Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer. Today I’m talking with Randall Diamond, the founder and Chief Growth Officer at Abundantly. Their software aims to help create meaningful connections by simplifying recognition and how it’s done. So we’re going to talk about recognition in technology, what managers think of all these newfangled recognition tools and getting whiplash from following the business world, all on this edition of PeopleTech.
Now in April, you launched Amplify, and that’s an AI tool that generates content for recognition solutions.
Randall:
Right.
Mark:
How’s that going?
Randall:
It’s being received incredibly well, except for the couple times that it hasn’t been. So just to back up a little bit, what happened is we had been working on development for Amplify nearly a year, and when we launched a KFC franchise, I had shared with the team, I had gone in person to meet with the managers and help them get the application loaded for Abundantly because they had a recognition strategy they wanted to pursue.
What was interesting is that they’re all digital natives. The folks who are managers at KFC are promoted from within, and so they grow into the title of manager and they’re very good at managing their teams, very good at digital tools. I asked them after they had Abundantly loaded to send a note of appreciation to somebody on their team, just someone that they might have missed thanking earlier, and I was looking at deers and headlights. It was like, “I don’t know what to say.” And some of the messages that were put together were well crafted, but a lot of them, it was more like, “I don’t know how to do this.”
And so that’s when we traded off some of our development to prioritize Amplify based on the needs of our customers. So for KFC, it’s been incredibly well received. It helps individuals write notes that reflect the message they intended to send. And as we share Amplify with new customers and prospective new customers, it’s the feature that nearly every call is most interested in.
I find that very interesting. So when I said it works well, the only two times it hasn’t is when people asked, “Well, does that diminish authenticity?” And I’ve had two folks who thought that it diminishes authenticity. Having written a thousand thank you notes by hand over my 20 years in this career, and I set out a goal to write a thousand, I can tell you personally that it’s a five to 10 minute activity to write a high quality note of appreciation. And what Amplify does is really create a first draft, or it’s probably 80-90% finished, and then you put your own personal flare on it. So for folks who are engineers, for folks who are frontline workers, there’s a ton of benefit in sending that recognition message that lines up with what you intended to say.
Mark:
You talked about this a bit of how KFC’s managers reacted, but in general, I mean, thinking about the whole business, are managers really on board with these kind of tools? Or do you think everybody’s having trouble sort of bringing them on board?
Randall:
The honest truth about recognition organizations, providers, is that a lot of pre-sale is spent focusing on budget controls. And then once organizations get on board, and this has been the case that numerous companies I’ve worked for, you spend the rest of the partnership helping managers and employees utilize the tool set more. In fact, when you see features that will allow people to, for example, boost somebody else’s post, a lot of that is drawing in additional users. So your question was …
Mark:
Are the managers really leveraging these tools or is it …?
Randall:
Right. Yeah. The managers are absolutely leveraging them because … Our clients managers are leveraging the tools and that makes it something that the HR professionals are happy about. What surprised me was that I started using our tools when I’m writing a note of appreciation and it takes it from a five-minute activity down to a two or three-minute activity. And a lot of what this industry is aiming to do is make it easy without losing the authenticity, and that’s the art.
Mark:
Do you have other solutions you’re considering developing off of AI?
Randall:
Oh, absolutely. Our future is AI for recognition. And really, our goal is … Not our goal. Our vision is the right message to the right person at the right time. And if I’m allowed to get a fourth, then it’s in the right manner. So Amplify helps deliver the right message. The next three operate on research based approaches to employee recognition. And the first one is not everybody wants to be recognized at the same rate. The impact of recognition has a lot to do with an employee’s position in the company.
Individual contributors performance is increased by 3.9% when they’re recognized, whereas for senior executives, 0% impact for each employee on performance based on each message. And what does that tell us? That executives don’t want to be recognized? No, I think it tells us that the intrinsically motivated, incredibly hardworking folks who make it to senior leadership roles are focused on impact. And so they get to see the fruits of their labor. Whereas I think about a call center representative who’s sitting probably working from home, solitary, wondering, “Does anybody notice? Does it matter that I nailed that call? That I did something that I didn’t have to delight the customer?” And if so, then that’s the opportunity for a peer or for a manager to say, “I see that. That’s valuable, keep doing it. Because the more you do, the greater our customers love us and the greater our organization operates.”
Mark:
I want to switch gears a little bit.
Randall:
Sure.
Mark:
I feel like it’s a weird time right now with the economy, the labor market being as it is.
