Unlocking ROI: The Total Economic Impact™ of Recognition Programs with Forrester

Uh, so with that, what is bringing us together today?  Well, we are going to dive into the heart of  what every HR leader is facing.  How do we prove that recognition is not just a nice to have,  but truly a real driver of business outcomes?  So in this session today, we're gonna hear from work humans,  David Stat, along with Forrester's, Katie Tynan,  and Sarah Vol, as they're gonna unpack the data from the  Total Economic Impact study  and share what sets high impact recognition  programs apart.  So with that, let's go ahead and  Hello everyone and thank you  for joining today's webinar sponsored by WorkHuman.  Today we're talking about unlocking ROI,  the total economic impact of a recognition program,  featuring our friends from the Forrester Organization.  I'm David Stott, a strategic client director  and a workplace consultant with WorkHuman.  And I'll be joined today by our guest speakers, Katie Tynan  and Sarah LA from Forrester.  The agenda for day, today's session is  to talk about the psychology  of recognition in the workplace,  and then to review the total economic impact study  that we commissioned with Forrester.  And then finally, I'll be wrapping up reviewing some  qualitative benefits  and the impact on cultural shifts  that recognition programs have on the workplace today.  We'll finish with a q  and a session, so feel free to, uh,  offer your questions in the chat or the q  and a functionality within this webinar,  and we'll get to all your questions toward the end.  And with that, I'd like  to introduce Katie Tynan from Forrester.  Thank you so much, Dave, and thanks everyone.  I'm so glad you can come  and hang out with us today  to talk a little bit about recognition.  My name is Katie Tynan.  I am a VP principal analyst on the employee experience  and Future of work teams at Forrester.  And I cover what you think of as organizational development,  which includes things like leadership and culture  and learning and change, all of these interconnected things  where we try to make our work as great a place  for our employees as possible,  and recognition is a foundational part of that.  So in this conversation, we're gonna talk about a piece  of research that we did alongside WorkHuman, but  before we do that, I just wanna give you a little bit of  a recap on the science behind recognition.  Why do we feel like recognition is  so important in the workplace beyond just, you know,  it's nice to say nice things to people?  So let's start with in some ways the, the sort of  grandfather of behavior, which is BF Skinner.  And some of you may be familiar  with BF Skinner if you ever took a psychology class  because he comes up in operant conditioning.  So if you go to the next slide,  BF Skinner's work was primarily with pigeons, right?  He had all of these setups with pigeons  and levers, and he could have the pigeons press a lever  and they would get a treat, and he could actually,  and his team could actually do some very complex  behavior shaping with rewards.  So that quote that I just put up was about the power of  rewards in shaping behavior.  But of course, and if you wanna go to the next slide, Dave,  humans are not pigeons, right?  We're a little more complicated.  So we can look at things like opera  and conditioning in the psychology  and the research that underpins that.  And it can be helpful to us in understanding some  of these mechanisms of how we get people  to behave in ways we want to.  But we have to remember  that human motivation is pretty different  than pigeon motivation.  So we need to think sometimes about these things in a little  bit more of a complex way.  So if you go to the next slide, I'll just show you a theory  that we look at in human motivation.  And again, this theory is not new.  This is Room's Expectancy theory,  which was published in ,  but this is actually very relevant to human motivation.  A lot of the research  that we use when we think about motivation  and when we think about recognition is foundational  psychology about human behavior.  So lemme just walk you through what we're looking at here.  The idea with expectancy theory is there's a three  components that humans do in their heads,  not necessarily consciously when they decide whether  or not to put their energy and effort into something.  So the first one, the e in expectancy theory, is expectancy  the question of whether I can hit a target if I work hard.  In other words, this thing that you're asking me to do,  this goal that you set, can I actually achieve it?  And then instrumentality, if I achieve it,  will I actually get something for my efforts?  And some of this is pay, right?  We pay people, but some of this is recognition.  Will I be recognized for my efforts?  And that's this third component valence.  Is that reward meaningful to me, right?  When you say, good job, Katie, that's great,  but does that carry meaning in my brain when I think about  the level of effort I had to put in?  Now you'll notice because this is sort of math psychology,  that those are multiplication signs in this equation.  So the idea is, if any of those things are zero,  then my motivation is gonna be zero on the  other side of that equation.  So it's not additive, it's not just can I hit the target  and am I getting anything out of it?  And is that reward meaningful?  It's even if I can hit the target  and I know I'm gonna get something out of it, it's  that reward or recognition isn't meaningful to me,  I'm not actually gonna try very hard.  So that brings us to yet another person  that we think about a lot in terms of motivation.  And that's Theresa Malay.  And Theresa Malay is a  researcher at Harvard Business School.  She wrote an excellent book called The Progress Principle.  If you haven't read it, you should.  And the idea behind the progress principle is a maba.  And her team looked at these daily diaries  of thousands of people.  It was a big research project,  and she basically asked 'em to describe their day at work.  And then she and her team went through  and analyzed all of this data.  And what they found,  which is really valuable when we're thinking about  motivation, is that human beings,  when we're in a work circumstance, we have a good day.  When we're making meaningful progress towards something,  we feel matters.  So combine that with expectancy theory,  and we can start to see this commonality, this commonality,  which is, I wanna do meaningful work  and I want someone to recognize  that I'm doing meaningful work.  