At RedBalloon we talk about recognition all the time, not only what we do at work, but what we are learning from our clients. Matt the RedBalloon head of corporate has put 52 recognition ideas into a handy little business card size piece. It is really quite fun – filled with great suggestions of how easy it is to make people feel great at work. 
I’m in Auckland visiting clients today with our Kiwi Manager, Laurel, and I met one of the finalists in the Unlimited / JRA Best places to work awards for 2009, Kerry from PAKnSAVE Henderson. (PAKnSAVE is a discount supermarket franchise group – Henderson is the suburb) – with more than 150 staff he was pretty pleased to be named as a finalist; up there with the big global brands, that you’d expect to see at these awards.
We asked him what’s the key… he outlined that he was making a considerable investment in training, that people liked to hang out together, and they had done a fair bit of work on their ‘values’, that is, what they stand for as a business in the community. He also talked about what he does to recognize exemplary contribution from his team.
Laurel spoke of some of the fun things that Matt had put in the 52 ideas piece - #3 'have the boss give up his car space'. Kerry chuckled and said one of his fellow managers had done that and even extended to recognition to include not just the car space for the week, but the bosses BMW 740 to go with it.
The winner was a storeman, who starts work every morning at 4.am…. So as the storeman was proudly driving to work one day in the BMW (dressed in his work attire of stubbies and singlet, ‘looking pretty rough’) the police pulled him over asking to explain who owned the car. The storeman announced it was his bosses and he had been given the use of it for a week because he was the employee of the month… the Police didn’t believe him. So the police made the appropriate calls (getting the boss out of bed) to verify that he was actually telling the truth and the car was not stolen…
I don’t know what the storeman thought of being pulled over, but he sure has told everyone about it… the experience and the story created, means this story has become part of the ‘folk law’ in that business. And that business is now ‘known’ as one that recognizes it’s people.
I was delighted to receive this photo from a client...It is from one of their 28 launch events as they rolled out the RedBalloon Program at each of their branch locations. When I opened it...I wondered who the people were... where do they live? I wonder what they have always wanted to experience.
Teaching an Old Dog new tricks.
This week I was presenting at the Marcus Evans HR Summit on the Gold Coast – and I shared some of what I believe has created an engaged team at RedBalloon. I was very quick to let the audience know that I am not an HR professional, but a marketer passionate about a brand… who knows that people and relationships make a brand. So engagement is an obvious priority for me.
I also said that ‘we tried a lot of stuff at RedBalloon, we got lot’s wrong, but other things worked’ so really what I was sharing was the theory of what we did, after we did it. We did not start with a white board and design and engagement program, it just evolved over time, knowing that if we always think of employees as customers something will happen.
I got a great question after my presentation.. ‘well that is alright for you – with your 50+ employees but what about massive organizations?’ Of course I mentioned the Zappo’s, Apple and Google examples of strong vision and leadership. The question remains where are the case in an Australian large businesses? (Dimension Data & Express Data were fellow Hewitt Best Employers for 2009.)
The other observation is that we built RedBalloon from the ground up always believing in our people – so it is just 'the way we do things around here', we didn’t try to change. We are also a professional, mostly young, un-unionised workforce.
Dexter 'old dog' on duty at RedBalloon - Mic's mate
So let me digress for a moment. At Redballoon we have used TNT as our courier company for many years, every day at the same time, the same courier Mic, cheerfully arrives at our office and picks up the parcels, having a little hello to everyone, patting Dexter the dog. And off he goes with a skip in his step. Quite the jolly fellow. I have never really thought about this, but he represents TNT so well. I just thought we had a ‘good one.’ And he has been with us for years.
So back to the Marcus Evans event. The speaker after me was Susan Davies, Director – HR, Administration & Customer Service, TNT Express. Unlike all the other presentation’s, which are full of power point and lots of theory, Susan let her people tell the story of engagement. She had taken video of people out in the field, in the depots, and asked them about what engagement meant to them.
This is a very impressive story, because when she arrived to the role, the company had just announced a loss of $79million. She (and the other leaders) believed that only through employees could they turn this number around. She said 'we simply got out of our offices, went to the depots around the country and got to know our people. We listened to what was important to them… we learned that instead of providing them with fruit boxes as part of a well being program, what they really wanted was pies and coke. It was all about being in their world.'
TNT employs 1000s of people in Australia and has a 87% employee engagement score. Not only that, in just one year they turned the business around to a $10million profit. She said ‘We are all in this together.’ Proving that employee engagement is a profitable pursuit.
The TNT story is not an internet start up on a crusade or an IT business, it is an old established business, with a ‘blue collar’ unionised workforce, which reinforces the idea that ‘as the leadership team goes – so goes the rest of the organization.’
Congratulations to Susan and her team… it was refreshing and a delight to hear the story. And I know from first hand experience – knowing Mic – that it was absolutely authentic.