People team wins big with peer-to-peer employee gifting

Celebrating co-workers is taking on a new meaning for Quantum Metric. The B2B company specializes in quantifying and improving digital experiences for its clients. Now their team is leaning on another B2B platform to do the same for an equally important group of people—their employees.

Quantum Metric is rolling out a unique employee recognition solution with the help of Sendoso and HiThrive.

“Our employees love swag, and one of the asks from our CEO was to find creative ways to deliver more of it,” explains Quantum Metrics Director of People Ops Alana Fallis.

Her goal was simple. Fallis wanted to partner with a tool that made rewards engaging and promoted a positive work environment to foster relationships across teams.

Gifting switches up employee recognition

HiThrive’s interactive employee recognition platform saw instant success at Quantum Metric. Within the first three months, employee engagement with the peer-to-peer recognition program was at nearly 100%.

It’s a new way to gift for Quantum Metric.

The company already utilizes Sendoso for corporate gifting and B2B marketing campaigns. HiThrive allows Quantum Metric to extend a similar corporate gifting strategy internally.

In short, employees can reward team members for good work with points using HiThrive on Slack. Employees then cash in those points for Quantum Metric’s branded merchandise. And their orders are seamlessly fulfilled by Sendoso’s automated Sending Platform™.

Changing employee appreciation culture

The new process comes as work culture is changing in America. Business experts are learning that employee appreciation should be a priority, especially as more companies go remote. Good leaders are moving to adopt that change.

Studies show that team members appreciate public acknowledgment for a job well done. A failure to celebrate big wins can hurt morale.

A well-rewarded team member with regular opportunities for feedback and praise often works harder and is more committed to the company’s mission. It’s why human resources and people teams explore personalized gifting using Sendoso. They’ve found that employee appreciation is even more valuable when working remotely.

Benefits of Sendoso’s Sending Platform™

People team managers at Quantum Metric wanted to call out great job performance with kudos and prizes. But they wanted to avoid the hassle of stocking and shipping items.

As it turns out, they already had the tools they needed with Sendoso’s warehousing capabilities. Sendoso is currently part of Quantum Metric’s corporate gifting strategy. It’s used by the executive, sales, and account-based marketing (ABM) teams.

But the people team saw an opportunity to use Sendoso to emphasize their employee-first focus. Their goals were to implement an employee appreciation program to support retention, engagement, recognition, and performance.

“It’s been a pretty big hit,” described one employee who already used Sendoso for field events. “[This is] 100% owned by the people team.”

HiThrive bridges workflow platforms

The team incorporated HiThrive into their workflow by using the Slack integration. HiThrive bridges multiple platforms, including Slack and Sendoso, to create seamless peer-to-peer recognition.

Employees have a Slack shout-out channel where they can send people points for doing something good.

Employees who go the extra mile can rack up points. When there’s a big task or a deadline, team members send points to show their gratitude. Plus, it’s a public shout-out of recognition.

“I’ve sent [points] to a team when I know I’m going to have to make them work longer,” described an employee. “And I’ve executed an event and somebody messaged me and sent me 500 points and said, ‘Great job, let’s go shopping.’”

Points translate into dollars, and team members are encouraged to hand them out regularly. Executives get 5,000 points ($50) to distribute each month, while everyone else has 2,500 ($25) to share.

Cashing in HiThrive points for swag

An employee is ready to go shopping once they reach a healthy balance of HiThrive points.

HiThrive built the integration with Sendoso specifically for Quantum Metric. It includes a landing page where team members can buy some of the same branded merchandise or swag, the QM team sends to clients.

With a couple of clicks, team members can use their points to buy logo tees, cocktail tumblers, cell phone power banks, and beanies.

Naturally, Sendoso handles the packaging and shipping through its warehouse network.

“We’re so excited that Quantum is thrilled,” said Joshua Zacharias, co-founder of HiThrive, who helped Quantum Metric integrate the employee recognition program into both HiThrive’s platform and Sendoso’s warehouse.

Zacharias created HiThrive to help business leaders recognize important moments together with their team members.

“We automate celebrations and milestones, and then teams can make them more meaningful by connecting them to rewards,” he said. “We’re not a rewards platform, but it is an important part of our cycle. We make it extraordinarily easy to make those moments available.”

In the Quantum Metric online storefront, all of the items are triggered with Sendoso.

“We love seeing the orders come in, not to mention the requests for what kind of swag employees want to see next,” adds Fallis who plans to switch up the swag periodically.

Appreciation that moves the needle

Quantum’s people team is using the

integrations to drive engagement among employees. Throughout the entire company, 96% of all team members have interacted with the program.

Team members are also enjoying their well-earned prizes and supportive comments from co-workers. Since the program was implemented, Sendoso has, on average, fulfilled about 50 sends per month for Quantum’s employees.

In a single month, employees redeemed 78 appreciation sends through Sendoso.

Sendoso plays a big role in Quantum Metric’s comprehensive marketing strategy, but it’s also making an impact internally. About 5% of Quantum sends with Sendoso are to team members.

Gifting: not just for sales anymore

When team members at Quantum Metric reward one another with points and messages, they are also reinforcing Quantum’s corporate culture.

“We tag it with one of our three core values, which are passion, persistence, and integrity,” explained Shayna Welton, a people ops manager at Quantum Metric.

The most popular core value cited by employees is passion—demonstrating the motivation behind their work.

Team member recognition promotes strong connections among co-workers, but it can also help the evolution of a brand. It’s why Quantum Metric is shifting away from the old human resources model and incorporating technology and personalization into its internal strategies.

Celebrating employees is at the heart of their core values, and Sendoso was there to help fulfill that mission.

“It’s helped us deliver a unique and fun experience for our team members,” summarizes Fallis, “while fulfilling our vision for next-level employee rewards.”

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