Resource Library

The morning newspaper and a cup of steaming coffee are natural partners. When six new coffee shops opened in downtown Traverse City within twelve months, the Traverse City Record-Eagle decided to take advantage of this "morning" momentum. Working with Nouveautes USA, the paper offered gourmet coffee to new and old subscribers who signed up for twelve months of Record-Eagle home delivery using automatic bill payment. The "Whole Latte News" consumer offer targeted well-educated, business professionals with an annual household income of $50,000 or more. The choice of incentive, gourmet Gevalia® coffee (distributed exclusively by NouveautesUSA™), helped drive home the core selling point of the campaign – the price and duration of the E-Z Pay subscription. For $12.00 per month for 12 months, new customers received 12 packs of Gevalia® coffee. ... [ read more ]

You've Got the Power was the third in a series of Lowe's employee initiatives designed to build credit card application growth and promote customer loyalty. The promotion successfully combined the power of merchandise incentives and cash to motivate a diverse workforce.... [ read more ]

In spite of Mountain Dew's strong market position, Pepsi-Cola wanted to build the brand's loyalty, attract new customers, and keep the growth rate above the industry average. To achieve those goals, the company developed the "Extreme Network" promotion, which offered a beeper in exchange for 10 Mountain Dew proofs of purchase, $29.99, and $5 for shipping and handling. The numeric pagers came with six months of free service. Total value: $125. ... [ read more ]

Kicking off the new Enterprise Engagement Alliance Brand Engagement 360 Knowledge Management program with the Association of National Advertisers, this primer on Brand Engagement 360 is prepared for marketing and agency management ready to implement a strategic brand engagement process that includes its internal and other stakeholders--including employees, distribution and supply chain partners, communities, volunteers, donors etc. This article summarizes the two key phases of the process: 1) Strategic brand purpose definition and 2) Implementation. Neither require major investments in time and money and in fact are designed to save both over time while enhancing performance and stakeholder experiences through greater alignment and efficiency. These processes are based on over 40 years of academic research and processes time tested in the world of total quality management in factories around the world. ... [ read more ]

There's no reason to wait for engagement standards from ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, to profit from engagement. While ISO recently approved the creation of formal standards for engagement, the organization has already created Quality Management Principles and standards for engaging employees in quality management practices... [ read more ]

With an increasing focus on professional program design, return-on-investment management, and effective human capital management and reporting, everyone in business can benefit from the most comprehensive, authoritative knowledge management center in the field of stakeholder engagement.... [ read more ]

This "model" human capital report condenses the longer profile of the "ideal" practitioner of Stakeholder Capitalism - a fabricated organization known as IMC, an integrated communications company. See ESM: -"The Perfect Company: Anatomy of an Ideal Practitioner of Stakeholder Capitalism." This model was created to help organizations of all sizes visualize the format and contents of a human capital report based on ISO 30414 Human Capital reporting standards for employees and ISO 10018 People Engagement standards for customers, channel and supply chain partners, and communities. ... [ read more ]

The concept of Stakeholder Capitalism has existed for decades but there remains confusion about the definition that is either a natural phenomenon with the emergence of any new concept or in some cases an effort to poke holes in the concept by deliberately mis-defining it. ... [ read more ]

A fundamental premise of Stakeholder Capitalism and Human Capital Management and measurement is that organizations with higher levels of people engagement do better. HCMoneyBall, which created the SaaS platform known as HCMetrix for human capital analytics and benchmarking, provides a free calculator enabling any organization to track its Human Capital ROI (HCROI) and the potential impact on financial performance.... [ read more ]

Employee surveys have the potential to help companies understand the relationship between human capital and the bottom line. Yet, if not managed carefully, surveys may fail to realize their potential as strategic organizational tools. Why? Because many organizations are successful in designing reasonable questionnaires, generating high participation rates and gathering a lot of good information. But where survey processes most commonly break down is in the “hand off” between a survey team, perhaps working with the assistance of an outside consultant, and line managers throughout the organization.... [ read more ]

This is a two-part interview with Michael Mazer, President, Mazer Telecom Advisors LLC, a Denver-based mergers and acquisition firm entering the engagement field... [ read more ]

There’s a spirit of energy at Arby's, where new CEO Paul Brown and his team are bringing innovation to products and services, as well as employee and franchisee relations. Coming off 18 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, Arby's is considered a star in the industry, rivaling (and even outpacing) the success of Chipotle. ... [ read more ]