And that's the secret to people being self-motivated.  So when we're talking about recognition,  what we're really talking about is how we make  that connection between doing meaningful work  and being seen for doing that meaningful work.  So if you go to the next slide,  this is the next evolution of that,  which is a Forrester model.  And we think about this, it's,  it's research called the resources  and demands model of, of job motivation.  So that is, again, another academic model.  But the idea is we, every day when we come to work,  we bring our personal resources, our personal energy,  but the organization has to show up with some stuff too.  So we show up with optimism, with talent, with skills,  with self-efficacy, with resilience,  with proactivity, all the things.  And then our organization needs to show up with fair pay,  with recognition, with reward systems, with resources  and tools for us to be effective.  And it's those things combined together  that enable employees to do great work.  Okay? So that's the fly by of the idea  of why recognition matters in the workplace.  And I just wanna touch on one last thing  before I pass it over to Sarah to talk about the research.  And that's culture. So I've talked about all the wonderful  good things about recognition,  but I, I wanna also talk about the fact  that behavior in organizations  and culture in organizations has a lot to do with  what leaders recognize, reward, and allow.  And so again,  when we're thinking about creating a positive culture in an  organization, we think about this quote, the culture  of any organization is shaped  by the worst behavior leaders tolerate.  So sometimes we're rewarding things unintentionally  by allowing them to continue to happen.  And so part of the goal of recognition in our culture model  is, and I'm not gonna go through all of this,  it's a complicated model, right?  But the idea is leaders at the top set the expectation for  what the culture is,  and then the workforce from the bottom up,  their daily behaviors, the rituals, the artifacts,  the things that we do every day  are what shaped that culture.  And recognition has a direct part in this  going all the way back to the BF Skinner  and the pigeons in terms of  how we reinforce behavioral norms, how we show  that shared purpose and how we connect meaningful work  to being seen for meaningful work to shaping that culture  of an environment where we all feel like we're doing  that meaningful work together.  So I know I just threw a lot of science at you in  eight minutes, but the goal of this is  to just set some context for you as you're thinking about  how to design recognition programs in your organization.  And now what we're going  to do is Sarah's gonna delve into the actual study  that we did and some of the things that we found.  And you're gonna see some of these pull throughs of threads  of how the science of what we know about human behavior  connects to the practical application of  how this shows up in the workforce.  So Sarah, I'm gonna pass it all to you  to talk a little bit about the study that we did.  Excellent. Thanks Katie, and thanks  Dave for having me here.  It's a pleasure to attend this webinar.  Uh, my name is Sarah Vol.  I am a consultant within Forrester's, TEI  or Total Economic Impact Practice.  I was a consultant that led the customer interviews, which  of course we'll dive into today.  Um, the other thing that we'll do really first is  to lay the groundwork around the methodology  so you can understand a little bit about what it entails  and how we got to the study results.  So we can go ahead and dive to the next slide.  Just a quick disclaimer here, um, it is important to note  that this is just an abridged version  of the full case study.  Would definitely encourage you to dive into  much more detailed that the study has to offer  and customer voice that is sprinkled throughout.  And then one other point here, while WorkHuman, uh,  did commission the study and they  provided the customer introductions  that we'll go into more detail today,  they were not actually involved in the interview  process itself.  Okay, next slide. So at this point,  you're probably asking yourself, what is T-E-I-T-E-I stands  for Total economic impact.  The methodology at this point is over  years old,  and the goal and objective really is  to provide both a realistic and conservative assessment  or approach, um, to a technology that you  and your organization should feel confident using  within the framework.  And specifically for this study today, we look at benefits,  which you could expect from a business case,  and then we also take it a couple steps deeper  to look at flexibility, which to Forrester is the notion  that now there's an investment,  and in this case, in work, humans technology,  what new long-term business paths are  available to the organization.  And then finally, risks.  This is, I think we could all agree there's inherent risk in  any technology investment.  This is to account for those variations on  the benefit side of things.  So we wrap all of this up into our TEI analysis.  So at a high level, the investment  for our composite organization,  which we'll explain in just a moment,  but so that we can have a little bit of grounding here.  The composite is an aggregate of the five customers  that we spoke with for this study.  So it's a hypothetical organization.  Um, the high level benefits here you can see, uh,  we accrued   and a half million dollars in total benefits,  a % improvement in employee retention,  and then a % improvement in new hire retention.  We'll walk through together what exactly that means,  but wanna just kind of open up with some high level results  as well as a quote, uh, from a customer's point of view  around how their organization chose WorkHuman  as their employee recognition software, really  after serving internally their employees  to gauge organizational health  and their realization that there were areas,  uh, for improvement.  Next slide. So here you can see the  five organizations that we spoke with  as part of this analysis.  You can see they're global in nature  across a range of industries.  We had the chance to speak with financial services,  manufacturing, it, food, beverage, and specialty materials.  These were all multi-billion dollar organizations.  And in terms of employee base sizes, um,  quite a spread here,  but you can see inclusive all the way up  to , employees as a, um, base.  