On Tuesday, December 8, from 2-3pm, the Enterprise Engagement Alliance and the Human Capital Institute will sponsor a webinar entitled "Return on Value by Engaging Talent: What Leaders Can Do," presented by Rodger Stotz, Chief Research Officer of the Incentive Research Foundation, and James Dittman, President of Dittman Incentive Marketing. The webcast will focus on the economic reasons to engage talent, discussing what leaders can do to create value from talent engagement. You"ll hear examples of leaders and organizations that excel at engagement and gain insight to achieving high levels of engagement in your own organization. To register, go to www.hci.org/hci/rpas_incentives_engagement.guid
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance will hold its first annual EEA Networking Expo at the Doral Arrowwood Hotel Conference Center in Rye Brook, NY, June 3-5, 2010. The event is designed to help organizations profit from engaging their key audiences and engineer new ways to use rewards and recognition to drive performance. A slate of interactive education sessions will enable attendees to share the latest and most effective policies, procedures, strategies and tactics in the field of engagement, offering unique, actionable ideas and information they can use to boost performance and profitability, and build relationships with all key audiences. Exhibitors representing the top products, programs and performance-improvement companies will be available during eight hours of dedicated exhibit time, as well as at other networking events and activities during the EEA Networking Expo, to share their extensive expertise with attendees. The Doral Arrowwood is convenient to all major metropolitan areas in the Boston/NYC/Philadelphia/Washington, DC corridor, located only 10 minutes from Westchester Country Airport and 40 minutes from New York's LaGuardia airport. For more information about the Enterprise Engagement Alliance Networking Expo, go to www.eeaexpo.com
International loyalty management corporation Groupe Aeroplan Inc., headquartered in Montreal, recently announced that it would acquire U.S.-based Carlson Marketing from Carlson Companies Inc. at a purchase price of $175.3 million USD. The deal is expected to close in December 2009. Carlson Marketing is recognized for leading-edge loyalty marketing services, engagement and events management. It also has strong client relationships with leading brands in the financial services, automotive, high tech, consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries. Groupe Aeroplan is a major player in the international loyalty management marketplace. It owns Aeroplan, the leading loyalty program in Canada, and Nectar, a coalition loyalty program in the U.K. It also operates programs in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. Current plans are for Groupe Aeroplane and Carlson Marketing to continue to run separately and independently – with no planned staff reductions or relocations. President and CEO Jeff Balagna will continue to head the Carlson Marketing management team. Says Balagna: "We look forward to joining forces with Groupe Aeroplan and significantly strengthening the scope of our loyalty marketing, program management and engagement and event offerings for customers, employees and business channels. Together we become the world's leading loyalty management provider, able to offer a vastly expanded network of loyalty marketing capabilities."
The Enterprise Engagement Alliance held a special meeting and reception at September's Motivation Show in Chicago. Founders and supporters of the EEA gathered to hear from some of the top names in the field, including EEA Chairman Allan Schweyer, Rodger Stotz of the IRF, Gallup's Ken Shearer and Melanie Lewis, Director of Sales Engagement at AstraZeneca, who accepted the EEA's first Enterprise Engagement Award of Achievement on behalf of AstraZeneca. In her acceptance speech, Lewis noted that AZ's engagement journey began about four years ago with a simple thought, and a challenge that wasn't so simple. "Michael Hickey, our Vice President of Sales at the time, posed the thought: Imagine what would be possible if we built an organization in which 100% of the people were engaged 100% of the time," said Lewis. "Michael had read the book, First, Break all the Rules, co-authored by Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham, and learned about the Gallup Organization's Q12 – the 12 questions used to measure the core elements of employee engagement." One of the most obvious examples of AstraZeneca's commitment to engagement is the creation of Lewis's current role as Director of Sales Engagement. "This is a position unique to the Sales organization and, to me, emphasizes the importance and criticality of engagement," she said. "I think we all know the business case to be made for engaging our employees; the work that the Gallup Organization, the Peppers & Rogers Group and the EEA have done makes it abundantly clear. No matter the statistic or the data source, we know that an engaged workforce drives better customer engagement, better revenue and higher profits."
To read more about how AstraZeneca has grown to become one of the premier corporations in the world in terms of its engagement culture and commitment, click here.
The Incentive Marketing Association (IMA) announced the winners of its 2009 Circle of Excellence Awards at The Motivation Show in Chicago. The awards, which are meant to identify and recognize outstanding examples of successful customer and employee incentive programs meant to drive business, went to three top winners:
"The path to being an effective manager and leader begins with a handful of essential traits," says Michael A. Fina. "It's the ability to build and maintain relationships, the capacity to recognize problems and take the necessary action to solve them, the conviction to trust your instinct, the wisdom to keep an open mind and, above all else, to act with integrity. These traits, combined with a well-developed employee celebration strategy that is aligned with business goals, can improve performance, productivity and profitability." Fina, Vice President of Michael C. Fina, discusses the philosophies that have led to the continued success of his family business in a new book, Perspectives on Managing Employees. The book includes Fina's own ideas on engaging new hires early in their employment, building trusted relationships between managers and employees, strategic employee celebrations and how successful managers navigate through HR minefields. He also highlights the importance of employee retention in both good economic times and bad. According to Fina, a well-developed and executed retention plan is key to reducing these costs, maintaining productivity and staying competitive in your market. Most importantly, this plan doesn't have to feature the hefty cash bonuses or lavish trips on the company dime that have been the subject of media and public scrutiny of late. Perspectives on Managing Employees, by Michael A. Fina; Published by Course Technology PTR, 2009.
