All Star - Blog listing page

    All Star Partners with Orrefors Kosta Boda: Clearly a Great Match

    Posted by heidi on 10.08.2013

    STURBRIDGE OFFICE PARK, FISKDALE, MA –  All Star Incentive Marketing dedicated to helping companies recognize and reward people behind their success has partnered with Orrefors Kosta Boda, one of the world’s leading brands of glassware and art glass.

    Read More

    Topics: News, employee engagement, Incentive Program, Incentive's

    Recognition Of Workers Must Be Genuine

    Posted by Brian Galonek on 09.30.2013

    I define “The Four Pillars of Safety” as engagement, recognition, communications and measurement. This article will focus on employee recognition, which I view as the energy that is created throughout an organization when people are given credit for their accomplishments and shown gratitude for their efforts. (Editor’s Note: To read this author’s article about the first pillar of safety, employee engagement, see “The ‘heavy lifting’ of safety” in ISHN’s June issue, pp.74-75.)

    imagesCraving praise

    When people are surveyed to find out why they left a job, it is interesting that time and time again “lack of recognition” and “compensation” always rank as the top two reasons. Regardless of economic conditions and other factors, these two heavyweights of job turnover rank at the top of the list. Any reason could compete with compensation as the top motivator of job change; however, this is what the data show.

    What this tells us is that people have a basic, fundamental need to know that their efforts are not going unnoticed. And that this need is powerful enough to affect how they work (including how safe they work) and to motivate them in either the right or wrong direction. We see it all the time in our own lives, but may not realize that many of the same things that drive our behaviors are at play in our workplace as well.

    Those of us who ever tried to lose weight know how motivational it can be when people start to notice your efforts and make comments to you about how you look (recognizing your accomplishments). I based my most successful weight loss effort not on what the bathroom scale displayed but on how many compliments I received from family, friends and co-workers. My goal was to get 10 unsolicited positive comments about my appearance, and I found it to be far more motivating than hoping for a lower number on the scale.

    Along those same lines, I still have trophies that I received from playing sports as a child. I still have positive uplifting letters that I received from family members after graduating from high school and college.

    And I have kept just about every plaque, certificate, email, etc. that I and my company have received from customers, employees and suppliers that recognizes our strong efforts.

    Why? Why does the impact of positive praise last so long?

    It is a validation of our efforts, a sign of our success, and it gives meaning to all that we do. In a workplace environment, it is the energy that flows and that pushes workers and companies to new heights.

    Like every other business tactic there are better and worse ways to deploy a recognition strategy. For the purposes of motivating safer behavior, consider the following:

    TIMELY: This is the most crucial factor because there is a half-life (deterioration over time) for recognition that is powerful, and the more time that goes by between the actions of an employee and the recognition of those actions, the less effective recognition will be. “You did a great job last year on that project…” is far less impactful than “You did a great job yesterday on that project…” While a slow response diminishes effectiveness, missing an opportunity to recognize someone altogether can be downright devastating. How would you feel if you just reached ten years on the job with a perfect safety record and no one noticed?

    FACE-TO-FACE: With the exception of long-haul trucking and a few other similar industries, it is relatively easy for managers to get in front of the workers they wish to recognize, and it is a missed opportunity to not do so.

    Posting a “nice job” on some sort of physical or digital bulletin board (if not accompanied by a faceto- face meeting as well) is a relatively hollow way of recognizing someone’s efforts.

    Dropping a note on someone’s desk, paycheck stuffers, emails and the like are all better than nothing, but not nearly as powerful as in-person recognition, where the recipient can read facial expressions and body language to truly understand the impact of their efforts.

    REWARDING: While not all recognition events should be attached to a reward, many, if not most should. Like it or not, human beings are motivated by rewards and adding a “token” to your expression of appreciation oftentimes has a multiplier effect on the power of the moment.

    The average American household participates in 18 customer loyalty programs (grocery stores, gas stations, credit cards, airline miles, etc.) and the companies that offer such programs do so because they motivate behavior. To a certain extent that same dynamic is at play with workers, and rewarding at appropriate levels is sure to add more buzz and power to your recognition program.

    TANGIBLE: Whenever possible, there should be some tangible delivery vehicle for the recognition, regardless of whether or not there is a reward attached to it.

    Football players are applauded for making a good hit and oftentimes rewarded with a sticker that they put on their helmet as a visible/tangible display of their accomplishment.