So let's go ahead and dive into what we first ask about  around customers.  It's critical for us to understand before states.  Um, so really when we say  before states, this is key challenges, you know,  what were they facing at the time of investment  that led them to, you know,  internally assessing their own a solution like WorkHuman.  So I would say, you know, when we spoke with customers, some  of them had longstanding culture of employee recognition.  They had that developed within their organization.  But on the flip side, you know, there were some customers  that were much more earlier in their stages  of defining really what recognition meant to their teams.  The majority had, uh, some sort of tool, um,  to help support their organizationals recognition efforts.  But the tools either lacked from a technology perspective,  um, for their organizations,  or they failed to deliver a program that could be customized  to their global audiences and meet their needs.  Some customers mentioned service issues more on  the award side of things.  Um, but in general, uh, adoption, regardless of what the,  uh, tool may have been that they had  for their employee recognition efforts, adoption was low.  So ultimately sought a solution.  Um, and in this case, we're human.  So if we flip to the next slide, we're curious, of course,  okay, well, what are your objectives?  We understand where you are today, you know,  what are you hoping to achieve, um,  and evaluate as part of a business case.  So in this case, the customers really emphasize the peer  to peer nature of recognition across their workforce  for both frontline  and knowledge workers, recognizing the difference  between employee types there,  and of course what, um, access to technology  that each of them had.  They also were looking for a solution  that had a simple user interface that could be  and help promote, uh, adoption across their organization.  And then a solution that could be tailored towards, um,  more, more on the design side  of things tailored towards their organization's priorities,  recognizing that those priorities may evolve, um, over,  over the course of the years that is deployed.  So we can flip to the next slide.  And this is really where we land on our composite.  So I mentioned the term at the beginning  of the presentation.  This is our aggregate hypothetical organization,  which is grounded in, uh, the before states.  We just talked about the pain points challenges  of the five customers that we interviewed.  So you can see here for the purposes of our study,  this is a global multi-billion dollar organization.  There are , employees, which we characterize as a mix  of both knowledge  and frontline workers to be inclusive of the use cases  that we heard during the interviews themselves.  And again, the important note here really is that this is,  uh, meant to be generalized.  We know organizations are much more complex than just the  characteristics listed on the screen here today.  But as long as you can understand, you know, the findings  and the assumptions that we make within the TEI study,  you can apply, uh, the, the results to your own organization  and make tweaks where necessary,  even if you don't necessarily see your organization exactly  within these characteristics here for our composite.  The other piece to highlight for the composite is really  how it deployed WorkHuman.  Um, you can see here it does implement four  WorkHuman modules.  So this is social recognition, service, milestones,  celebrations, and life events.  We do look at the TEI benefits over  the course of three years.  Um, so it has an increasing, uh,  employees increasingly adopt WorkHuman at the composite year  over year from year one to year three.  And the, um, composite does have the ability  to centralize its recognition budget, um,  at the organizational level rather than siloed,  which was important to the customers as well.  Next slide. So here's another  kind of voice of the customer quote.  I've included it, uh, really to highlight how this customer  included and described that recognition programs go beyond  just a compensation reward program.  And this really kind of level sets us  for the benefits both quantified and unquantified  or qualitative, which we will dive into now.  So we'll first start on the quantitative side of things.  You can see there were two benefits that we have here, both  employee retention improvement as well  as new hire retention improvement.  So let's go ahead and explain exactly how we got  to the results that we did.  When we spoke with customers, they really emphasized  how employee retention metrics were tied to recognition, um,  and their ability to closely track improvement over time.  So interviewees shared internal studies  of their own employee data, um,  that indicated higher employee adoption  of specifically peer-to-peer social recognition practices,  drove higher engagement levels,  and as a result, ultimately higher retention.  This benefit is specifically focusing on tenured employees  for the sake of this study, that's employees  who have been at the composite for at least a year as, uh,  in contrast to the next benefit, which is new hires.  So those less than a year, you can see off to the left here,  really the drivers behind the retention improvement.  So there was emphasis on a mix of characteristics, uh,  in program design that were essential to this.  Um, improvement in retention.  So this includes frequent recognition  with smaller award values, a mix of both peer  and manager recognition, a mix of e thanks, uh,  and monetary awards.  And then finally ensuring that their program  was allowed employees to both actively receive  and give recognition.  So these drivers, again, kind of recapping  what we did at the high level results at the beginning are,  are behind the % improvement that we can see in retention.  You can also see, as I mentioned, kind of,  there's an increasing adoption  of WorkHuman at the composite each year.  So we there, the composite reaches its % adoption  by the end of year three.  The $. million in cost savings that you see off  to the right is really a result of the costs specifically  around hiring and training employee replacements, uh,  that are saved as a result of having WorkHuman in place.  And so if we flip to the second quantified benefit,  it is structured exactly the same way as the first, uh,  but it does narrow focus in on new hires,  some differences to call out.  