How Experiences Can Impact Employee Engagement with Jon Irvine, BlueBoard

In this HRchat episode, we talk about how employee recognition and incentives have evolved and ways experiential rewards can strengthen the employee experience and be a key factor in retaining and attracting employees.

Bill's guest this time is Jonathan Irvine, Head of Business Development at Blueboard, an employee recognition and incentives platform powered by hand-curated experiences. The company claims to make it easy for companies to give meaningful employee rewards, incentives, and gifts - from one-of-a-kind to once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Questions for Jon Include:

• You work with lots of HR folks at Blueboard. What do they seem to be focused on right now as we kick off a new calendar year?
• What does employee fulfillment look like? Why should companies care?
• How can People leaders and companies create this culture of employee fulfillment?
• What does a recognition program look like that will actually make a difference? 
• Why are transactional rewards like cash and gift cards no longer enough to incentivize and motivate employees?
• What can companies expect after taking steps towards building a culture of employee fulfillment through innovative recognition? 
• What are the potential benefits to the personal and professional development of employees who take part in hand-curated experiences on a regular basis? Can you share any stats around how experiential learning can make employees happier, more well-rounded, and high-performing?

More About Blueboard

Blueboard is the employee rewards and recognition platform for the modern workplace. Blueboard enables companies to reward top employees with memorable, personal and shareable experiences. Experiences as rewards not only provide a more meaningful avenue for employee recognition, but also create a lasting impact on your top engagement metrics (like increased employee motivation and retention rates, and providing a more positive company culture).

Companies including The Trade Desk, GoPro, and USI Insurance use Blueboard to reward their top performers with experiences - think local adventures like skydiving, couple's massage, learning to surf, or luxury incentive travel in lieu of cash or gift cards.

Experiences range from local adventures like learning to surf or DJ, taking guitar or an aerobatic flight lesson, to luxury incentive travel escapes.

Blueboard is currentl

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the HR chat podcast, bringing the best of the HR and talent communities to you.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Welcome to another episode of the HR chat show. I'm your host today, bill Banham. And in this HR chat episode, we're gonna talk about how employee recognition and incentives have evolved and ways experiential rewards can strengthen the employee experience and be a key factor in retaining and attracting employees. My all, some guests, this time is Jonathan Irvine, head of business development at blue board, an employee recognition and incentives platform powered by hand curated experiences. The company claims to make it easy for companies to give meaningful employee rewards, incentives, and gifts from one of a kind to once in a lifetime experiences companies, including the trade desk, GoPro and USI insurance use blue boards to reward their top performance with experiences. Think local adventures like skydiving couples, massage, learning to surf or luxury incentive travel in lieu of cash or gift cards. John, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the show today.

Speaker 3: 1:25

Well, thank you. Well, it's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So beyond my, we introduction there, John, why don't you start by telling our listeners a wee bit about yourself and telling them about the mission of blue board I'm

Speaker 3: 1:35

As you said, I'm as a head of business development of blue board. And, um, I have been in the incentive recognition and engagement space longer than I usually like to admit. And I'm passionate about the topic and blue is say we're the world's leading experiential rewards and recognition company and platform. Um, and I say world, I mean, we offer thousands of experiences across the globe. Currently. I believe we're in 72 countries and our mission literally to help people challenge their comfort zones, indulge in their passions and try something new. We really do believe that experiences can change lives for the better and can change companies. And we've seen that we see it every day. Um, our experiences build impact anticipation, deliver a measurable engagement impact, and we have the data to pack to back that up. And it's really exciting.

Speaker 2: 2:28

OK. Did you hear that listeners John claims to have the data to back that up maybe are challenging'em on that later on, we'll see with one of my ping questions, but just for now, uh, at, at, at a higher level, John, you, you work with lots of HR folks at blue board, of course, what, what do they seem to be focused on right now as, as we kick off a, a new calendar year?

Speaker 3: 2:47

OK. First and foremost, the fact that they got through another really challenging year, I mean, we're seeing burnout among our HR clients at, at a kinda troubling level. Um, other than that, as they try to fight through their own challenges, as they try to support people who are dealing with the hybrid work environment and everything else that's going on, they're focused on employee retention. I mean, they're still experiencing or feeling the effects from the great resignation, which sounded like a name for a phenomenon, but is actually a real thing. And certainly attracting the right somewhat as a result of that. Um, and then fighting low employee engagement. Um, most companies are shifting to, or about to shift to the hybrid work world. How do you drive employee fulfillment? How do you create fulfilled employees, um, with that as the umbrella? So really it's recruiting challenges, retention, challenges, employee engagement, and, and of course there's diversity, equity and inclusion, which is becoming more and more and more critical.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Okay. Thank you very much. Now then, as part of your answer there, John, you mentioned employee fulfillment. That's a good term. I like that term. Uh, what does employee fulfillment look like? And um, why should companies care?