    Being handed a letter from the boss stating that your safety suggestion was the best one submitted and that it will be implemented is far better than simply being told you made a good suggestion. The tangible element of that piece of paper, or that certificate, or that actual award (TV, jacket, fishing pole) adds great emphasis to the recognition event.

    PUBLIC: More often than not workers will find a recognition event to be more powerful when it occurs in front of their co-workers. (There are some exceptions to this rule, and managers should be careful to know their workers before committing to a public event.)

    Being recognized in front of one’s peers helps legitimize the accomplishment for those receiving the recognition. It allows them to climb higher on the needs pyramid (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) to reach the self-esteem level, which is characterized as a point in a person’s development in which they desire recognition and respect. Reaching this level on Maslow’s chart allows a worker to bask in the glow of their accomplishments without the need for selfpromotion.

    GENUINE: Finally, recognition must be authentic. It should not be perceived as a manager simply doing their duty. If the recognition seems hollow to the recipient, then it can have no positive effect at all, and may even have a negative impact in some circumstances.

    Managers need to be sincere because even though workers do want to be recognized, they don’t want to be pandered to, and they will not respond well to false praise. This can be the most difficult area for some companies, because it is reflects on the personalities of those in charge of engagement and recognition. Affecting change on those personalities can be a challenging task.

    An employee who receives timely, public recognition of their accomplishments while being rewarded with a tangible token of appreciation -- and occasionally with tangible awards -- will crave more of the same, and will act accordingly to earn additional respect and recognition of their efforts. This is why recognition is one of “The Four Pillars of Safety” and why it is so crucial to creating a great safety culture.

    Brian Galonek is president of All Star Incentive Marketing and an ASSE member. He is one of only 35 Certified Professionals of Incentive Marketing, and the former president of the Incentive Technology Council. All Star Incentive Marketing is a 40+ year old company, one of the nation’s top suppliers of safety recognition and rewards programs, and a past winner of the IMA ”Circle of Excellence” award for best safety incentive program.

    Read More

    Topics: Employee Recognition, Blog, employee engagement, Incentive Programs

    Increasing Employee Participation in Corporate Wellness Programs

    Posted by heidi on 09.26.2013

    employee_wellness

    Read More

    Topics: Employee Wellness Program, Blog, Incentive's

    Tips on motivating employees in a small business

    Posted by heidi on 09.24.2013

    Read More

    Topics: Employee Motivation, Blog, Motivating Employees

    Loyalty: Not Just for Royalty

    Posted by Gary Galonek on 09.23.2013

    Both smiling

    Read More

    Topics: Blog, Loyalty Incentive Programs

    How companies reward their most loyal employees

    Posted by heidi on 09.13.2013

    By Jonnelle Marte

    After working 25 years for the same company, many employees are faced with a difficult choice: a juicer or a cotton candy maker. Such are tokens of loyalty many firms offer their longest-serving employees.

    At a time when workers change jobs as often as they change light bulbs, and employers are searching for new and better ways to retain their best workers, some consultants marvel at the persistence of a seemingly ancient initiative: tenure reward programs. Employers spend about $46 billion a year, or roughly 1% of payroll on various employee-recognition programs, according to the Incentive Marketing Association, a trade group for firms that help build incentive programs. A 2012 report from Bersin & Associates found that the bulk of those funds, or 87%, are spent on programs that reward employee tenure.

    Most of the time, employees are given the chance to choose from a catalog of gifts when they reach significant anniversaries with their company—say, a knife set for reaching the five-year mark, or a 48-bottle wine cooler on their 25th anniversary. Acknowledging that a person’s fifth year anniversary at one company could be their 20th year working overall, some firms are adding a bigger range of gifts. Electronics and home appliances are popular choices but not all gifts are quite so practical. “An item that might raise an eyebrow for one person - such as an adjustable slimming belt - could be seen as the perfect reward for someone with a doughnut addiction,” says Susan Adams, the director of engagement at Dittman Incentive Marketing, a firm that helps employers develop employee-award programs. “There is something to suit everyone’s taste.”