Here interviewees did explain to us  that there is a higher attrition rate  for new hires specifically,  but then also a higher improvement in retention  because of WorkHuman.  So this is how we get to the % improvement,  so slightly higher than, um, tenured employees, uh,  and a similar % adoption by the end of year three.  So this adds, you know,  almost $ million in additional cost savings as it relates  to hiring and training.  So I mentioned there are many,  many more benefits within the study that we, um,  heard from customers.  There are seven qualitative benefits in total,  both on this slide and the next.  And the first place that I'll start if we kind  of categorize these is really around the work.  Human team interviewees mentioned work, humans willingness  to, uh, help help these organizations understand  and overcome adoption challenges, uh, critical  to realizing the benefits  that we've just talked about together.  Additionally, their social analytics team was called out  as being important, um, helping their, these customers.  HR leaders really design  and understand what business value metrics to  track within their own organizations  as a result of WorkHuman.  And then more internally, the platform, um,  allow these organizations to tie recognition sentiments  to company values, uh, placing an emphasis on being able  to reinforce company culture.  And then leaders also gain the ability to  highlight recognition either at company-wide meetings  or department meetings, uh, around discussions of culture.  So again, reinforcing that's a similar point.  And then finally, the peer-to-peer aspect really, um,  allowing employee groups that may not have, uh,  had the chance to work together, um,  or work alongside one another, um, allowing them to do that.  Um, the other quant, uh, qualitative  or unquantified benefits here.  Um, you know, HR leaders being able  to design a more equitable  and consistent program around recognition.  We talked a little bit about frontline  and knowledge workers together, so both of them, you know,  having their unique needs, this platform serving, um,  as the ability to create that unique experience.  And then finally on the program administrator side, really  around their ability to drive reporting, uh,  or receive reporting insights in this, uh, you know,  driving efficiencies maybe on some tasks that were more  so manual in the prior environment prior  to WorkHuman was implemented.  The last thing I'll call out here  before, um, kind  of our Fuji use case is did look at employee productivity.  Um, this being a result of higher engagement levels,  not necessarily something that Forrester was able  to quantify for this study at the time of interviews,  but definitely was highlighted, uh, during our discussions.  And so flexibility, again, more so on the future use case.  Uh, here you can see there's a few,  few highlights to call out here.  AI capabilities were mentioned really in driving  further employee engagement.  Um, of course it continuing to expand to meet, you know,  full adoption, uh, at the composite level,  promoting in the moment recognition.  So this being, um, this feature being available  through integrations.  And then of course, continuing to evolve  what business value is important to each  of these organizations and assessing that over time.  So as we conclude the more results focus portion  and research focus portion of this webinar, I do leave you  with a quote from one of the customers, really  around future possibilities  and outcomes of working in WorkHuman, working  with WorkHuman, um,  and the future looking mindset that some  of these customers share with us at the time of interviews.  So we encourage you, check out the full study, see what, uh,  we weren't able to share with you today.  Um, this is much more detail,  go ahead and turn it back over to Dave.  Great, thank you so much, uh,  for, for taking me through that.  It was a real pleasure to work so closely  with you on the study  and we're thrilled with the outcomes of what you found.  Um, so to wrap up our webinar, I wanted to go a bit  beyond though what, uh, Forrester was able to find, uh,  in quantifying the, the benefits of,  of an investment in strategic recognition.  There's a host of other benefits that that also, uh,  that Sarah mentioned that I wanted to explore a bit deeper,  um, beyond just direct cost saving.  We know that a culture of recognition  can drive a cultural shift  that organizations sometimes struggle to quantify,  but unanimously agree that recognition is invaluable  to driving business success success.  For example, we know that culture, uh, as they say,  can eat strategy for breakfast.  That's a quote that's attributed to, uh,  the great Peter Drucker.  And simply what that says is, is  that a company's organizational culture is  more critical than its strategic plan.  Even the best strategy will fail if the organizational  culture doesn't support, uh, its implementation.  So cultural impacts from a recognition impact, uh,  in the form of tying recognition directly to company values  and fostering greater collaboration.  It brings greater connection to their work  and it strengthens the employee's sense of belonging.  It also provides you with data-driven decision making using,  uh, deep analytical learnings that's available to us today.  Through the power of artificial intelligence, we can begin  to create business strategy  and make business decisions based upon  what we're seeing within these recognition moments.  There's also a greater degree  of cross-functional collaboration.  Sending and receiving peer-to-peer recognition facilitates  those stronger connection points between employees  who might not otherwise frequently collaborate, leading  to more cohesive workplace relationships  and the organic formation of new high performing teams  around equitable and inclusion inclusive recognition.  With the AI driven tools like Inclusion Advisor  and the standard of living index that are built  in the human a work human platform, organizations are able  to ensure there's fairness in the giving of rewards,  eliminate unconscious bias in guaranteeing  that employees are receiving an equitable  experience worldwide.  And then there's a host of operational efficiencies  that can follow from customized reporting capabilities  within WorkHuman.  It eliminates the need for manual data tracking,  and it allows HR and leadership teams to quickly  and more efficiently analyze  and communicate programs success without the administrative  hassle that often comes with it.  