Speaker 3: 3:57

Oh, there's lots of different definitions of employee and fulfillment fulfillment. Um, but really it's when we're working in alignment with our intrinsic motivations and we gain a sense of purpose. So we like to talk about most loved employers. Um, how do you create a most loved employer phenomenon in your own workplace? And most loved employers have fulfilled employees. So those are people who are taking satisfaction and pride with the work. That's pretty simple. Um, they're connected to their team and their workplace and they're aligned with the values of their organization. And it's, it's really critical. Um, probably today more than ever. It drives higher employee attention, retention, better quality employee engagement. Um, certainly it can enhance or be enhanced by a culture of recognition and more motivation. And it's that intrinsic motivation that comes from the sense of being fulfilled and connected. Um, and we'll talk more, I think, uh, I'll certainly wanna talk more about, um, motivation and fulfillment and sense that how can companies really manage emotion better?

Speaker 2: 5:07

How can people leaders and, and HR departments and companies create this culture of employee fulfillment?

Speaker 3: 5:14

Well, like everything we're talking about, it starts the top. Um, leadership has to see employee fulfillment as being critical to the, they have to walk the talk. Um, everything else is just a bandaid. If that's not the case, now people need to see and identify with the purpose of what they're doing. Um, I mean, at the end of the day, bill, people just wanna be good, right? And then lastly, a topic that's near and dear to our hearts by really driving a culture of genuine recognition and I recognition and foremost that's, um, transactions, but they tend to really struggle with emotion. And as we are in this hybrid workplace today, the emotional aspect of the being that is the employee is more and more and more and more, it must be embraced and it has to be cared. I was gonna say manage, but I don't mean that it sounds manipulative. It it's the opposite of manipulation. It's caring.

Speaker 2: 6:23

Okay. Let's get into some of the details now, then John, um, maybe you can take a couple of minutes here and sort of paint a picture for us. Uh, GI GI give, give us the low down in terms of what a, a recognition program could look like. That would actually make a difference.

Speaker 3: 6:40

Sure. First, lemme say that I've seen multiple examples of companies thinking that the existence of a recognition program is success now a little bit. Okay. I checked that box and nothing could be further from the truth. I've seen companies go from program to program, to program, and it's essentially different flavors of the same. It's just not effective because a there isn't the leadership buy in and B it's just a bandaid on a bad culture. You can't fix that. But beyond that answer, let's say that the company really is involved and engaged with driving a culture of recognition. Um, I'm gonna go back to my statement about transactions and their companies are great at transactions, but struggle with emotion. Um, engagement and fulfillment is an inherently emotional thing. And we as human beings are inherently emotional creatures and that's why gifts. And in many cases points, um, as a reward in a recognition program is, is generally a challenge. Cause a recognition moment should feel like your company is giving you a hug. And as soon as you introduce something monetary into a recognition moment, it becomes inherently transactional. You've mitigated any emotional impact and made it again. A that's that's actually how we came to be our founder. One of our co-founders Kevin, um, years ago, he busted his tail for months on a project. He was one of the major accounting firms. And I mean to the point that he was gaining weight and wasn't healthy, and he really, really worked his tail off and afterwards his manager came in and, and handed him a gift card and it left him so cold cause immediately it wasn't a genuine thing. It, something meaningful to him. It was a dollar amount. And immediately he's thinking all the extra worked Divi had left him so cold. He came up with the idea for blue board, all the things that the company could have done with him. He happens to love boxing and he thought he can't afford the gym membership. I wanted, my boss knows that she could have gotten me a six month gym membership for less than this gift card. It would've meant so much more. That's impactful. Another thing is that experiences are inherently emotional and shareable. I go back to emotion again, right? But let's talk about transmitting that emotion across the organization. I won't share that. I gotta check that I got a check or a$500 gift card, but I will share that I and my family swam with dolphins or that I learned to fly an airplane or that my kids and I got a telescope and learned about the night sky from an astronomer. And those were all real examples by the way of experiences that we offers of. And that's all really shareable. You see it every day. People share it on slack, on teams, on their, on Facebook, on whatever social media they're a part of. Right. And the rest of the organization sees that and picks up on it. I'm not gonna share that I got a 1200 bonus check, but I am gonna share that. I swam with dolphins with my kids. And that impacts the entire team, the entire employee base. I mean, one, one thing to think about bill is that as we're in this hybrid workplace and everybody's on zoom calls or conference or whatever, it's, we're, we're seeing each other's dogs. We're seeing the cat get up desk. We're seeing the children running around behind us and that's OK. Three years ago. It might not have been as OK as it's now, but that's OK. And it's now becoming embraced. I, I sat in a meeting the other day and a kid, a guy had his eight month old child on his lap and it wasn't just OK. It was embraced. She was the star of the meeting, right? That's a fundamental shift in how people are interacting with their coworkers and how companies are interacting with their employees and embracing that from a recognition standpoint. It's just as critical. I am now giving you time back with your family, doing something you would've never dreamed to do you and your go and take trape lessons. Cause you've always wanted to fly it on the trape or be a trape artist that is impactful recognition on a whole other level. And we see it every day. And in terms of socializing the program itself very rarely. And when you see a recognition program getting socialized across an organization, is anybody talking about the rewards? Well, when the rewards are fundamentally defining the program, that is an impactful program.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Love it. Well, a fantastic answer. There is so much in there, John. Um, but I'm gonna try and, uh, unpack it a little bit with you. So one thing that I found particularly interesting in that answer and, and I, I suspect our listeners might too is, um, you touched upon, um, how, uh, experiential rewards can, can actually be good for, for social advocacy, uh, which is the something that never occurred to me before. I think you used the example of, you know, someone's happy to, um, to post on social that they've been swimming with dolphins. Um, but they wouldn't, um, put on social that they've just received a, a, a bonus or something, um, or gift card. You absolutely. Right. So, I mean, this is a little bit conjecture, but maybe, maybe you can, um, talk in, in terms of conversations that you've had with your clients, but what, what, what kind of difference does that make in terms of attraction and, and, and retention, uh, of, of employees then particularly the attraction side. I guess if we're talking about, you know, uh, your, your, your employees are becoming advocates for, and, and they're sharing these awesome things that you're doing, uh, for them and therefore that's, that's gonna attract potential new, right.