    Many employers outsource the process to a third-party company that make it possible for workers to order their gifts online. Often, employees sifting through the merchandise won’t see a dollar value attached to each item, but companies commonly budget to spend $25 for each year of service, says Jeffrey Fina, chief business development officer for Michael C. Fina, a leading provider of employee recognition programs. So someone celebrating five years at the firm could expect to get a gift worth roughly $125, he says.


    wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock.com

    These programs are ineffective, some experts say, partly because many employees aren’t even aware the programs exist. The programs may be doing little to encourage people to worker harder or to stick with the company longer. Indeed, while nearly 75% of companies said they have a recognition program, only 58% of employees knew about them, according to the Bersin report. “Doing this type of program doesn’t result in any significant benefit for the company,” says Stacia Sherman Garr, a lead analyst for Bersin.

    Given that workers typically change employers every 4.6 years, according the U.S. Department of Labor, few are likely to stick around for the gift of a blender or autographed baseball. For employees ages 65 and up, median tenure at a company was 10.3 years in 2012, three times the tenure for workers ages 25 to 34.

    And even if a person wanted to stay with their employer for 20 or 30 years, they might find their ambitions of loyalty outlast their company’s fortunes. The average company stays in the S&P 500 stock index for 15 years, down from about 67 years in the 1920s, says Richard Foster, a lecturer with the Yale School of Management and former senior partner at McKinsey & Co. Those exits from the S&P are often more due to companies being acquired or spun off than they are to companies shutting down, says Foster, but such organizational shifts are often accompanied by changes in branding, structure and focus. “Anybody who thinks they’re going to stay with a company 30 or 40 years better go back and change their assumptions,” says Foster. “These days, workers should expect to have to change jobs four or five different times.”

    Still, the gifted coffee makers and bicycles are unlikely to go away anytime soon. For starters, even if it isn’t clear that the programs do anything to boost engagement or performance, not having them could hurt a company’s retention and recruitment efforts, experts say. “It’s very emotional to the employee,” says Fina. “It’s like their birthday, and if you miss it, they get pretty upset.” Some companies are responding to shorter tenures by offering rewards earlier and introducing a greater range of gifts, he adds.

    And the programs, when paired with other measures, can help boost morale and performance, he says. Some companies find the gifts can have more of an impact when they are paired with regular employee feedback, when they’re easy to redeem, and when a company sets clear criteria on what workers must to do to earn the rewards, says Garr. For instance, employees might get gifts for helping the company meet organizational goals, like boosting revenue, or for participating in special projects outside of their main responsibilities. Companies that had those additional elements had 31% lower voluntary turnover than companies with ineffective programs, according to the Bersin report.

    The tax man also has a hand in the current reward programs. Unlike with cash awards or gift cards, when companies give tangible gifts to reward performance or longevity, employees can generally receive them tax-free. Length-of-service awards can generally be given only every five years. And there’s a reason the gifts—even for 50-year veterans—can be only so extravagant: The total value of gifts workers can receive tax-free each year, for performance or longevity, is capped at $1,600. (Anything above that must be reported as income.)

    Another factor is cost. Some companies feel tangible gifts can have a bigger emotional impact than a gift card, and may feel like they have to spend more when they’re giving cash in order for it to have the same effect, says Adams. Indeed, 54% of companies surveyed by the Incentive Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that studies the use of incentives, said they gave employees merchandise as part of their recognition programs. Thirty percent said they gave workers cash.

    Article posted on www.marketwatch.com

    Read More

    Topics: Blog, Employee Incentive Program, Increase Performance, Reward Employees

    All Star is Awarded New Product of the Year by OH&S

    Posted by heidi on 08.28.2013

    OH&S Salutes 24 Winners in 2013 New Product of the Year Contest

    OHS_NewProductAward

    Read More

    Topics: Award, Blog, Incentive Solution, Safety Incentives

    All Star is awarded the Circle of Excellence

    Posted by heidi on 07.30.2013

    Circle of Excellence

    Read More

    Topics: Blog

    Face-to-face connections lead to employee engagement

    Posted by Brian Galonek on 06.21.2013

    By Brian Galonek

    I define the “Four Pillars of Safety” as engagement, recognition, communications and measurement.

    How important is engagement?

    If you were to ask c-suite executives to identify pillars of safety, they would probably name training, risk management, PPE, monitoring, root cause analysis, culture, etc.

    While these all relate to safety, they should largely be considered safety tactics or measurement tools and not the support structures that truly promote a safe workplace. All these things roll up into one or more of the four pillars listed above.

    A safety harness, after all, is useless, or even harmful, if not worn properly. And the training necessary for proper usage is of little value if not administered properly. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but training a group of disengaged workers is a bit like herding cats (cats that may be on their phones checking their fantasy baseball team’s stats or thinking about what to have for lunch instead of really absorbing the training).

