Heading 1

What initiatives and projects are you working on or accountable for?

• Corporate website—running smoothly with the latest technology
• IT applications used internally by employees and externally by partners
• Infrastructure team that builds everything
• Project management team that executes approved strategy

“Digital transformation of the organization. I’m responsible for bringing in new technologies, enabling a more mobile workforce, and improving the employee experience.”

“The customer experience, then the voice of the employee (and that would include all the programs and tools) that accelerated this last year when we had a plan and a roadmap.”

“Our regulatory reviews. We recently made the news for getting a consent order, which is serious, so now we’re hyper-focused on satisfying the regulators for the next 12 to 18 months.”

‍

Will these initiatives change in the next 6 to 12 months?

“Not that I’m aware of. The infrastructure, education, website, IT all have to be assessed.”

“No, the website and data center have to be running. And we can’t move everything into the cloud because there’s too much intellectual property and patents in there.”

“We’ll probably move up the timing of some technology introductions and some new system enhancements that we paused.”

“No, I think the company is pretty sure of where it wants to go, and what we’re going to work on.”

“We may do some offshore, because so many things are in the cloud, we don’t really need that many people on site.”

“Voice of the customer, and voice of the employee, those are pretty wide in scope.”

‍

Are there emerging initiatives you will likely be tasked with in the future?

“Working from home with flexible hours. We’re in the biotech industry and we know how much a healthy working environment means.”

“There’s discussion about how to best manage remote whiteboarding. How should we manage the collaboration across different time zones and regions to speed up our innovations?”

“We have a cultural shift, due to both the pandemic and our new CEO, that puts more importance on employees. Because ultimately, we can’t do what we need to without really dedicated, passionate people.”

“I think it’s all going to be around how technology will transform the way you work and see where it is.”

‍

What are your key performance objectives?

• Innovation
• Productivity
• Revenue growth
• Employee satisfaction
• Customer satisfaction
• Keeping the budget under control

“Helping people feel valued as employees and making sure the firm responds to their issues and concerns—those become objectives.”

“Mainly KPIs and help the company grow revenue. My goal is 5% annually. It may not seem like a lot from IT. But from a strategy perspective, it’s a lot.”

“Ensure all my key stakeholders are engaged, and not just in, the leadership meeting. I need to do my lobbying and get my advocates out and spend the time so they understand what I’m proposing and why.”

“Delivering all these technology projects, most of them, by the end of this year.”

What are your aspirations for personal success and growth? (overall)

“Remain employed in this environment. This side is the fun part. Putting these things together is fun. You’re not sending out pink slips. It’s a great time.”        

“Learning how to coach like a world-class leader is a goal for me.”

“They send out an anonymous survey every year to the entire team, and there are two people who usually get a 100% approval rating and I’m one of them. I’d like to do that again.”

“Personally, I’d love more work-life balance. Which is not the case right now. In the next 10 years, I’d probably like to retire. Get a little healthier, get a little more active.”

“Making an impact on this company, really impacting people’s lives and work for the better with technology in ways they’ve never seen before.”

‍

What are your aspirations for personal success and growth? (specific to employee recognition)

• Influence decision makers
• Find talented leaders
• Support our teams
• Go beyond expectations
• Our people feel recognized

“It’s not about who gets the credit, it’s about jointly creating a successful environment for the company and its employees.”

“I want employees to feel like they are being recognized and their needs are heard.”

“I have a pretty strong working list of where we need to shore up pure recognition, incentives, and communications. Success for me is when I get an unsolicited ‘Thanks for understanding what it really takes.’”

“If I can have everyone—every leader, every manager, every employee—buy into it and feel like this is valuable and worth their time, we’ll improve engagement. We’ll improve retention.”

“For me just personally, I want to feel like I’ve been able to drive this kind of a change for the better.”

