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Spawglass Shows Employees the Money
January 19, 2010
By Sarah Boehle
From the Training Top 125 Best Practices e-Newsletter
For Texas-based SpawGlass Holding L.P., cash prizes have proven an effective employee motivator for staying current with the company's extensive corporate knowledge base. "We call our Web-based intranet system ‘Teambase,'" says SpawGlass VP of Education and Training Jim Jones. "We use it as a central repository for all company documentation, including everything from procedure manuals and customer documents to training and presentation materials."
Yet while Teambase provides a wealth of useful resources, Jones says that getting employees into the habit of relying on Teambase was a challenge initially. "Not only did we implement Teambase to improve efficiencies, we really wanted to standardize our processes and procedures companywide," notes Jones. "But none of it was going to happen if we couldn't get people to use Teambase in a routine manner."
The solution? SpawGlass decided to show employees the money.
To better acquaint workers with Teambase, its content, and the organization of the site, the company recently initiated a monthly "What's on Teambase?" bulletin. The one-page bulletin includes a brief paragraph describing two or three Teambase resources, as well as instructions on locating each one online. Also featured in the bulletin is a 10-question quiz that can only be answered by accessing Teambase to find the answers. Employees have one week from the day of the bulletin's publication to submit completed quizzes—with 10 correct answers—to be entered into a drawing for a $50 prize. "While it may sound a little corny on the face of it, that cash prize helps to motivate participation," Jones says.
To implement a monthly bulletin that functions as a vehicle for training delivery, Jones points to the following tips:
• Keep it brief. "We limit our bulletin to one page," says Jones. "We chose this length because we felt it was reasonable. It's long enough to cover the material we wanted covered, but brief enough not to bog people down or turn them off."
• Standardize the format. "We set up the one-page bulletin in a two-column format," Jones notes. "We always reserve the left-hand column for brief descriptions of no more than two or three Teambase resources, and the right-hand column is where we always position the quiz." Jones says this standard format makes it easier for employees to quickly read and digest the bulletin's content each time it is issued.
• Provide an incentive. Jones says the cash prize drawing pays off in two ways for SpawGlass. "First, it provides a little extra incentive to get more people participating and learning about Teambase. Second, it injects some fun into the process." That fun, says Jones, translates into a workforce more positively disposed to learning the assigned material. "In my experience," says Jones, "people just don't learn as well when you try to force-feed it to them."
SpawGlass Holding L.P. is a general contractor based in Texas. In 2009, the company placed 90th on Training magazine's Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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