Let's take a, a closer look at a particular  client of work humans.  And that is of our friends at Morgan Truck Body.  Now Morgan Truck Body is, uh,  an approximately , person organization,  and they are responsible for building some  of the tractor trailers that we see  on the roads around the world.  And through their partnership with WorkHuman  Morgan Truck Body was able to find an increase of %  of their sites that had used a rec  that leveraged the a recognition program By WorkHuman,  we're able to see improvements in productivity,  employee safety, and product quality year over year  as a direct result of their partnership  and their belief in creating a,  a strong culture of recognition.  Additionally, around productivity, we, uh,  have work humans worked with other researchers  to identify the potential  of nearly $ million in gained employee  productivity from the establishment  and development of a strong recognition culture.  These, uh, these benefits are derived in a host of areas,  including, uh, employee safety with fewer, uh, a,  a decrease in on the job injuries  and a fewer unscheduled absences.  It could also be attributed to higher customer retention  or sales performance,  or just improved employee wellness,  which we'll talk more about further.  In fact, on the topic of wellbeing, we know from research  that we've been doing that strategic recognition  has the power to enhance employee wellbeing.  Employees who strongly agree  that recognition is an important part  of their culture are up to % more likely  to be thriving in their organization.  Employees who strongly agree that they get the right amount  of recognition for the work that they do are up  to % more likely to say that they're thriving.  And when employees give recognition at work,  at least a few times a month, so they are as much  as two times as likely to be thriving.  This concept of thriving at work is an important concept in  employee engagement, uh,  because we know that employee engagement is so critical  to driving all sorts of other business outcomes.  Investing in strategic recognition also unites employees  around the world and it can help their feeling  and of a sense of belonging.  The impact of belonging at work includes  improved performance  and learning through fostering psychological safety,  which drives stronger learning and performance outcomes.  It boosts health and reduces stress.  A sense of belonging supports better physical health,  and it buffers against burnout.  It also builds resilience and trust.  Ongoing recognition strengthens trust, commitment  and team resilience.  And as we saw with the study that Sarah talked us through  recognition attributes to lower attrition recognition  and social support increases employees commitment.  Our research partners have found that without belonging,  they're up to  times more likely to be disengaged.  So the effects  and the impact of recognition while in some  cases can be quantified.  There's also a host of benefits  that are a little bit more difficult to understand  and get our arm wrapped around.  And that's sort of the power of recognition.  It's kind of a two-pronged effect  where there's clear hard dollar impact in lowering re uh,  lowering employee turnover that absolutely  and directly saves organizations money.  But there's a host of these qual qualitative benefits,  more difficult to measure, right?  Feelings of connection, feeling valued,  feeling more motivated to show up better at work.  It also attributes to a better sense of mental health,  and it provides employees with affirmation.  So this ripple effect, uh, of recognition, um,  just continues to bring greater and greater value.  We have a saying at Work Human that says, people  who see recognition tend to repeat the behaviors.  Okay? What people see, recognize gets repeated.  So with that, um, we'll wrap up today's webinar  and move now into our q and a session.  Remember, if you have any questions, feel free  to come off mute, can ask your question live  or feel free to use the functionality right within  the Zoom link.  So let's get to the questions.  So we've had a few questions come in the chat  that we've been working to answer,  but, uh, we can open it up a bit more broadly here  for anyone who, uh, would like to ask, uh, either myself  or our guests, any questions from what they've shared.  And just looking at the q  and a section, there's a couple of questions in here, um,  that, that are for different people.  So Sarah, I see a couple for you.  I don't know if there are some that you wanna hop on and,  and take a look at.  And then there's one about generations that I can take.  So who wants to go first?  I could jump in. So let's see.  All right, so there's a question in here  about Okay, we can start.  Yeah, so the adoption rate, I have mentioned, you know,  hitting an % adoption rate for the composite organization.  And, you know, part of  what we heard from customers really was  around each organization had a varying degree of maturity  as it related to their culture of recognition.  So, you know, really understanding there's going to be a,  a starting place that's different for each organization.  But with this in mind, I would say the organizations  that were successful in hitting kind  of a higher adoption were really intentional about working  with the WorkHuman team to understand, you know, even  before implementing what are common adoption challenges  and barriers, you know, what can our organization do  to get ahead of some of them?  Um, and I would also say we talked a little bit about  program design, really making sure  that whoever the tool is implemented across, you know,  their own organization, it made sense to the employee base,  it was familiar, it could be understood,  and this isn't, you know, this is tapping into things like  tying back recognition, you know, levels  or you know, the program in general to co co uh,  company values and culture.  So many ways to customize  and really again, ensure that this is not a, you know,  design forget it solution.  It's very much as iterated by the interviewees, you know,  continue to be optimized and customized over time.  Great. So I can take, there's a question in here  that asks, um, I'd like to know how recognition is perceived  among the generations that are now in the workforce,  um, in the workplace.  So for example, many generations  and millennials, uh,  don't know about thank you cards the way Gen X  and boomers might.  