Case Study | Executing and Measuring Internal Campaigns | Rewards & Recognition

More Than Tchotchkes: Emotionally Connecting With Your Employees

The Challenges

The United Services Organization (USO) needed better tools to recognize their 600 employees stationed across the globe, but leadership wisely wanted this to mean more to employees than just “free stuff” (aka Tchotchkes) Working with IT, HR and senior leaders, I was part of the team that vetted the vendor and I led all efforts to communicate the launch. But how could we grab our people’s attention and get them to value this program beyond the platform?

A crucial piece of communicating with your employees is to capture, keep and recreate the emotion that first attracted them to your organization, that longing to belong we felt when we realized we wanted to work there, that New Job Energy.

As a non-profit dedicated to helping military families endure the rigors of life in the armed forces, I knew the USO brand was centered on service and purpose. I scoured employee survey results and conducted interviews with both new hires and long-tenured high performers to identify how to articulate that shared purpose.

I connected that emotion directly with our values, which our leadership loved, as it gave daily opportunities to recognize, reward and reflect through the behaviors of our shared values. I am always looking for opportunities to bring an organization’s values to life beyond a poster on a wall.

We used similar research to name the platform USO Salutes. I wrote, produced, edited and scored the teaser video, in addition to facilitating small group manager training to cascade opt-in and use.

We reinforced the program through consistent storytelling on other channels, with our approach backed by the analytics the new platform provided.

More than 90% of employees opted into the program with monthly use rates exceeding 80% more than two years after launching the platform. As an internal comms team, we used the platform to gather stories about our employee teams at their best. The emotional connection we conjured at launched compelled our President to give me and my team the President’s Award, which ironically, he did on the new platform, USO Salutes.