“Research Has Clearly and Consistently Proved the Direct Link Between Employee Engagement, Customer Satisfaction and Revenue Growth.” ~ Harvard Business Review, 2000 If there ever was a true debate around the linkage between employee engagement and organizational success, that debate has long since ceased.... [ read more ]

Even top corporate executives who are aware of engagement practices aren’t always aware of the financial return they can deliver. The Engaged Company Stock Index shows that companies with high levels of employee, customer and community engagement financially outperform ... [ read more ]

‘Repeat business or behavior can be bribed. Loyalty has to be earned’ - Janet Robinson While Ms. Robinson may have been referring to brand loyalty or product loyalty as opposed to customer loyalty programs in the above quote, her words illustrate a very important concept. Incentive programs don’t start with built-in loyalty and customer buy-in. Without question, incentive programs need to generate loyalty – not only from senior management, but also from the customers they’re trying to entice. An effective program will excel for both management and customers when it is built with a foundation that provides a clear vision for success. In fact, many established programs have been assembled using five critical building blocks that inspire brand loyalty among customers. ... [ read more ]

There’s a reason for the old adage: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Anyone who has ever tried to run a business knows that’s true. But it is also true that you can’t manage what you measure only once each year. When it comes to employee and customer engagement, most of us collect information through annual surveys, analyze the results, share them in a high-level report and perhaps devote part of an executive meeting to discuss the implications. Like performance reviews, this is usually done once a year – if at all. ... [ read more ]

The 10018 Guidelines on People Involvement and Competence were created by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, Quality management and quality assurance, Subcommittee SC 3, Supporting technologies. These standards are based on ... [ read more ]

Social media, blogs, and e-newsletter technology enable almost any organization to become its own media company to generate leads, enhance thought leadership, build relationships and enhance sales ratios. Very few in business implement strategic integrated communications programs, often because they lack the people with the journalistic and other content creation skills needed for effective content marketing or they fail to integrate the communications programs into their sales and support process. ... [ read more ]

Gamification form Badgeville has released the results of an independent survey of over 500 business workers, ranging from entry-level employees to C-level executives, looking at the success of gamification across U.S. organizations. The results: 78% of workers are utilizing games-based motivation at work and nearly all (91%) say these systems improve... [ read more ]

Conceived in the 1990s, the concept of Total Rewards represented a revolution in thinking related to compensation that to this day has not been fulfilled at many organizations, that is: a strategic, holistic approach to compensation that considers every aspect of the employee experience and his or her capabilities and potential contributions to the organization. ... [ read more ]

In this excerpt from his new book, ‘Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior,’ PossibleNOW VP Eric Holtzclaw explains how techniques such as laddering, lensing and latticing can radically and permanently change the way you view your products, services, customers and marketing message ... [ read more ]

In the mining industry, the average cost of a Loss Time Accident (LTA) is approximately $50,000. To raise awareness of good safety practices on and off the job, Massey worked with Artistic Promotions to develop an incentive program that would motivate their predominately male work force of coal miners, supervisors, and mine safety directors to improve individual, team, and mine safety performance. Football was a theme that had broad appeal for this target audience and with the goal of improving team performance, it was logical to create the “Raymond Safety Bowl”. The Bowl was named after a former employee, Raymond Bradbury, who was legendary for his concern for safe work habits. ... [ read more ]

American Express Incentive Services (AEIS) needed a short, catchy, and memorable way to link recognition with high performance and to convey the value that it places on its people. The Max! employee recognition program was developed to create and enhance a high performance culture, and was based on the premise that the Max!-imum performance of AEIS employees is worthy of Max!–imum recognition. The Max! Employee Reward & Recognition Program is personified via Max!, a graphic character who embodies the spirit of a champion. The custom-designed, blue-skinned superhero dons a red cape and tie and carries a briefcase in his quest for superior performance. He's helped along the way by AEIS peers, supervisors, and officers who know the value of recognizing and rewarding achievement. ... [ read more ]

ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) is the world’s largest association dedicated to workplace learning and performance professionals. ASTD’s members come from more than 100 countries and connect locally in almost 136 U.S. chapters and 26 Global Networks. Members work in thousands of organizations of all sizes, in government, as independent consultants, and suppliers.... [ read more ]

Each employee received a T-shirt imprinted with the company's core values and philosophies, an apple stress ball, and a behavior profile describing the "Successful to the Core" ideals. Employees were then asked to nominate fellow workers who exhibited these core values. The names were placed in an apple suggestion box. Nominees received wooden apples, and their pictures were displayed on a bulletin board labeled "Apple of Our Eye." Every quarter, one nominated employee was presented with an acrylic apple by the division head. ... [ read more ]