Randall:
Right.
Mark:
What are you hearing from employers about engagement in the midst of all this? Is it more important, less important? What do you think?
Randall:
All of the above. I mean, it’s all of the above, and it’s also week by week dependent as it feels like we’re in choppy waters in a sense, because one week things will be just really lining up in terms of where organizations are for delivering a high value employee experience. And then the next week a series of funding maybe doesn’t come through because of interest rates or because of regional banks, the collapse of some regional banks. And so it’s almost like you’ll get whiplash right now if you’re following the conversations, because like I said, from one week to the next, it’ll be really focused on employee experience. And then the next is really focused on survival. And then coming back to employee experience and building culture and all of those things. So we just go with the waves.
Mark:
Are you guys hunkered down to have that pattern continue, or do you see signs that it might get better or worse at any point?
Randall:
Well, I think if you’re playing the short game, you’re probably pretty distressed. For our organization, we are in that fortunate position of having the resources, so we’re playing the long game, which means that we’re supporting organizations who want to launch now, but also spending quite a bit of time just planting seeds. And my colleague, Jeff puts it best. He says, “Planting them deep,” because there are organizations that really want to do what we provide, especially in the way that we provide it. But going to senior leadership and asking, as I mentioned in a moment ago, is week by week, so you might schedule something next week and then macroeconomic conditions change.
Just to get back to your question about longevity, it’s planting seeds deep. It’s serving those who are ready to launch now. And then with our existing customers, we’ve done some interesting things around how do they limit award spend because with inflation, other economic conditions make it … I just keep going back to the week by week thing. So one week things are wonderful, we want to invest in our employees, and then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, my food costs have tripled in the last three months. And so how do we provide rewards that don’t cost me anything, but keep that appreciation occurring?” And so we’ve come up with some interesting ideas for different organizations.
Some are expected like an additional day of PTO, but some of the other ones that are well received is your manager washing your car. And this is more for the in-person folks, but that’s an incredibly well-received reward that doesn’t cost the organization money.
Mark:
The workforce in general. I mean, there’s a funny workforce. There’s several generations in it. There’s still some boomers, there’s Gen Y, there’s Gen Z, and what impact is that having on businesses and on employers?
Randall:
It’s interesting. I think we spend a lot of time in the work tech space trying to stratify generations, and I’m a “Zennial” right on the cusp of Gen X and millennial. So I don’t feel like I fit into either category, but what I have noticed is that people from the baby boomer generation, and Gen X are certainly making the same comments that have been made since time eternal, which is, “Kids these days.” Their expectations. And so I feel like that statement doesn’t really have context, which is that it’s always been the state of affairs where older generations perceive younger generations as more entitled or less respectful, less willing to put in that hard work.
At the same time, I see a ton of people from the millennial generation, gen Z, who are working incredibly hard, doing incredibly innovative things. And so I don’t really have a great summary or synthesis of how the generations differ other than I do think that people want to do work that’s meaningful. And I just think that that part is universal. How people go about it, I think that that’s where you’ll see generational differences. Some of the younger generation, I think sometimes this gets interpreted the wrong way, where they’ll be more efficient with work, and then that gets perceived by somebody from an older generation as a hack or a trick or a shortcut. And assuming that it’s not a shortcut, it’s just more efficient and optimized, then that’s just smart working.
Mark:
This dynamic in the workforce of multiple generations being …
Randall:
Yeah. Right. Okay.
Mark:
How’s that impacting how you plan or your plans and what you’re doing?
Randall:
So fortunately, we have every generation represented at Abundantly, and that gives us an opportunity to opportunity run new functionality or new messages or just new thinking about employee recognition. That’s one of the most important things to us. What is fascinating to me is that it’s less generational and more individual is my observation. So we can have two people from the millennial generation or Gen Z who have completely different perceptions and expectations, but we take all of those voices and bring them together as we think about what’s the next generation of employee recognition and how do we serve these generations by studying our own team and also mining research?
So from my point of view, I think that we have that give and take in terms of product development, where we look at how does this meet all of the needs on a generational basis. And like I said, I think it’s more of an individual basis than broad generalities.
Mark:
Randall, it has been great to meet you and great to talk with you. I appreciate your being here. Thanks so much.
Randall:
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Mark:
Today, I’ve been talking with Randall Diamond, the founder and Chief Growth Officer of Abundantly, and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of Recruiting Daily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcast.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM technology report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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