So a couple of things on this.  Um, years and years ago when I was working in IT  and millennials were coming into the workforce,  and there was a whole industry that was spun up  around managing millennials.  And some of you who are millennials may remember this,  there were all these consultants  that were telling organizations how to manage millennials.  And I was at a conference and a, a woman came up to me  and she said, key, I'm starting  to feel like I'm a problem, right?  Like, why do we need all of these people explaining  how millennials do stuff?  And I agree with that sentiment  that when we separate people out by generations in that way,  we are generalizing about them.  And sometimes some of those things are  true, but they're not always.  So my guidance to her  and to anyone who asks me how to manage millennials  or how to manage Gen Z is they're humans  and you manage them like humans, which means you need  to know what motivates 'em.  You need to know what they care about.  So if we think about expectancies theory, the  part of it is, is that reward meaningful.  You need to understand not what's meaningful  to a whole generation, but what's meaningful to individuals  and what they care about,  which is why a recognition system needs to have  that combination of recognizing the behavior, meaning  apart from the monetary value at all, you are elevating  and making someone visible for doing something that is good.  So that piece of it is just as important.  And there's another question in here  about the monetary piece.  The, the visibility piece is just as important  as the monetary piece.  The monetary piece does need to be meaningful in some way,  meaning there has to be,  or there should be some flexibility in it.  So if, for example, all you could get  for a recognition in a monetary value was, um, a,  a gift card for a restaurant  and you never went out to eat, then  that wouldn't be meaningful for you.  So it's combination of making sure you get the  moment right, meaning you are appreciating  that person in the moment, regardless of the monetary piece,  and then you are adding on something that is meaningful  to them if you choose to do so.  So I personally would just suggest  that it's less about the generational questions  and more about the individual choice,  which applies across all generations.  Humans in general prefer some choice  and prefer to have some agency in, in how they are rewarded  for things if possible.  Okay. David, I don't know if you see any in there  that you wanna jump on.  There's a couple that would like working. Um,  Yeah, I'm answering some right in the chat.  I'll speak to this one that I'm, that I was, um, being,  I was answering, which was,  is there a difference in recognition that is monetary based  or versus, uh, a non-monetary based?  So, um, what the question, question is, is referring to is  at WorkHuman, you know, we help,  or excuse me, we help organizations deliver recognition,  and those recognition moments could include a monetary,  a monetary award, a micro bonus if you will.  Typically that average amount is somewhere between   and $ per instance.  So it's, it's relatively small,  but we also, uh, have the ability  to give non-monetary recognition or kind of an e kudos  or e thank you, whichever,  whatever term you might wanna use.  And, and, and workmen has been doing this  for over nearly  years now.  And so we've been studying the impact in the business  effects of, of, uh,  non-monetary recognition delivered in mass  or at scale in organizations as it compares to, uh,  recognition delivered, uh, in a monetary form in mass  and in recognition sometimes within the same organization.  And, and essentially the, the outcomes of  that research is yes, people respond better  in, in, in outcomes that matter to organizations.  Most often that measure is around retention  when they receive monetary recognition.  And, you know, there's some common sense in that, right?  If I want to incentivize my children  or my pet to drive a certain behavior  that we're all familiar with, well, you know,  parrots sometimes, um, uh, lead me to that outcome  a lot faster, a lot quicker than a non-car  or no carrot, right?  So, um, you know, so, so the, our,  our research follows that same sort of con concept  and principle in that we tend to do see, uh, better outcomes  with monetary based recognition.  If you were to quantify that,  I think our research is something like nearly four times  you need, you need four times more non-monetary recognition  to deliver the same effect of one monetary recognition.  And there's some research that backs that up.  So that's one question and I'll move away from that.  Um, I thought there was a question in here,  um, that was related for the study,  but, uh, Katie, there's one, um, you mentioned  that if any part of the expectancy theory is missing,  like if the reward doesn't carry value mm-hmm.  Then that motivation drops to zero.  Um, did you touch on that one?  Yeah, as that's a good one to talk about too.  I touched on it a little bit,  but let me just sort of open the aperture a little bit.  Um, meaningful work,  when we talk about meaningful work, um, there are a lot  of people who say, well, meaningful work is its own reward.  And that's sort of true, right?  If we're talking about intrinsic motivation.  But we all know there are certain tasks  and things that we do that are not intrinsically motivating.  And so when we think about what motivates different kinds  of work, and there was a study that was done  by Theresa Malay who, um, I mentioned earlier,  and you've probably heard about it if you've ever watched  Daniel Pink's Ted Talk on motivation.  And what he describes is the fact  that repetitive work is motivated differently than  creative work and knowledge work solving problems daily  is creative work.  So when we're thinking about what's meaningful in  that motivation theory, we have to think about the type  of work that's being done.  Because if I'm asking someone to do something that they know  how to do really well  and is easy for them, then a simple  monetary reward is actually very effective.  If I say, hammer this nail into this piece of wood,  and then I say, well, I'll give you something, if you hammer  two nails instead of one nail in the same amount of time,  that is rewarding to people up to a point.  But creative work is motivated differently.  Creative work is more about the intrinsic motivation,  the reward of solving the problem itself  and being recognized and seen for it.  