Work-related experiences can boost morale, retention and the bottom line
Brian Hart was 27 when he founded Flackable, a Philadelphia-based public relations and digital marketing agency, in 2014. He waited 10 months to hire his first employee, a recent college graduate who would work from Chicago. Two months later, he made another hire.
Coming from a large PR agency, Hart was confident he knew the world of public relations and how to differentiate his company’s services from competitors who had significantly larger staffs and marketing budgets. The management thing? That was another matter.
“There was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning, when you make that first hire and especially after you start to grow quickly,” he says. “I had a lot to learn being in that role. I’ve grown a lot in terms of leading a team. I’ve learned a lot, and I realize that I need to continue to get better.”
Now at the seasoned age of 31, Hart says he feels a lot more confident about his role as a manager. One important element he says he learned along the way was keeping an open dialog with his team and creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable talking about what matters to them, what may be bothering them and what motivates them. Through those conversations, Hart says he has learned how important experiences are for building morale and making his employees — which now number more than half a dozen – feeling appreciated.
“We’ve got multiple generations working here, but the bulk are young, entry-level workers. That generation places more emphasis than other generations on having opportunities to have experiences,” he says.
With his first hire more than 700 miles away in Chicago, Hart knew it was important to fly out soon after she joined his team to create a strong working relationship. During his visit to the Windy City, Hart and his new colleague went to the zoo, the Chicago Aquarium and a Chicago Hawks playoff game (the new hire was a huge hockey fan).
“We packed a lot into that trip,” Hart recalls. “I saw how impactful and important that was and decided to make it a priority very early on.”
A mentor starts a tradition
Like Hart, Jeff West, a retired sales coordinator for a Fortune 500 insurance company, learned early in his career how poignant experiences with co-workers can be. West says he learned this not from managing others like Hart did, but from a mentor who dipped into his own bonus pay to fund incentive trips for top performers on his team.
“I don’t think he realized how important what he was doing was,” says West. “The camaraderie that we had inside our team was very rare. We were all working so hard together to hit our targets and the loyalty on our team was tremendous.”
When he became Texas sales coordinator himself, West continued the practice, spending 20 percent of his bonus pay on incentive trips for his regional sales coordinators. The structure of the company meant that West and his colleagues were, in actuality, independent contractors and not full-time employees of the insurance company. West’s actions, just like those of his mentor, built a sense of togetherness that many inside sales teams would love to have.
In 2009, West took a group of sales leaders and their significant others on a trip to the British Virgin Islands. Dinner one night included a boat trip to a small restaurant on the island of Jost Van Dyke. It was a venue West had been introduced to years earlier by his management mentor.
“The best lobster anywhere!” he says. “On the way back, we were all looking at the stars and watching a thunderstorm in the distance as we cuddled with our spouses. The memories of that trip are still mentioned as the best experience they ever had from their relationship with any company. The fusion we created produced amazing loyalty that exists even to this day.”
The science behind experiences
West and Hart know in their gut that providing experiences for employees has tremendous ROI. The science backs them up, says Cameron Conway, vice president and general manager of sales effectiveness solutions at Maritz Motivation Solutions, providers of employee engagement and performance improvement programs.
“This is not just something we see as a trend in the marketplace. It’s driven by the way the human mind works,” Conway says. The company has a behavioral scientist on its team who helps align employee engagement efforts with research findings that experiences drive more powerful memories than other types of recognition.
The triple whammy of experiences, says Conway, is that it keeps workers engaged during the anticipation stage, when they are actually having the experience and afterward, when they share stories about their experience.
Some feel the influx of millennials into the workplace combined with increased blending of work and outside life has sparked a greater interest in company-sponsored experiences. “The boomers were the generation of acquisition of things; the millennials are a generation of the acquisition of experiences,” Conway says, but he quickly adds that top performers over 40 are also increasingly embracing experiences over stuff.
For many millennials, experiences that are paired with career development are the most rewarding. Hart took his team of young PR and digital media marketers to the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston last fall.
“It was motivational and educational,” he says. “I saw so many different areas where it added value. I love that my team got to hear entrepreneurs and celebrities and artists and other influential people talk about where they find inspiration. It really resonated with the team.”
Jeremy Shepherd, founder and CEO of PearlParadise.com, an online jewelry retailer, says he has rewarded team members with experiences for years, and he also focuses on the combination of fun and career advancement opportunities. Business takes the company’s team members to Asia a few times each year. Shepherd says he selects a deserving new team member to go at least once a year.
“We book their tickets with either free time before or after our scheduled work. To date, we’ve taken nine of our team members to Hong Kong. For all but one, it was their first time and a trip of a lifetime,” Shepherd says. “Although we always give them a task while with us, they also have several days to explore on their own, and they get to join us at vendor dinners, which are a big deal.”
Experiences can happen anywhere
President’s club incentive trips are great and certainly memorable, but experiences through work can occur frequently and don’t require huge budgets. Hart says his professional growth strategy includes regular Friday training sessions, including movie days when they watch films about the financial industry, which they primarily serve, and discuss afterward.
“It’s crucial to keep everybody motivated and collaborative,” he says. “One of the things I learned by becoming an employer is just how valuable good, smart, motivated and dependable employees are. I’ve also learned how costly an unmotivated and uninspired employee can be, and what a drag that can be on business.”
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