Speaker 3: 12:43

Well, yeah. We have clients using it to do that every day. Um, it's a differentiator and that's one of most difficult. How do you become the employer of right. And everybody's got a 401k just about everybody's got healthcare. Um, so you go down to benefits while a few images of some incredible experiences and people will share images, they will share photographs and videos. So you take a few of those with permission and you put those on your recruitment website, or you share those with the potential people that you're trying to recruit. Um, now you're different. That's the rewards program on steroids. That's showing culture at a whole different level. That's just not a<inaudible> table in the coffee room, right? This is, this is different. And we're seeing that every day. We're also seeing, um, experiences used with referral programs, employee referral, um, different than a cash bonus. OK. This is unique, right? It's not that I'm gonna get 500. If Sam stays for 90 days, I'm gonna get to learn to fly an airplane. Right. That's a whole different level of reinforcement.

Speaker 2: 13:51

I'd like to learn how to fly an airplane, John. Geez.

Speaker 3: 13:55

That's yeah, I've done

Speaker 2: 13:58

That.<laugh> um, OK. Uh, another, another follow up to, to, to the, the answer where you're talking about what the, what that process could look like, um, how, how do HR departments, how do managers go about trying to understand what types of experiences their employees would, would want? I'm guessing the simple answer is they have, they have real conversations with them and try and get it, you know, their, their intrinsic motivators, but may, maybe, maybe it's more complex than that. Uh, maybe those touchpoints don't always happen. And, and instead an HR department would select based on a category of experiences that blue board offers. So talk to me a bit about that process.

Speaker 3: 14:38

It's a great question. The, the simple answer is they don't have to, right. The way it works with blue board is that the only thing the HR department decides is what they wanna spend per per in experience. And then when an employee logs onto our platform, they're taken to a collection of experiences at that price point. And it could be anywhere from 50 to, depending on where they are in the world. Cause that's the first thing they tell us is where are they? Right? And they're presented a combination of in home experiences. Thank you. COVID we now have hundreds and hundreds of in-home experiences, um, local experiences directly, you know, drivable from where they are and then experiences that are available across the globe. And of course the higher, the price point, the more travel is included and people can travel when and where they're ready. But what we find is that managers learn about their employees based upon what experiences they choose. Um, the woman I mentioned, who went, you learned the trape, her manager had no idea. She'd always wanted to try the trape. Um, I would've never known be is your manager that you'd learn to love to learn to fly. Um, but I would find out if you chose that as your experience reward and that's, so that's how it works. The employee act actually gets to choose. We have these, we have thousands of curated experiences for them to choose from. So the manager or the HR department doesn't need to choose the employee. Does the choosing

Speaker 2: 16:03

Makes sense to me, sounds like you guys have got your, your ducks in a row and, uh, focusing, just jumping and, and pick what they want. Um, okay. So what, why are transactional rewards like cash and gift cards no longer enough then to, to incentivize them and motivate employees? I mean, you gave that wonderful example, um, of, of Kevin's experience there, um, which made which, which resonated with me, but, you know, just what, what, what is that case to sort of drive that, that case home a little bit more, take a minute or two, to do that, to, to explain why the traditional, uh, forms of incentives and rewards like cash and gift cards, just, you know, they just don't cut it these days.