“Reinforce what people are doing, going beyond expectations, and properly recognize it. Like we’re here with the Gatorade, we’re clapping, we’re cheering you on and we know you’re gonna make it. And we’re here to help you, and if you stumble, there’s gonna be someone right there before you hit the ground.”

What challenges do you face in your role? (overall)

• Budget
• Staffing
• Less face time
• Advocating for our priorities
• Managing personal time
• Returning to the office

“Internal clients have a hard time separating the plumbing from the objective—they get very hung up on the user interface.”

“Personalities can prolong a project. The value IT brings is usually at the beginning and end of a project. So that middle part is painful.”

“We need to make sure that we have the right approvals, which makes everything I want slower.”

“With my leadership team, the challenge is making sure that I get my time on the agendas, and it doesn’t happen every meeting, so it’s just fighting for my advocacy of priorities.”

“Challenges with my own personal time, because weekends aren’t weekends. That’s a big challenge for me.”

“I think Covid took us to the future of where we were going to go anyway. Then it was ‘Oh, Covid is over, everyone run to the office. Wait we sold all the buildings. There are no more offices. Okay, let’s buy buildings.’ It’s very reactive.”

“In the Bay area, we’re literally stuck in traffic three hours, most of the day. It’s an hour and a half each way. Normally, it should be a 20-minute drive. So why do this to our people?”

‍

What challenges do you face in your role (specific to employee recognition)?

• Decentralized/manual reporting
• Colorless reports
• Lack of time
• Inconsistent commitment to recognition
• Complexity

“We need recognition to be easier, because right now, there are all kinds of logistics that make it a pain. Whatever we can do to make it more accessible and routine will be an improvement.”

“I want reporting to be more consolidated across a lot of systems. I evaluate my director, the director evaluates their managers, when those roll up to me, I don’t want any kind of manual intervention, I want to see things as I drill down.”

“I think reporting on our app could be more graphic. People are inclined to notice color; they know what it means. There’s not enough color, there’s always a lot of data. It’s too time consuming.”

“The system should be able to present a story by color and give me enough detail that I don’t need to ask around to get more insight to summarize.”

“Getting the time with the right people to really fine-tune proposals and make sure that they’re packaged, communicated, and received well. They need to be on point, so they’re not seen as superficial.”

“Some managers do a great job, and they’re really on top of recognition, some managers aren’t. It’s a little inconsistent and people get forgotten. Because of that, it’s essential to build this part of the culture.”

‍

In the next 6 to 12 months, will those challenges change?

“Probably not in the next six months.”

“Yeah, with what we’re implementing. I think so.”

“No, for us, that’s a really short time period, and if they change, that means I’m throwing away work that I’ve invested a lot into.”

“As more of our people work remotely, it’ll become more important and possibly more challenging to ensure they feel part of the fabric of the firm using non-traditional methods. I see a little more attention coming to this, which is a good thing.”

‍

What types of risks do you face in your role?

• Attrition
• Regulatory risk
• Employee Information
• External partner vulnerabilities
• Employees leaking information
• Email (incoming)
• Implementing the wrong strategy

“Losing key employees that we’ve spent so much time training.”

“Because we’re global, we have a lot of data privacy and data jurisdiction concerns, not just on customers and transactions, but also employee and personal information.”

“I need to make sure that nothing is violated when we work with our employee information. That is absolutely critical. It’s a huge risk, and it gets revisited. At times, we even pull in external advisors and consultants to try and find the vulnerabilities before anything gets deployed.”

“Working with all our external partners, our key risk is identifying their potential vulnerabilities because we don’t know what we don’t know. SolarWinds was a total surprise.”

“Implementing the wrong customer strategy or the wrong employee strategy, and having it backfire. It’s up to us to constantly monitor. And if we start to see a negative trend or performance metrics, the team has to react immediately.”

‍

What types of risks do you face in your role specific to recognition?

“If we implement it too loosely, there could be room for abuse. But on the other hand, if we don’t do it, we face low employee satisfaction, low engagement, and attrition.”