    Safety professionals know all too well how difficult it can be to get the mind share necessary to have the wide variety of safety-related messages heard and even more difficult to get their workers to internalize them. They have come to realize, even if their bosses have not, that the best tools, tactics and data will not move the safety needle if they don’t have engaged workers.

    Engagement is defined as “an emotional involvement or commitment,” and it is a fundamental need of any organization. It is the connection point between employees and the people they interact with in their daily work. Next time your boss wants to know what you plan to do to improve your incident rate, you will do well to point in its direction.

    A lack of commitment

    There is a growing field of research that looks at employee engagement and related performance issues both in the academic and business worlds, and the data is mounting. According to a study conducted by Human Capital Institute, only 11 percent of today’s workforce demonstrates a very strong commitment to their organization. In a webinar that I delivered last year for ISHN entitled “Safety Soup,” I asked the attendees what they thought the percentage was in their organizations, and the most popular answer was 50-74 percent. The nexus between perception and reality is all telling on this issue.

    One of the main reasons for this lack of commitment in my opinion is the poor connection not just between any given employee and their immediate supervisor but between an employee and the myriad of other people in the organization that they interact with (or that they could interact with under different circumstances).

    Creating a more engaging environment, i.e. making or improving the connections, is a necessary first step in improving organizational safety.

    Two of the other safety pillars — recognition and communications — contribute heavily to successful employee engagement, but much like training they are not engagement itself. A robust employee communications plan will again fall on deaf ears and recognition will seem hollow if proper connections have not been established. This is the “heavy lifting” with the big pay-off for those who take the time to truly consider how to accomplish the goal of creating a more engaging atmosphere in the workplace.

    Safety managers take the lead

    Safety managers may wonder why this responsibility falls on them. Engagement is the responsibility of the managers and the people with the most direct contact to the employees. For a safety sensitive workforce, this is often the safety manager.

    Once a safety manager comes to grips with this need, they should ask themselves, “What can I do to get everyone in my sphere of influence to connect better?” Write down every idea that pops into your head no matter how outrageous or unattainable it may seem and don’t dismiss any idea in the early stages. Ask other key managers and employees to do the same; white board every idea articulated and then consider each one individually in a group discussion. There is no way for me to predict what you might come up with because each environment is so different. However, below is a list of some things I have heard from other companies that may help you visualize the results you can expect:

    • Create a wellness program – Get healthy together with weight loss and exercise competitions. Hire a permanent trainer, form teams and give awards to the best performers.
    • Trading places – Use job shadowing, allow meeting crashers, and/or ask managers to work an occasional shift in different departments.
    • Friendly competitions – Create more ways to compete as individuals and teams on internal objectives like safety or external things like a bowling league.
    • Throw more parties – Have breakfast gatherings or cookouts with families. Dole out recognition of accomplishment in front of families and coworkers.
    • Create a rewards system – Publicly recognize and reward our best workers for their efforts and accomplishments. Create a centralized program site where people can redeem for tangible awards.
    • Ask the employees – Broaden the request and get more employee feedback about how they like to be engaged.
    • Message boards – Put up message boards around the company and draw attention to employee accomplishments both at work and at home.
    • Hire an engagement officer – Find and hire a person to promote engagement 24/7/365.
    • Study the good ones – Identify our most engaging workers and study what they do.
    • Break some rules – Identify rules that are counterproductive and show workers that change can be a good thing.
    • Charitable contribution – Identify five charities that we can support as a group and give workers paid time to take part in charitable activities.
    • Group adventures – Go zip lining, whitewater rafting or create a paint ball league.

    One thing that can be counted on no matter what the suggestions: the more face-to-face meaningful interactions that take place, the better engaged your workforce will become. Whether you resolve to switch to in-person training (instead of electronic) or to create a bowling league, person-to-person interactions are a fundamental piece of the puzzle — especially as the world grows increasingly more distracted.

    http://www.ishn.com/articles/96091-face-to-face-connections-lead-to-employee-engagement

    Read More

    Topics: Blog, employee engagement, recognition, safety, Safety Incentives

    Everyone is a specialist.

    Posted by allison on 05.22.2013

    The 12 Trends That Will Rule Products In 2013

    Think 2013 will spell the end of good old analog and human interaction? Eh, not so fast according to a group of agency experts.

    Read More

    Topics: Blog

    Subscribe Here!

    Recent Posts

    Posts by Tag

    See all