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Max!-ing Out Recognition: American Express Incentive Services Case Study
March 06, 2008
For American Express Incentive Services, an award-winning employee recognition program was of Max!-imum importance
By Leo Jakobson
Profile: American Express Incentive Services
Program: Max! Employee Rewards & Recognition Program, a Web-based peer-topeer and manager recognition program using points on an AEIS DirectSpend gift card
Objectives: Improve AEIS' culture of recognition in order to increase employee satisfaction, help management embrace formal and informal recognition, and keep employees' focus on company performance goals. In addition, the Max! program was intended to be a template for an AEIS recognition program platform.
ROI: Employee satisfaction scores jumped from 3.2 to 4.25 after one year; 100 percent participation, with 65 percent of employees awarding all of their points and the rest giving out 50 to 70 percent.
A few years ago, executives at American Express Incentive Services realized they had a problem with their internal employee recognition program.
"We had a program, but usage was mediocre, it was stale," says Julie Hubert, director of employee development of American Express Incentive Services (AEIS), a St. Louis–based joint venture between Maritz Inc. and American Express that focuses on the incentive gift card market. "We wanted to create a culture of recognition that was also a culture of performance."
Slipping employee engagement is a problem for any company, but it's just downright embarrassing for an incentive company. Thus, Max! was born. Max! is simultaneously the blue-skinned, red-caped embodiment of engagement at AEIS, and the symbol of the company's commitment to "MAXimum Recognition of our People and MAXimum Performance." Oh, and he's also the winner of an Incentive Marketing Association 2007 Circle of Excellence Award, presented at The Motivation Show in Chicago last year. So clearly, AEIS succeeded in its goals. (Full disclosure: The author of this article was a 2007 Circle of Excellence judge.)
At its core, the Max! Employee Rewards & Recognition Program is an online, points-based, peer- and manager-recognition tool. In 2006, AEIS distributed more than $85,000 worth of points (at $1 per point) to its employees that they were supposed to award to peers or, in the case of managers, to direct reports, for providing superior customer service or making it easier to do business with AEIS. Other incentive programs, including a sales incentive and another supporting an all-hands corporate goal of becoming a billion-dollar firm by 2008, were worked into Max! as well.
Manager buy-in was an important component of the program. The company had a special, custom-designed Max! Trophy for managers who exhibited outstanding recognition to employees. And managers' scores on the "recognition competence" section of AEIS' 360- degree 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 to form the basis of a cutting-edge recognition platform that would give AEIS a presence in the rapidly growing employee recognition market.
If case studies of programs with measurable success rates are as 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 and 70 percent of their points. That level of participation is, according to Hubert, "Better than what we see with a lot of clients, but we would like to see even more" of the points used.
Superhero
The comic-book-esque Max!—who is sort of a Superman who forgot to drop Clark Kent's business shirt, tie and briefcase—is featured on virtually all program communications, including the launch video, 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 three-dimensional 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, AEIS vice president of employee development and human resources, adding that the company has a youngish employee population for which the character was appropriate.
Max! was everywhere, says Hubert, because the program managers "communicated the heck out of it." Adds Baker: "We continuously communicated, 'Use your points.' That was extremely important. People really do want to feel valued."
Using those points, which are delivered in an e-mail certificate that is cc'ed to the winner's immediate manager, who is in turn encouraged to publicly reinforce the good behavior that led to the award, was 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 items like case studies, competitive intelligence and employee referrals.
For instance, a special Travel Max!—dressed in sunglasses and a colorful sweater instead of a suit, and with the briefcase replaced with a suitcase—was unveiled at the AEIS 2006 sales conference. A live-action Max! character gave away two or three vacation prizes at the 2006 and 2007 sales conferences. g
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