“We expect the platform licensing fees will increase due to inflation. But we also expect new features to roll out so we can easily see the value. If the system doesn’t improve or doesn’t connect well with our other systems, then there could be a risk for both sides because I’ll have to look for another vendor.”

“There are so many human resource requirements and reporting needs to show equity and diversity, that we have the right population, that we’re doing everything without bias. I have a few statisticians dedicated to running models to prove we’ve got that right.”

‍

What problems do you face that obstruct your operational and functional goals or objectives?

“Doing things on a relatively large scale and yet having a deep, meaningful impact.”

“From the employee side out, it’s understanding different ways, expanded ways, additional ways to handle internal inquiries from colleagues.”

“If you’re not in the office, you don’t have the opportunity to walk over to a colleague who you know has the answer.”

“It’s the mechanics of getting in touch, getting a response, passing it through whoever needs to approve that response and work it through. So that time delay can be a big operational hurdle.”

“Keeping up with the service demands. We have a ton of customers who reach out because of our current volume. It’s just being able to keep up with our customers like before. And deliver the same quality.”

‍

What problems do you face that obstruct your personal and performance goals?

“I miss the old routine. I used to work four days on campus and then Friday from home. Now I work from home almost every day. I try to go into office at least once a week, just to see who’s there and have some key leader meetings.”

“It’s making sure I can garner the right attention at the time I need it, which means sometimes I’m talking to APAC at 1:00 in the morning, but I need to be on my A-game because they’re ready to talk and giving me their time, so it requires some flexibility.”

“My roles, responsibilities, and projects have expanded, and knowing where and when to focus my attention is difficult sometimes. There’s just never enough time to do everything I want to, and I need to stop at some point because you do burn out.”

What obstacles to your business goals does your organization face?

“I think it’s the human factor.”

“The world has gone digital. It’s almost impossible to keep up.”

“Jumping into the new dual and hybrid work models—office and remote—has almost doubled the computing power we need.”

“Keeping up with demand because we’re in manufacturing and technology.”

What problem(s) does your current recognition system solve?

• Weak capabilities / limited choice
• Complexity
• Inefficiency
• Tired of doing this in-house

“You can recognize other team members, like in UK or in Germany, in the same system and they can see it. Their manager can see it. That promotes joint success.”

“We needed to add sparkle to a different dimension of employee recognition—beyond what was already in place.”

“The program recognizes people for digging deep and doing what needs to be done. They’re sacrificing time with their family, they’re needing to learn new things on the job, they’re juggling more projects than they asked for. And we needed a better way to recognize them.”

“Our main challenge was how do we put some logic into this program so that we’re wide in scope but deep in impact? We wanted to make all of our employees feel personally valued and recognized for everything they’re going through to make us successful.”

“Too often in a large corporation, you don’t feel special, and don’t feel individually recognized. You might for a moment when you get a little award from a colleague. But this is coming from the cooperation. It’s like getting a Grammy, it’s gotta feel relevant and big and important.”

“It allows us to recognize—with gifts, gift cards, cash, whatever—and all employees can access it. And we now have the portal to unify us and make it easy to provide rewards.”

What elements comprise your current recognition program?

“We have a platform with a system for sharing employee success stories across the company.”

“One of the programs was, ‘You’re not just doing your job well, but you really are going beyond.’ And that beyond needed to make sure with the programs that we had an integration into HR. For that deep receipt, it’s gotta feel like a sustained effort.”

“Our program allows you to send anything you want to a specific employee—recognition notes, greeting cards, pictures, monetary recognition, gifts, Amazon items. You can also copy management or the team, so they see it.”

Which elements of your current solution work well? Which don’t?

Works

• Recognition points
• Accessibility/Usability

Doesn’t work

• Deeper understanding
• Usage/Adoption

“It works well in terms of standardized recognition points. The previous solution was a little arbitrary. Now we can see exactly what people did to receive points. And they all add up to give us the honest figure.”