Speaker 3: 16:38

Well, it's a number of reasons, um, with cash, the challenge is justifi. If I give you 5,000 and say, do something special, you can't justify in most cases, not you bill, but anybody can't justify spending all of that on a wonderful reward for myself, some of it's gonna go the 401k or the, you know, the college fund or repairing the deck or the roof. Uh, I'm gonna do something responsible with it. If I give you a five experience, you have no choice, but to treat yourself and you take you and your significant other on that bucket list, trip to Iceland or whatever it might be. Right? So justifi ability, that's critical. Um, but just as important as that is the fact that we're, if we give cash or gift cards, we're monetizing, whatever behavior has been, um, exhibited. And it's it, it's an inherently unemotional thing. Unless you give somebody a life changing amount of money, it's not, it's not emotional, it's a transaction and recognition should never, ever be a transaction. It is the one time a company gets to genuinely give its employee a hug. Cash is never a hug

Speaker 2: 17:58

Unless you paid someone to come over to you and give you a hug, I suppose. But otherwise, no, you're absolutely right. Um, okay. So what, what can companies expect after taking steps towards building a culture of employee fulfillment through, through incentive recognition, then, you know, what, what, what are those, what are those KPIs, John? What, what are those key deliverables? What maybe you can talk to me a little bit about retention rate. We, we spoke about attraction quite a bit earlier on. Maybe you can talk a little bit about, uh, retention rate. Maybe you can talk about engagement, share, share, share a little bit there.

Speaker 3: 18:27

Yeah. I think it's important to state that the goals are no different than any other form of recognition, right? The end goals are higher employee retention, better quality employee engagement. Um, really having a culture of recognition, having more motivated and passionate employees there's research around discretionary effort, right? How much discretionary effort to so there's business reasons that recognition makes a ton of sense and recognition is not the sole driver of engagement far from it, but it is one of the pillars of driving engagement. So the business outcomes aren't different it's that experiences are a different and more effective way to vector into those business outcomes than a typical program. So the business outcomes are what the business outcomes are and people will talk about it correlating to stock performance or return on equity, et cetera, et cetera. Um, you know, some of those are a little bit debatable, but what is not debatable is that higher performing companies across the globe do have higher employee engagement and tend to have true cultures of recognition and experiences are a way to pivot the recognition conversation into something that is much more effective and actionable.

Speaker 2: 19:43

Okay. John, thank you very much. Uh, I would, I just wanna continue down this line of questioning just one more, one more time, if you don't mind, and then actually we're gonna be looking to wrap up. Um, and I, and that's, I just wanna challenge you a little bit really can, maybe you can share any, any statistics around how experiential learning can, can make employees happier more well rounded and performing at higher levels.

Speaker 3: 20:06

Sure. There's lots of statistics around how effective recognition makes, um, employees more likely to stay at a company and perform I, um, what I can do is share some blue, specific statistics after people go on and experience, we give them a quick little survey and the results are pretty astonishing, to be honest, unlike anything I've seen in my career, um, we ask them, do they think blue positively impacts the company culture? And that number is 95% agree with that. And this is across thousands and thousands of people, right. Um, we asked them, did blue blue experience make you feel appreciated? And it's almost percent say yes. Uh, do you believe your retain talent? That's say yes and powerful higher 95% say yes, those are some pretty solid statistics in my opinion, bill,

Speaker 2: 21:13

Not too shabby, John, not too shabby at all. Okay, sir, before we wrap up for today, um, I'm sad to say, cuz it it's gone very quickly. Um, maybe you can share with our listeners how they can connect with you. So perhaps that's through your LinkedIn, maybe you wanna share, uh, your blue board email address. Maybe you are really cool and you're on TikTok or something. Um, and uh, perhaps you can also tell them about how they can learn more about all the cool things happening over at blue board.

Speaker 3: 21:38

Sure. To get in touch with me personally, probably my personal email, which I'm Sarah, which is John J O H Irvine. I V I N E at blue do com. And if they wanna learn more, the best places are website and you can browse around on there. Lots and lots of information, click the blog, tons of, of knowledge share on the blog. And then of course the on our home top right, is a big red button that says requested demo. Happy to show anybody anytime what we're actually talking about when we're talking about experiences and what a game changer can be. Wonderful.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Well, John with no H that just leads me to say for today, sir. Uh, I had a lovely time with you. I've enjoyed this conversation. So thank you very much for joining me on this episode of the, your chat show.

Speaker 3: 22:29

Thank you very much for having me bill. It's been absolute pleasure. I Jodi as well and

Speaker 2: 22:34

Listeners as always until next time. Happy working.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Thank you for listening to the HR chat podcast brought to you by the HR Gazette.