employee rewards & recognition case studies

Rogers Communications Inc. is a diversified Canadian communications and media company. Rogers Wireless is Canada's largest wireless voice and data communications services provider. Rogers Cable and Telecom is Canada's largest cable television provider offering cable television, high-speed Internet access, residential telephony services, and video retailing, while its Rogers Business Solutions division is a national provider of voice communications services, data networking, and broadband Internet connectivity to small, medium and large businesses.

Rogers Communications had an incentive program in place that used corporate branded merchandise to reward their employees. This type of reward was gradually becoming less effective as a motivational tool.

Rogers wanted to increase the effectiveness of their employee motivation program by offering more desirable rewards and an easy-to-use system. Due to the vast scope and geographical diversity of the Rogers Corporation, their rewards program needed to service the entire country. The program also had to accommodate a wide variety of effective motivational tools and rewards to meet the needs of each and every employee.

I Love Rewards created Rogers First Time Rewards, a points-based employee incentive program for Rogers Communications call centre employees. A scale of incentive programs were developed to motivate positive employee behaviors - customer service, sales, attendance and punctuality, call quality, and call time.

When an employee performs at or above their targeted objectives, they are rewarded for it, receiving a branded 'PointsCard'. Each card has a pre-denominated points value, noting the number of points that the employee is receiving. The recipient then logs into their website and enters the card's details and the points are automatically added to their account. The points earned can then be used to redeem for a wide array of brand-name products from a custom-designed catalogue.

The initial First Time Rewards program started in late 2003 with 4,000 members and within a few years has grown to over 6,100 members.

As of 2007, 78% of members have acquired points for performing Rogers' recognized behaviours resulting in over 2,000 redemptions in a twelve-month period. In addition, the PointsCard technology developed for Rogers has since become a module available with all I Love Rewards programs.