“I don’t think we’re able to capture all nuances of what ‘beyond’ means. And we’re never gonna get down to the one-on-one for over 200,000 employees to understand their stories. We’ll always have to make some assumptions.”

“We might be missing the mark, or we might be missing pockets, of really vital beyond. That people are going to burn out or leave because they’re not feeling what’s known. So we really lean on managers to help us with this.”

“There’s been some reluctance to recognize. Not sure why. We hear excuses like, ‘I don’t have time, I need to do performance reviews, I need to do mid-years.’ This is actually more important, and something that I think still needs some work.”

“We can send recognition better than ever before. It’s accessible, it’s fluid, it’s intuitive. The thing that’s not so great is adoption. There’s still confusion around how recognition should be used and for what and when.”

What else do you wish your current solution could do?

“It does what it needs to. But it could help with adoption to some degree by inspiring recognition because right now you have to initiate it. I’d love to see it suggest, ‘Hey, have you thought about doing this or that?’ where it could give an idea of how to recognize.”

“I wish it could be customized to every individual. I wish there was a way to auto-capture from the employee upwards, what it is from their perspective they’re doing ‘beyond.’”

“In terms of the recognition, it’s solid. The communications will change up, the tracking, the monitoring, the recording, it’s all pretty good.”

Are you the key sponsor or champion for the purchase of a product, service, or solution?

• No (majority)
• Yes

“That would be the head of our global business. Probably the CAO. They’re the sponsor.”

“It’s our head of HR, she’s our CHRO, and our CIO from the technology side and then I’ve got my direct boss, my VP, but within that, there’s the governance body comprised of myself leading it, as well as a peer from HR and then everyone else kinda reports into us.”

“In the governance committee we meet with all the stakeholders, brainstorm ideas, and then I scope it with the C-Suite. We work with the procurement department, procurement does an RFP, RFI, quote. We assess various vendors and then decide how to proceed.”

“Yes, I’m preparing that summary business case. I’m doing the pre-advocacy with all the participants to ferret out questions in advance, understand who my advocates are, identify any learning questions, so I’ve got some of that addressed in advanced and at the ready. I like to go into every leadership meeting for a significant purchase as prepared as possible.”

‍

Are you the final decisionmaker for the purchase of a product, service, or solution?

“The final signature would be the CEO. Nothing of this magnitude would be done without the CEO.”

“Our CTO, if it has anything at all to do with technology. And because of the long chain for integration implementation. But the budget will come out of my business heads because they’re the ones that produce revenue.”

‍

Are you a user of the purchased product, service, or solution on a day-to-day basis?

“In so much as the product is made for the entire employee base. But HR are the administrators, and some of my IT folks and portal designers are continually involved.”

‍

Do you handle procurement and negotiation, or manage the settling of terms, conditions, and pricing?

“The procurement team executes the actual purchase, but the ‘decision to purchase’ precedes that. We get involved in the selection and the details, but they run the POs, any financing, and all the agreements. It’s a true hand-off and it’s a very welcome one.”

“My colleagues in procurement, legal and contracts, they’re the ones that do the hard negotiation.”

“We have a dedicated, impartial procurement department for that.”

‍

In what key stages of the purchasing process do you play an advisory role?

“I’m one of the program managers. But there are several of me because we’re global and I can’t be in some of the APAC projects because there are different regulations.”

“IT is involved in either the proof of concept or some of the RFP reviews, due diligence, because we need to manage the risk levels of everything that we do. And even in a simple transaction, there seem to be elements of risk.”

What is the purchase decision process at your organization (e.g., discovery, evaluation, commitment)?

