The Great Resignation: What Is Driving It?

January 31, 2022

I Quit. That’s what millions of Americans have said since the beginning of the pandemic but what is driving The Great Resignation?

The term was coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, who predicted the mass exodus in May 2021.Others have used “The Great Reset” or “The Great Reimagination” to describe this pattern in the workforce. The key takeaway is that employees are examining the way that they’re living and working and making the changes that best suit them.

Companies are experiencing turnover and struggling to find workers. This time period is perfect for businesses to reevaluate their position on remote working, as well as their compensation, retention and incentive programs.

Read the full article below for more information:The Great Resignation

Do Point Programs Motivate?

The IRF published The Psychology of Points after conducting extensive research into the effectiveness of point programs. I’ve attached the full report at the bottom of this blog.

The key takeaways are:

• Higher intrinsic motivation

• Higher organizational identification

• Higher employee engagement

• Greater satisfaction with their rewards and recognition

• Greater preference for working for an organization with a points reward program

From our literature review and expert interviews, we found that points rewards participants:

• Care more about the recognition, appreciation, and belonging associated with receiving points rewards than what the what the points are redeemed for

• Find points themselves memorable (e.g., “points feel like gifts”)

• May spend or save their points; use them for big or small dollar items, but receiving the points themselves delivers part of the reward (and the positive effects that follow)

IRF Psychology of Points

Employee Engagement Essentials: It Starts at The Top

April 1, 2021

 The global pandemic has changed the way that many corporations operate, with a large percentage of employees working remotely, which has resulted in employee engagement falling to record lows.

 Since the statistics show that businesses with a high level of employee engagement consistently outperform competitors, it is vital to develop an engagement strategy that is supported throughout the organization with the CEO and Executive Leadership driving the initiative.

 The Profit and ROI of a highly engaged workforce, leverages your enterprise brand and also raises the bar on increased sales, productivity, innovation, quality and safety. A strategy to connect the dots in a virtual world have never been more critical.

 To learn more and to help understand how this can be achieved, the link below is an EEA Zoom show on “Engagement Essentials” with the key points being:

• The key challenge with employee engagement assessment surveys is that there is rarely accountability for action.

• Employee engagement should be focused on the goals of the organization, and not engagement as an end.

• Organizational purpose and performance goals should drive engagement design, not satisfaction surveys.

• Today’s managers at all levels must not only have the soft skills to coach, support, and identify opportunities and challenges, but understand the business of people: how the various engagement tactics work together.

• CEOs and managers at all levels need to have their incentives aligned with effective people management.

• When selecting an engagement strategy or tactic, ask how it fits into the overall plan, aligns with other tactics, and can measured.

This virtual round table features  Michael Anderson, Partner at Anderson Global Talent LLC. , Rick Garlick, Vice President MAGID and Research Advisor for Incentive Research Foundation, and Kevin Sheridan, author of multiple books on employee engagement, and developer of the PEER assessment product.

What Top Performing Companies Do Differently in Incentives and Rewards

The results of the 2020 Incentive Research Foundation’s study on Top Performers are in and the findings are interesting.

A key takeaway is: “An area where Top Performers seem to really ‘get it’ is a greater recognition that ‘one size does not fit all’ when it comes to both non-cash incentives and incentive trips. While Comparators place the greatest emphasis on the ‘value of the reward,’ value is in the eye of the beholder. By focusing on ‘flexibility’ of the incentive experience, Top Performers recognize the value in personalization. It is not just about what something costs, or its equivalent cash value, but rather the personal significance of the reward to the individual.”

This infographic highlights some of the major points.