gratifying to receive?
- Maybe you’re looking for employee recognition that will make your employees proud to work at your company?
- Maybe you’re looking for employee recognition that is a reflection of Leadership’s attitude toward its top people?
When entering these tricky conversations, remember to illustrate specific qualities of an ideal employee recognition program that match your company’s culture and beliefs. And consider sharing examples of how your current employee recognition program is not delivering on your vision for an awesome employee recognition program.
How Blueboard Can Help:
Work in partnership with your Blueboard account rep to build out a program plan modeled from our Blueboard Method framework. Collaborate around shared ideas within our interactive Program Planning Guide tool. The guide helps you to:
- Share the program plan, timeline and milestones internally to increase understanding of program scope - gaining momentum.
- Define your program goals, and decide on the tools you’ll use to measure success with, as well as the dates/timeline for reporting.
- Lay out a streamlined plan for program education, announcement, and long-term sharing and socialization.
3) How to Navigate Budget Conversations:
What makes it difficult to justify the cost of using Blueboard? Sometime Finance doesn’t understand the value that Blueboard offers or might make comparisons to other items that at the end of the day, aren’t comparable.
Focus on where to pull the budget from:
- Centralized budget: pulling from a centralized HR budget is often simpler, but positions Blueboard as a larger line item.
- Decentralized budget: tapping into a departmental budget is typically easier to approve, but requires coordination from various business leaders.
- Combining with Wellness: because Blueboard employee rewards support work/life balance and happiness, it’s also common to add Blueboard into the greater Benefits line item.
In summary, a few things to remember:
- Employee recognition is a low-hanging fruit with great opportunity for meaningful impact.
- Blueboard is here to support you, and make your job easier through guided tools and best practices from our top customers
- Know your audience: each executive is different and will have a unique way of evaluating value and making decisions. Be prepared to mix and match strategies, and get creative along the way.
Is it time for you to prioritize employee recognition, and need some help from Blueboard to make it happen? Simply reconnect with your account rep, or reach us above^^ via the orange Request Demo form. We’ll look forward to rewarding your employees with awesome, life-changing experiences.
See you next time!