1. Education Phase

• The CHRO approaches SVP of HR with an idea or request (or vise-versa)
• SVP of HR meets with HR Director; they do some preliminary online research to see ‘what’s out there’ looking at potential vendor websites and the sites of their clients

2. Solution Phase

SVP of HR forms a team:

• VP Compensation & Benefits
• VP Director HRIS systems
• SVP/VP of IT

SVP/VP of IT does some research with their team

• Team looks at ‘vendors we know’ and reaches out to colleagues for suggestions/ideas
• Team creates RFI and later RFP to narrow the list (3–5) to invite in for a demo.

Criteria:

• Specific needs
• Scope
• Budget
• What they’ve learned is ‘best practice’ via their research

3. Selection Phase

• Invite 3–5 vendors in for a demo
• Narrow to 2 based on ease of use, support, cost, vendor strength/track record, wow factor
• Final recommendation, based on fit—how well do they ‘get’ us?
• Make recommendation to VP of HR (or CHRO)
• Get approval

‍

Please rank your involvement in the discovery (early) phase of the buying process from 1 to 5.

Avg: 4

Range: 3–4

‍

Please rank your involvement in the evaluation (middle) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 5

Range: 4–5

‍

Please rank your involvement in the commitment (final) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 4

Range: 4–5

“As a team, we had made up our minds and were comfortable with the decision. Then, right near the end, came the user tests. And that changed everything—in a good way. We were headed down a road built on good relationships, but clearly inferior technology. The user tests saved us.”

INSIGHT: For years, the over-riding concern of IT in this buying process was “I don’t want HR to fall in love with something that will blow up my world.” In recent years, IT has taken on a far more strategic role, weighing in on UX and conducting user tests, which can often change the results at the end of the process.

‍

Who else is involved in the buying process?

• CHRO/CFO (approver)
• HR SVP (champion)
• HR VPs, Comp & Benefits, Talent Mgt (influencers)
• Vendor Relations/Purchasing (ratifier)
• IT SVP (ratifier)

‍

What was the most important factor in the decision?

• UX tests/easy for end users
• Comfort level with vendor
• Profitability/viability
• Vendor’s market strength and reputation
• Vendor’s experience with similar companies
• Vendor’s track record/years in business
• Vendor’s responsiveness/level of support
• Ease of implementation—details on what/why
• Vendor’s strategic approach
• Clear product strategy

“They came in with a lot of info and data from a bunch of companies our size. We could envision it.”

“They had a great game plan about how we should go about this.”

In the discovery (early) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• Short videos
• Use cases
• Testimonials
• Demonstrations

“Two-minute video: I can watch and listen, and then they can follow up with a fact sheet from an independent source. If it shows they’re top five, we can go from there.”

“Relevant use cases are very important and impactful.”

“Looking at a demo in terms of a use case turned POC, and then being able to ask questions. This isn’t a webinar session, it’s more private, so we can ask questions and of course, there are NDAs.”

“Demonstrations are the most meaningful and seeing employee testimonials of a company culture transformation.”

‍

In the evaluation (middle) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

“More granular-level tech specs, so my tech teams can really dig into it.”

“Information around regulations and the need for compliance that proves their expertise. Those were important points that garnered a lot of interest.”

“Reading through the articles, blogs, and studies that they’ve done.”

‍

In the commitment (final) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

“At the selection, it’s mostly our interpretation of anything we’ve run, whether it’s a POC, our own due diligence, or our weighted rankings. So that’s more internal. The first two phases involve more interchange with vendors.”

Where do you start your search for information when considering a purchase (e.g., search engine, vendor website, industry website, industry peers)?

“Prefer to interact over the phone or Zoom.”

“I can do email, but it’s easier to get my questions answered on the phone.”

“LinkedIn via email message. Not flooding and not a random cold call. I’ll blacklist vendors entirely if they cold call.”

‍

What triggers a response to a marketing message (e.g., relevant to my job role, an initiative I’m working on, or a problem I’m facing)?