So, um, oh, it's Daniel Pink.  Norm just asked in the chat, um,  that Ted Talk is Daniel Pink, PINK, um,  and it's called What Science Knows  and Business Doesn't About Motivation, it's really good.  And it's not, it's not new, it's like  years old.  Um, and it was when he published a book called Drive the  Surprising Truth about what motivates us,  which is also a really good book.  Not that I'm doing promos for Daniel Pink today,  but we're talking about motivation  and that's a really useful, uh, resource.  So all that to say, when you're thinking about  that expectancy theory, right, can I hit the target?  Is the target itself meaningful to me? Is it worth hitting?  And is the reward that I get,  do I believe I'm gonna get a reward?  And is that reward meaningful to me?  You have to think about what type of work someone is doing,  what is meaningful to them.  So it's also why in some ways the question  of generations is less, less useful than the question of  what kind of work that person is doing  and what motivates them more generally.  So it's, it is complicated, right?  There is decades of research on motivation theory,  so I'm not sure that we can necessarily cover it all in one  webinar, but it is a very interesting topic  because there are a lot of  practices in organizations leadership  and reward practices  that are actually legacies from the industrial revolution  when we were doing very different kinds of work,  but we've just carried them over as management practices  and it is necessary in this day  and age when most people are doing knowledge work  and more creative work, even in frontline types of jobs.  It's very different from a motivation perspective.  Hopefully that's helpful. I know it was a lot.  Thanks Katie. Uh,  I'll answer another question I see here live and, and, um,  and Sarah, maybe I'll get your help here  because it does involve the study.  Ashley asks about the offline population  and was there any specific data that correlates  to an offline workforce?  And I know Sarah working closely with you on this study  with the clients from WorkHuman who participated, a few  of them had large offline populations.  Yes, correct. Do you recall any commentary from those  clients on the impact of the, of their offline workers and,  and how recognition, um, is reaching those offline workers?  Yeah, and I think this, uh, there was one in particular  that I can recall a manufacturing organization.  Uh, I think it was the largest customer that we spoke  with, and that's exactly right.  I think, you know,  a significant portion was frontline workers.  Um, and this goes back to the piece around intentionality  with program design  and really making sure that at the manager level, whoever is  interfacing daily with the frontline workers,  ensuring they were bought on, you know, brought on  and really understood the value of WorkHuman,  like why it even existed, and then, you know, coaching  or, you know, encouraging their employees.  So from what I can recall, you know, off the top of my head,  it really was the discussion, you know, led peace  and making sure, um,  there was stickler buy-in across both types  of employees, if you will.  Yeah. And, and I'll add, uh, you know, from experience,  it all starts with the tone at the top  and the leadership support for a cultural recognition.  So if you're in a manufacturing facility with a, uh,  or a plant environment, you know, the use of  of team huddles, uh, to, to create a,  so kind of a in-person social experience around celebrating,  you know, folks who, who have done a wonderful job and,  and calling them out, you know, in, in a team huddle.  But at WorkHuman we also use technology to better, uh,  better reach those folks to the degree that we're able.  So our application, our solution is available in both, um,  uh, uh, off a mobile application, both iOS  and Android, where, uh,  in those large manufacturing environments, we see, uh,  really good adoption in many cases  where there's an intentional effort to get folks  to buy into the idea of using their, their mobile phones  and downloading the apps.  Um, that's one way we also deliver through teams.  So we, we integrate with a lot of the technology  that's out there that organizations are already using  to reach those offline workers.  We're, we're, we're integrating  with a lot of those solutions as well.  So there's a number of strategies  that we can help organizations, um, to, to, to really target  and impact those workers who may not be sitting in front  of a laptop like I am here right now.  And one, one other thing I can add,  I know I had called this out, uh, during flexibility section  of the presentation, but this kind  of emphasizes in the moment recognition.  So it's definitely something that the customers spoke with  as well, reaching, you  know, reaching the employee where they are.  So yeah. Dave, there's one other study related question.  I think it might be helpful for the audience to hear.  So the question is asking, you know,  my employee base does not exactly match the number  of employees in the composite how to results differ.  Um, this is something, you know, really important to, uh,  take ation when you actually get the study in front of you.  So one benefit of the TEI is that it does have model tables.  So for each quantified benefit in this case, there are two,  you'll see exactly how the kind of, kind of quote unquote  behind the scenes math works from a forest or perspective.  So the, the benefit here, you know,  if you have a thousand person organization instead,  you can actually plug in as an input,  if you will, a thousand employees.  It trickled down the math  to understand the cost savings for your organization.  So I would encourage you to play around with that, um,  and dive a little bit more into the differences  and how you still can understand what it means for you.  Yeah, and, and I, I would add Sarah more at a macro level.  Uh, we we're human again, we, we work  with organizations of all sizes.  We, we've worked with, you know,  one thou usually it's about  person organizations in up,  if I'm being transparent.  But because the concept of recognition  and the delivery of gratitude is something so embedded, the,  the positive effects of that is embedded in psychology  that I'm not an expert in.  Frankly, I, I would lean into Katie here a bit more, but  because we're talking about human to human interaction,  celebrating the positive, celebrating the good, you know,  it works any place, anywhere  where there are people at the heart  of an organization, right?  