The #1 reason employee engagement programs succeed

One of the leading independent life insurance providers recently launched its employee engagement program. Knowing the first six weeks after launch is critical to driving the program’s long-term success, BI WORLDWIDE measured key activities against our industry benchmarks… and we were blown away! The organization was well above the benchmarks in almost every engagement category.

How did they do it?

There are a several key components to designing an employee engagement program. The program rules need to match the corporate culture and align with its values. They need to provide employees with opportunities to be recognized for frequent behaviors, short-term accomplishments and meaningful results. And, they need to stay in line with budget. Most leadership teams are ready and willing to put in the time to make sure their program design is just right.

However, even with great program design and support from leadership, many engagement programs fall flat. If that happens, it takes much longer to drive uptake with associates, and they’ve lost valuable time to start driving ROI.

It’s all about communication.

Our life insurance client adopted several of our best practices from other successful employee programs. In addition to focusing on the recognition promotions, our client built a team to specifically work out launch communications and gave them a small budget to use. Even more importantly, they began promoting the program several weeks before it was set to launch. Utilizing a mix of tactics, such as printed cards, magnets, intranet announcements, live training and leadership meetings, the percent of people who enrolled in the program in the first week exceeded the typical one-month benchmark.

Even the most engaging program will fail if no one knows about it.

As the launch period went on, the engagement numbers kept increasing. That’s because our client didn’t stop communicating once the program was live. Instead, they developed special launch promotions that lasted throughout the first six weeks – and these promotions became the basis for continued communication: winner announcements, newsletters, progress updates and rewards.

Several months later, the program continues to maintain its engagement level. The launch campaign created the perfect cycle: communication, which drives activity, which drives communication… and generating the momentum that now allows the program drive behavior change.

To know more about how we can help find the best strategy and methodology for developing employee engagement programs we invite you to contact us by phone + at +1 954.800.0490 or via email latam@biworldwide.com

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