4 Key Elements of an Employee Loyalty App
There are hundreds if not thousands of HR applications, but all of them to this point are focused on automation of administrative processes. By definition, these apps will have limited impact on Employee Loyalty because they are not designed for that purpose. Do you really think a system designed to streamline organizing employee tax documents is going to move the needle on employee loyalty? Of course not.
Why an Employee Loyalty App?
With employee turnover and quite-quitting on the rise, keeping your best employees on the team and productive is now a priority for every business. As people are the source of innovation, productivity and the point of contact with your customer – it is people that make the difference between companies that succeed and fail.
Recognizing the critical value people play, why would more companies not start using an employee loyalty app that is specifically designed for that purpose. Whistle is the first app specifically created to address employee loyalty and move the needle on employee retention and productivity.
What is important when choosing an Employee Loyalty App?
There are several key elements to look for when choosing an employee loyalty app, lets take a look at a few and why these are critical to an effective employee loyalty program.
An employee loyalty app should be easy to use
The concept of ease of use is or simplicity is important for every application, but its especially true for an employee loyalty app because it should be something that feels effortless and creates little friction. There are already too many challenges in most work experiences that adding more cognitive friction or work will only reduce the effect of your employee loyalty efforts.
Ease of use can be reflected in both the design and user experience (a passive approach) but also through tools that make recommendations or help prioritize what is important (an active approach).
Whistle does both of things through an intuitive design but also through the use of Robin, an artificial intelligence persona who continually analyzes each person’s experience and make suggestions one the best next step. By curating the experience we reduce friction and increase engagement – helping produce better outcomes.
Seamlessly integrate learning, rewards and communication tools
At the heart of employee loyalty is a sense of feeling valued and creating value. Most companies focus on wrong factors that create a sense of loyalty and result in higher turnover and lower productivity. Most HR tools also focus on these transactional elements like managing a wellness program, retirement benefits or HR forms for compliance purposes.
When selecting an employee loyalty app, it’s important to recognize that employee loyalty is about behaviors, that are most heavily influenced by certain employee experiences – specifically the onboarding experience, an employee’s experience with their manager and an employee’s sense of feeling valued.
These three areas disproportionately influence employee loyalty – meaning you can do a lot right in your company, but if you are not doing well here your turnover will remain high and your employee productivity low.
Whistle seamlessly integrates features like learning, rewards and communication tools because those are the critical elements of behavior change – for a manager or employee. These features can be organized into a limitless number of program types but most importantly can create programs to improve employee onboarding, manager training and an employee’s sense of feeling valued.
Although many companies have tools for onboarding or training, they are not designed or integrated in a way that will change behavior. An app that is not specifically designed specifically to influence employee loyalty, will have little impact on it.
Integrate with outside data sources and systems
Wouldn’t it be great if you could understand how your various HR programs actually impacted employee loyalty? The first step is integrating your HR data so that you can connect behavior to business outcomes. But integration should not end with data.
Employees spend an enormous amount of time on computers in various systems. Ideally your employee loyalty app would meet your employee where they are – in other apps.
Whistle integrates with other platforms including communication tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, because that is where employees spend time. In fact, many features like payments can be used without ever having to download or open an account with Whistle.
These integrations also help reduce the app fatigue most employees already feel with yet another app to download or learn. This makes Whistle not only simple to use for employees, but easier to deploy for administrators so your employee loyalty app will make everyone’s life a little easier. Why would you accept anything less from an employee loyalty app?
Provide real time incentives and rewards
It’s not obvious to many people that incentives and rewards are a critical elements of an employee loyalty app. But motivation is a critical component of any successful program that is about changing people’s behavior – and employee loyalty certainly is that!
Rewards and incentives can take many forms – from badges and levels (gamification elements) to points, payments and prizes. All of these elements have impact, but time also rapidly decays the impact of each.
More than any other factor, time is a critical driver of a rewards impact on behavior. Research shows that a delay in a reward reduces the impact of that reward by almost 5% each day. So a reward given at the end of a month that is part of a pay check has lost almost all of it’s impact on influencing behavior.
Whistle integrates gamification elements like badges, leaderboards and animations, but we also built a proprietary real-time payments feature so that monetary rewards can also be instant – maximizing the value of the reward. An employee loyalty app can operate without some of these features, but the business impact will be reduced.
Whistle, the employee loyalty app
There are many factors that influence employee loyalty but Whistle is the first employee loyalty app specifically designed for that purpose. By leveraging Whistle an integrating with other programs, Whistle can help companies improve bother their top and bottom line.
In a recent case study Whistle helped a manufacturing company reduce turnover by 26% in 90 days through a redesigned onboarding program. The company has always on-boarded people, just never with an employee loyalty app. Companies are using Whistle to people managers to be better people managers, rethinking incentives and rewards, and even changing their approach to culture – building a more inclusive workplace and helping to attract more people.
Contact us for a free demo and better understand how much you can improve employee loyalty when using an employee loyalty app!
Chris Dornfeld is the President and Co-founder of Whistle. With a background spanning several start-up companies, global corporations, higher education and government as the CIO for the City of St. Louis – Chris has a unique vantage point on engagement, culture, technology and our changing work experience.
