Using Recognition to Reduce Staff Turnover in Retail

WOW! used to distribute prepaid Visa cards that would periodically get topped up with cash. But after the survey, they discovered that this method felt too impersonal to employees.

So WOW! developed a more comprehensive rewards and recognition programme that gave employees more choice through Awardco’s partnership with Amazon. Employees are now able to save for things they want, such as gaming consoles and holidays and buy things they need, such as toiletries and clothing. 

And it isn’t just rewards that are more personalised—WOW! created a peer recognition programme, a recognition social feed, and a programme tied to their company core values, ensuring everyone has multiple ways of being seen, feeling valued and earning rewards!

With a strengthened culture of frequent recognition, along with personalised rewards, WOW! has seen employee engagement and satisfaction improve across the board.

In a retail, sales-driven environment, compensation is vital to employee engagement and retention. To best align with their pay for performance model, WOW! wanted to empower employee productivity and success with rewarding incentives.

To that end, they restructured their compensation model and incorporated performance-based incentives through Awardco. That way instead of jumping through budgetary hoops to offer a blanket raise, they used their recognition budget to give employees more opportunities to excel and earn more.

The combination of enhanced earning opportunities and near-unlimited reward options has had a huge impact on employee performance:

• Attrition has decreased over 30% to an all-time low
• Productivity increased over 50% year-over-year
• Employee motivation is skyrocketing

Because WOW! mobile boutique™ knew where they could improve created strategies to target those pain points and used Awardco to empower their culture, they’ve seen some astounding returns.