• Something new/innovative
• Clear, relevant benefits
• The medium—trusted channels

‍

Do you prefer to meet with a vendor’s salesperson or sales team by phone, video conference, or in person?

• In person
• Zoom

‍

What prompts you to take a meeting with a vendor sales rep (e.g., recommendation by a direct report, boss’s suggestion, significant financial investment, or high risk)?

“If I’m convinced by their sales pitch, that they’re unique, that they understand our industry.”

“When the rep’s from either a known company or a trusted channel.”

‍

What does a salesperson do to win your trust (e.g., demonstrate expertise in my industry or company, show they care about my success, cultivate a personal relationship with me)?

Transparency

• What you see is what you get
• Don’t promise everything
• Don’t mislead, don’t change the terms

Competency

Willingness to talk about my needs

Availability and responsiveness

• Know they care about your business
• Would rather work with IT

“I hate when the sales pitch oversells capabilities—that just throws trust out the window.”

“The pitch is less important than what’s behind the curtain.”

“I like to talk with IT and hash out an issue and get their feedback. I don’t get a lot of value talking with a sales rep.”

“That they listen, and they create a presentation that I feel comfortable forwarding on.”

“Tell me everything that’s wrong with their company and products.”

INSIGHT: IT often has an aversion to sales and marketing people. They’d much rather deal with vendor Tech peers.

‍

Besides the sales rep, which other vendor representatives (e.g., product manager, solutions specialist, executive) do you meet with during the purchase decision process?

• Technical architect
• Implementation partner

“I feel for some of the cold calls, honestly, but their approach is terrible. It’s a tough thing to break into.”

‍

What type of group interactions (e.g., webinars, seminars, conferences) do you find impactful during the purchase process?

• None – prefer direct interaction with peers

‍

What third-party influencers (e.g., industry analysts, consultants) do you interact with during the purchase decision process? Which ones are most impactful?

“A reputable, referenceable customer. It’s very important because I know how the real feedback is. Background check.”

“Primarily, a couple of consulting things, but really the winner is my peers in other companies. Referrals.”

What professional associations do you belong to? Do you listen to or follow any industry peers, authors, bloggers, or analysts to support your purchasing process, and would you recommend any to colleagues?

• None (majority)
• Local quality / QA testing groups
• IEEE
• Gartner
• Forrester
• InfoTech
• Conferences specific to my area of IT  
• Conferences specific to my Industry

“I’m part of a business community for biotech industry leaders. Also PMP, Cisco certified groups. Some medical groups.”

“IEEE. The world’s largest technical professional organization.”

“I go straight to the analysts. I don’t waste my time doing my own research.”

“I email companies to get their recommendations and referrals, see what they’re doing.”

“I look into all kinds of things. It’s hard. I listen to all new tech and all new trends, but as far as like enterprise. It’s tough and there’s not much. I mean LinkedIn and so on, but there’s really not much out there.”

‍

What conferences or events do you attend and why?

• None/Few (majority)
• Local roundtables
• IBM events

“We don’t attend conferences that much.”

“I attend industry and medical events. They help me understand what the doctor is talking about.”

“MCS, VMworld, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Salesforce, or Dreamforce, whatever they call it. So, usually all the main players.”

‍

Do you go to vendor websites and, if so, why?

• No (majority)
• To read their white papers and case studies
• To see what’s new
• To review specs, descriptions, product pages

“I do, because I want to see what they’re pushing, what their passion is, what they have up their sleeve, and look at their strategy. Also, maybe I’ll learn what new products they have going on.”

‍

In which social networks are you active for business purposes (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)?

• LinkedIn (majority)
• None

‍

Which trade journals or publications do you read?

• CIO Magazine
• Computer World
• Various technical journals
• None / not really
• Others mentioned: InfoWorld, PC World, Mash-able, Tech Crunch

“It’s primarily blogs, like IT Week, and most of it actually comes from LinkedIn.”

“Yeah, it’s really tough to get high-quality IT articles.”