The Employee Loyalty Card - Notes from Aquire Structure 2011
SteveGood morning from Fort Worth, Texas!
I have been attending the Aquire User Conference called 'Structure 2011' the last two days, and first off I wanted to express my thanks and gratitude to Aquire CEO Lois Melbourne for inviting me not only to attend, but to also present to Aquire's customers, partners, and staff. A copy of my presentation, about some of the challenges and opportunities that the dynamic, hybrid, and ever-changing workforce presents to organizations, is loaded on Slideshare here, and embedded below, (email and RSS readers will need to click through).
But more interesting than my presentation, was an idea that sprang from a presentation on analytics from Aquire's Andrew Courtois, and was later kicked around a bit on a special 'Live from Aquire' broadcast of the HR Happy Hour Show, (the part of the show where Andrew joins is about 30 minutes in).
Andrew talked about how casino companies leverage analytics to drive revenue and (hopefully) improve customer experience and loyalty via the use of what are called 'Player Loyalty Cards'. The basic premise is a player signs up for a casino loyalty or reward card, agreed to have their playing history tracked by the casino, and in exchange the casino offers different rewards and incentives for regular or additional play.
Seems like a pretty good deal, right? The player gets the occasional reward or bonus and feels a little more attached to the casino and process. The casino gets access to detailed data on playing trends and history. But what Andrew shared about one of the ways HOW the casino uses this data was the interesting part.
By analyzing playing data both in aggregate, and at the player level, the casino comes to 'know' a given player's 'pain point', i.e., the general amount of playing losses that causes to given gambler to quit playing and walk away. By looking at the 'Player Loyalty Card' data, and comparing real-time casino floor information with the data from previous experiences, the casino can, again in real-time, send a host or hostess over to see a player that the data says is about to get up and leave and offer the player a free dinner, a discounted room, or some other reward or incentive to stay a bit longer and (hopefully) continue playing. Sort of devious and also a really smart way to use analytics to drive business outcomes.
So after Andrew's talk, and on the radio show, we floated around the idea of a similar construct in the workplace, something called 'The Employee Loyalty Card'. What if as an organization, we could create a way to capture all the activities, actions, interactions, projects, contacts, etc. that an employee undertakes inside the company and then somehow find a way to analyze that data against actual historical outcomes in order to take both preventative and corrective actions?
We all have those anecdotal organizational stories about the 'client from hell' or that manager that is really hard to work with, but sometimes we don't really know the deleterious effect they have on the organization's people. Do high-performing people suddenly start performing worse after getting assigned to a particular project or manager? Do they leave six months later in higher numbers?
Conversely, we often have a great leader or two that we all feel does a good job of developing and coaching staff, but can we more accurately predict their ongoing impact on the people in the organization, and better still - can we use data to understand how to create more of these great managers? Do we know that 40% of our best performing sales people might have taken training from the same sales manager?
Could you imagine an 'Employee Loyalty Card?'. A way to trigger HR and organizaitonal leadership when employees hit that tipping or pain point?. A process or technology to collect, analyze, and act on all these diverse employee interactions and actions and then make more informed decisions?
It was an interesting conversation and I would love to know what you think.
Thanks again to everyone at Aquire!
Reader Comments (2)
I didn't know casinos manipulated the information in their loyalty cards to try to keep people at the tables. I don't think that would even be legal in Canada—it's hard enough to get gambling addicts away from the tables as it is.
As for "employee loyalty cards"—I think the premise is good, but you would have to be careful in the implementation. If people get the feeling that they're being "spied on" at work, it could end pretty disastrously. Plus it's important to treat people as individuals, and not just data points and deviations off of the mean.
Employee training is essential for an organization’s success.Training is a program that helps employees learn specific knowledge or skills to improve performance in their current roles.
Employee training is a process focused on communicating with and teaching an employee information and/or instructions. When things get financially tight in business,
often employee training is the first thing to go.