Zurich, Switzerland | 6th December 2017
By Max Hunter, Chief Joy Officer at Loylogic
Employee loyalty. What does that even mean? I’ve given my all to companies before but they seemed to show no loyalty to me. The only way the company tried to engage employees was through a ‘carrot and stick’ bonus scheme and a Christmas party. Plus I got looked over for ‘promised’ promotion, then uninvited from the Christmas party once I handed in my notice after 5 years dedicated, successful service. When the squeeze is on, the only thing that gets squeezed is the people.
“When the squeeze is on, the only thing that gets squeezed is the people”
I accepted the role as Chief Joy Officer at Loylogic because the CEO was serious about the people’s experience. So serious as to put me on the Executive Management Team. To help make it a place where people felt they belong, where they felt that the company cared about their growth and their contribution to the whole. Where they could be trusted to co-create their shared experience of working at Loylogic.
Why should companies put the effort into people feeling engaged? People are being paid to do a job after all. Well, if all your business needs is people ‘just doing their job’, feel free to ignore all of this. But if you want people who are motivated, looking left and right for how to make the company excellent, being creative and innovative beyond their Key Performance Indicators, then you need engagement. You need loyalty.
“You want people who are looking how to make the company excellent, being creative and innovative”
Reflect for a moment on how much resource and effort you put into understanding your customers, their needs and their impact on your business. Then think what difference to your company’s future a hundred engaged employees could make compared to a hundred engaged customers. It’s got to be worth it.
“Our internal workplace App has over 90% employee engagement after 18 months”
What have we done to drive engagement? So far it’s fundamentally about increasing the sense of belonging, connection and growth. We’ve helped people to connect across offices and departments with our internal workplace App, which has over 90% employee engagement after 18 months. The App is like our own Facebook, encouraging sharing, recognition & fun to inform and engage. We started with fun initiatives (like Best Team Selfie, see photo) and then trusted people to fill the space after that. It’s now our key notice board for company information (amongst other things) and everyone engages.
We’ve focused on the real company values that make up our DNA with our company-wide Quarterly Values Awards. We’ve implemented a gratitude and recognition program where we’ve used our flagship loyalty reward solution, Choice ®, to reward employees for demonstrating our values. We’ve focused on improving the manager/ employee relationship by changing the performance appraisal to be more about growth than ratings. We’ve even changed our all-company monthly meeting where everyone contributes and everyone looks forward to it. And we’ve had a lot of fun doing all of it too.
“We’ve used our flagship loyalty reward solution, Choice ®, to reward employees for demonstrating our values”
We’ve also changed the language we use to embed the culture shift. Are they human resources? No, so the HR team has been renamed as the ‘People Experience’ department. Our employees are called ‘pilots’ (of their own growth), so what about their managers? Co-pilots.
Are we perfect? Of course not. The journey to ‘perfect place to work’ is a big one and the vision, as with most visions, will take a long time to be reached. But we’ve come a long way already and I’m so proud of how the people at Loylogic have taken to the journey.
Now how are you going to take the first big step on the journey to engaged, loyal employees?