For more on Michael C. Fina Company, visit its website at www.michaelcfina.com. To order a copy of Perspectives on Managing Employees by Michael A. Fina, click here.
As part of our effort to re-brand and re-focus the "Motivation Industry" under the broader umbrella of Engagement in all its various forms and functions, Engagement Strategies Magazine is proud to present a special "e-book" issue on The State of the Industry.
Click this link to download and view this ESM special report and read what key players in the Engagement industry have to say about this comprehensive corporate philosophy that will transform the relationship between companies, employees and customers, ushering in a new era of productivity and profitability. ESM is the official publication of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance, a coalition of companies and associations dedicated to the idea that engagement is an enterprise-wide endeavor that "begins with people and ends with profitability" The EEA's primary mission is to research and promote the importance of engaging people in business, including customers, employees, channel partners and managers.
The Fall issue of Engagement Strategies Magazine is scheduled to mail this week. Here's a preview of what you'll find inside:
Don Peppers says he came to understand the need for both employee and customer engagement through his work in marketing – particularly his study of marketing technology – over the last decade and a half. "The whole one-to-one marketing concept is based on technology," explains Peppers, co-founder with Martha Rogers of Peppers & Rogers Group and 1to1 Media and co-author of the recent book, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow. "It's concerned with the fact that interactive, database and computer technology were making it more possible for companies to talk to customers one at a time, customize products and services for them and hear back from them, as opposed to simply talking at them through mass media. There's a whole architecture of competition now built around this sort of interactive relationship with customers. But at its core, it's driven by technology." Read more of the Fall cover story in Engagement Strategies Magazine. To make sure you get your copy, click here.
Jeff Grisamore has spent virtually his entire career in the performance improvement field, but as the 21st Century dawned he and his company saw the need for a change. "About eight years ago we made a decision to diversify the company," says the President of EGR International, "and we started an in-house marketing communications/ad agency. We realized that in order for the promises made by performance improvement companies to be delivered, there had to be a communications component. Whether you're trying to motivate an individual or a group, the success of the program has a lot more to do with communications than it does with the reward component alone." Now, in addition to the performance improvement component of its business, EGR employs art directors, copy writers, graphic designers, web application experts and motion graphics and animation people. "We have this really dynamic agency competency that we can overlay onto our performance improvement programs," Grisamore says. "That's a huge differentiator for us from a lot of the traditional, mainline incentive companies." Read more at EngagementStrategiesMag.com.
In our annual overview of recent studies on recognition, motivation and engagement, we look at the latest research from the Human Capital Institute, the Incentive Research Foundation, the Forum for People Performance Management & Measurement, Aberdeen Group, TMP worldwide, Hay Group and Watson Wyatt. To find out how people are driving performance and profits, go to EngagementStrategiesMag.com.
One of the greatest opportunities to increase corporate profits – and subsequently boost the economy – lies in motivating workforces to improve performance, drive greater customer engagement and ultimately increase revenue, according to a new report from the Enterprise Engagement Alliance (EEA) and the Human Capital Institute (HCI). The Enterprise Engagement Alliance is a coalition of companies and associations dedicated to promoting the importance of engagement, founded last year by the Human Capital Institute, Peppers & Rogers Group, 1to1® Media and Selling Communications, Inc. Entitled The Economics of Engagement, the report provides a comprehensive analysis of research in the field of Enterprise Engagement and offers how-to information on benchmarking tools that can quantitatively measure the benefits of employee and customer engagement. These measurement tools are critical to demonstrate the bottom-line impact of enterprise engagement, both to corporations and to the economy as a whole, using financial language that senior executives, investors and economists are accustomed to. "One of the most encouraging findings of this report is the revelation that vast reserves of overall performance potential are essentially hiding in plain sight," says Bruce Bolger of the Enterprise Engagement Alliance. "Engaging the people that companies deal with on a day-to-day basis – both internally and externally – in a comprehensive, compelling and connected way will create a result that is more than just the sum of its parts. Naturally, as with any such investment, the return needs to be demonstrated to decision makers, and there's a growing body of evidence in the engagement arena that does just that." For a copy of the report, click here.
Selling Communications, Inc. is a fully integrated, target marketing, media and technology agency that improves results for clients by focusing on the people who matter most. We can help your business grow and save you money by targeting key prospects, getting their permission and strategically integrating your marketing and sales communications with the specific audiences most likely to affect your business performance.
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For more information on Selling Communications, its products and services, contact Jim Kilmetis at 914-591-7600, ext. 229 or send an e-mail to jkilmetis@sellingcommunications.com.
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