We know, you know, the benefits of wellness  and the mental health impacts of gratitude that's been,  that's been, been studied and, and and offered.  Um, you know, for, for folks who, who are suffering  or are experiencing mental health issues, one  of the best ways to sort of overcome that is  to express more gratitude in, in, in, in, in that concept.  You know, there's so much power behind identifying  what is going good in the world, what's going good at,  at work for both the person you're giving it to,  but also the one who is giving it.  And so, uh, regardless of size of organization,  gratitude is good.  We, we call it vitamin G  because it delivers so much goodness.  The vitamin G is that gratitude.  Uh, and,  and so, um, spread the grad, spread that vitamin G as  as much as you can and, and good things will come. Yeah,  And I'll just tack onto that.  Um, so we did some research at Forrester probably three  or four years ago,  and when we looked at things  that were protective against burnout, we find  that recognition is the top of the list for factors  that mitigate burnout.  Because a lot  of burnout comes from when people feel like they're toiling  alone in the dark and nobody knows all the hard work  and effort they're putting in.  And so shining a light on people through recognition,  and again, a lot of people have asked this question about  monetary versus non-monetary, the psychological benefit  of recognition.  And, and I mean that in the literal sense, seeing someone  recognizing work  that has carries its own water in terms of helping people.  Um, and, and David to your point,  from a mental health perspective,  from a protectiveness against burnout perspective, right?  Just being seen for doing good hard work is important.  And on top of that, being seen  and recognized specifically matters.  So if I say to Dave  or to Sarah, wow, you guys were great on  that webinar, that's okay.  If I say to Sarah, you know,  what really made a difference on that webinar was  how well you knew the research so that you could dive in  and answer questions specifically  about what people were asking.  And I think that had a big impact on people.  You can really hear the difference in those two comments  and how much more meaningful that second one is.  So it's the specificity, it's being seen  and recognized.  It's also being seen amongst your peers for doing good work.  And so all of that comes together to give people, again,  that psychological boost that Dave was talking about.  The financial piece does matter.  And I will say there's a lot  of conversation about this, right?  Do we need to do the financial piece at all?  There's some good research as well about  compensation more broadly.  And again, it's way more we can than we can talk  about on this short webinar.  But I'll just say there's, uh,  if we think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs for a minute,  if any of you are familiar with that, in order for people  to do good work, that lowest level is they have  to feel safe at work, they have to be able  to meet their basic needs.  So there's a level of compensation that people need in order  to just be able to focus on work at all.  If they're not meeting their basic needs,  if they're not able to afford food and water  and shelter, then recognition is not gonna be enough  to sort of put them over the edge on that.  But as you move up Maslow's hierarchy  and you get into the belonging and the meaningful work  and really all the way up to self-actualization,  those are places where recognition matters a lot.  So the monetary piece of it depends a lot on where  that person is in terms  of their overall financial situation.  I personally think the actual act  of recognizing is more important than the monetary piece.  But there is also some good research out there  that says the monetary piece matters  and is significant in, in certain use cases too.  So it's complicated is the answer to all of those questions.  I see a question here from Latoya about the ROI  of recognition, and I love the question  'cause it's my absolute favorite topic, and,  and I feel like, um, it's an area that I love, uh,  about, about recognition.  Sarah, the study, the composite organization was ,  employees, I believe, and we, we accomplished north  of $ million in benefit, if I, right?  Correct. Yeah. So easy math,  that's about a thousand dollars per employee in benefit.  That, that, if I believe I'm doing  math off the top of my head, right?  So if we bake it down to buy a per employee basis, you know,  in our composite study and the outcomes of the research,  and I know the benefits were a little bit even greater than,  than than  million.  So, um, if we, if we do the math  and it's a thousand dollars per employee,  I can promise you this about that composite organization.  'cause I know these clients behind the scenes,  they're not spending a thousand dollars on recognition  to achieve these benefits.  So the point here is,  is an investment in recognition always pays for itself, pays  for itself in outcomes, right?  If you do it right, recognition, done right,  doing it right means the right level of reach,  the right level of frequency with the right amount of value.  And that value typically, as I mentioned during my talk,  somewhere in the neighborhood of $ up to $,  if you do four to six  or eight of those a year,  we're talking about a few hundred dollars of investment  to capture over a thousand dollars of benefit.  And the payback on that is Forex.  So Latoya, I hear you here on trying to sort  of quantify the benefits of your investment.  You're a partner of work human, uh,  you mentioned in your question.  So reach out to me, find me on LinkedIn,  send me an email at David dot yes,  that rhymes@workhuman.com.  Um, I would love to work directly with you to help you with  that case study or that business case for your organization  and anybody else who's,  who's interested in learning more about that, that  that's why I'm on this webinar because I do that work.  And our partnership with Forrester was to really dive in  and actually study the, the true economic impact of,  of a partnership with us.  Thank you so much for joining us here today.  Here are the codes  and if you have any questions at all,  you can feel free to reach out to us.  But we hope to see you on the next one. All.

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