Inspirus

Employee recognition has long been a cornerstone of effective management. Today, as the competition for talent escalates, how organizations value their employees has become more important than ever. The kind of recognition a firm offers to its employees truly makes a difference in employee engagement, performance, productivity, and retention.

But this is where several challenges exist. For one, when it comes to recognition, oftentimes, companies don’t know where to start; it is extremely difficult to quantify or track the level of recognition at a workplace. Secondly, there are multiple recognition programs available across an organization but there is no common strategy, goal, or purpose defined as part of these programs. In other words, programs and employee engagement activities are not aligned with the greater vision of the company. Complicating matters even further is the fact that the processes currently used to deliver the recognition and reward solutions lack scale, efficiency, and both personal and financial accountability. The need of the hour is a new approach that enables business leaders to add value to their employee recognition experience, and this is where Inspirus comes into the picture.

A Fort Worth, TX-based HR company, Inspirus, helps organizations develop recognition solutions and services to support their company goals and foster deeper connections with their people. “Through our technology and integrated solutions, we elevate the employee experience and optimize organizational culture. By providing a holistic approach to the entire employee journey, businesses can ensure their people feel valued, connected, and a deep sense of belonging,” says Theresa Harkins-Schulz, SVP of customer success at Inspirus.

Every day, countless companies miss the opportunity to harness the full potential of their greatest resource—their people. Inspirus’ offerings enable companies to motivate their multigenerational workforce through one point of interaction for everyone—employees, managers, and administrators—continuing a decades-long mission to bring joy to work, one experience at a time. Through Inspirus Connects recognition platform, businesses gain a central location where their employees can connect, know, and celebrate their colleagues and peers, learn new things, collaborate, and stay up-to-date on company communications, news, events, and initiatives. “They can also acknowledge the achievements, life events like birthdays and service anniversaries, and performance milestones that make an organization thrive with programs,” adds Theresa. These moments are then publicized within a community activity feed, which serves as an educational point, providing opportunities for other employees to continually learn by seeing the photos, watching videos and photos, and reading about best practices, as well as by liking and commenting on them.

On the other hand, with the Inspirus Celebrates platform, organizations can easily implement a personalized, cost-effective recognition program in as little as three weeks. Inspirus offers clients the ability to recognize key milestones within an employee’s career and customize gift offerings; they can choose from jewelry, gift cards, and merchandise of their choice and shop at their leisure.

“Our curated award collections ensure employees can choose brand name merchandise that has them feeling valued and recognized for their many contributions,” informs Theresa.

What’s more? From an admin perspective, each program can be configured to recognize and encourage the behaviors and cultivate a culture to reinforce collaboration, inclusion, safe activity, or demonstrating healthy behaviors. Admins can also establish policy and procedure within their organization for how recognition programs are deployed, and Inspirus Connects provides a new recognition program or rewards offering to be spun up in as little as 24 hours. Furthermore, admins can not only control the program but also spin up communications quickly that they may need to disseminate within the organization. “Our Celebrates packages undergo a rigorous process to ensure a positive, high-quality user experience. We stay on top of demographic data for all industries, along with industry standards to ensure we meet and exceed our client’s needs and expectations. We consistently review our products, budget, and levels in an effort to deliver the best experience for employees,” mentions Theresa.

Inspirus utilizes a framework that includes four different phases while working with all of its clients. The first step is discovery, where the Inspirus team tries to understand the client’s organization, their goals, people strategies, and if/how they use recognition within their workforce today. “We term it as program inventory; we assess the organization to understand what programs exist in the company and use it to determine and define a strategy that best fits the client’s needs,” explains Theresa. “We end the discovery process with our summary of recommendations that the client has to do in order to devise the framework.” Inspirus’ key employees and solution architects then work on designing and creating a program and solution offering that meets the company’s needs as well as utilizes technology in more efficient ways. This is followed by managing and delivering the required outcomes for the client. Inspirus also makes it a point to ensure that the client is offering appropriate rewards and recognition activities. The team calibrates the program against the budget and the financial inputs of the organization and the accountability that they are looking to drive within their leadership, management, or their workforce when it comes to delivering recognition and rewards.

Inspirus is an industry leader in employee engagement and recognition. For more than 100 years, their innovation has empowered over 350 market-leading companies to use rewards and recognition to enhance their employee experience. The organization is also a recipient of several accolades from leading industry organizations, including being honored with consecutive Baker’s Dozen Awards for customer satisfaction by HRO Today. For the road ahead, the company is working on making the experiences that employees have within the Inspirus platform more real-life through videos and imagery. “We are looking at integrations with applications like Outlook and Teams,” states Theresa. Alongside, the Inspirus team is also planning on building a sense of belonging with its clients and growing that community within the organization. “A lot of our focus is around connecting and bringing communities to life and integrating the tools into workplaces where it’s meaningful for the employees. We are committed to providing opportunities to celebrate the big recognition moments and meaningful, everyday recognition that make employees feel appreciated and promotes positive team culture,” wraps up Theresa.