Cardinal Health partnered with Workhuman to launch its first global, social recognition solution, Bravo!, designed to support a culture of recognition and appreciation across the entire organization.
A Customer Success Story
Citizens: Creating a Culture of Connection With Recognition
As one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, Citizens Financial Group is headquartered in Providence, R.I., and employs more than 18,000 people across 43 states. The company’s mission is to help customers, colleagues, and communities reach their potential. Bringing that vision to life are Citizens’ guiding principles and internal values of: exceeding customer expectations, doing the right thing, thinking long term, and working together.
This case study explores how Citizens partnered with Workhuman® to implement a modern recognition and reward solution, driving employee engagement and retention across its business.
Showing appreciation along the way is going to boost morale and it’s going to boost engagement, and that’s what we’re seeing with these numbers.
Derek Desousa
Director of Employee Engagement, Senior Vice President at Citizens
Director of Employee Engagement, Senior Vice President at Citizens
As one of the nation’s oldest and largest financial institutions, Citizens Financial Group is headquartered in Providence, R.I., and employs more than 18,000 people across 43 states. The company’s mission is to help customers, colleagues, and communities reach their potential. Because of this, the team at Citizens knew prioritizing employee recognition was key to achieving Citizens’ goals around becoming a customer-centric organization.
“If colleagues are your differentiator, why not invest in them? Why not help equip them to feel motivated and engaged to continue to do better?” says Michelle Hecht, Head of Communications at Citizens.
This case study explores how Citizens partnered with Workhuman® to implement a modern recognition and reward solution, driving employee engagement and retention across its business.
168,000+ recognition moments since Credo Awards launched
The challenge
Prior to partnering with Workhuman, Citizens had launched a homegrown recognition program in 2015. The program “was very manual,” says Derek DeSousa, Director of Communication Programs and Events at Citizens. “We were shipping gift cards out to winners. By the time someone received recognition – which could take up to four weeks – they often forgot what they did to earn it.” The team knew prioritizing employee recognition was key to achieving Citizens’ goals around becoming a customer-centric organization.
“If colleagues are your differentiator, why not invest in them? Why not help equip them to feel motivated and engaged to continue to do better?” says Michelle Hecht, Head of Communications, Executive Vice President at Citizens.
In looking to up-level the existing program, Citizens had three guiding principles: to modernize the experience, to make the rewards more appealing, and to make recognition easier.
Significantly lower turnover for employees receiving 10-12 recognition moments annually
The solution
In partnership with Workhuman, Citizens modernized its approach to employee recognition and launched Credo Awards in 2019. The new program is peer-to-peer and tied to core values, as well as:
• Real time – to reinforce the right values and behaviors
• Social – to amplify each recognition moment
• Mobile-enabled – to expand reach to branch (remote) employees
• Data-driven – to enable better tracking and insights from recognition data
The mobile app in particular is one of the most important features for Citizens. “It was the biggest win to be able to spread our recognition across the entire network,” says Derek. “You think about having a front-line sales team, and a regional manager is now able to visit a location and recognize those colleagues by the time they get to their car. That was important to us, to be able to digitize our approach.”
Another key improvement area in launching Credo Awards was access to data.
“As a manager and leader, I really appreciate all the data and analytics that are there to help see how your team is participating and how others are recognizing them,” says Michelle.
“What may have been an underfunded investment in some business units before, we’re seeing them realize the impact, and starting to increase their investment and the time they’re allocating to recognition,” adds Derek.
What’s more, Citizens was able to streamline and create efficiencies across all of its employee rewards programs, such as Credo Champions and Credo Community of Champions, with its new Credo Awards platform.
96% recipient reach since launch
The result
Since the launch of Credo Awards, Citizens has generated more than 168,000 recognition moments across 96% of its employee base. This type of engagement is imperative to Citizens’ organizational health.
This connection and engagement is also driving tangible ROI in the form of employee retention. Data from the Workhuman research team shows turnover is cut in half for employees receiving 10-12 recognition moments annually compared to those who haven’t received any recognition.
And as Citizens continues generate more recognition moments, the team is able to better understand the social networking across the organization.
Citizens’s decision to implement a formal recognition program came at just the right time. “COVID-19 has made us think about everything differently. We’re reminding leaders to take a moment to pause and show gratitude and appreciation for what everyone’s doing,” says Derek. As the business world continues to reshape itself post-pandemic, Citizens is highly aware of the benefits of recognition and will only continue leaning into them.
How can we help your business?
Find out how Workhuman solutions can transform your business to create your own success story.
Reach out to us!
See more success stories
“Workhuman … allowed us to move into the digital space and make our recognition program more user-friendly,” says Michaela Leo, former director of compensation at Merck.
“This allows us to very easily recognize people from all over the world which, in a traditional HR system, you might not be able to do quite as easily … It’s great to see the connections.”
In 2015, LinkedIn partnered with Workhuman to launch Bravo!, a global, peer-to-peer recognition and rewards program that has a significant impact on employee retention and performance.
“Recognition is an investment in people. It’s going to retain talent,” says Gabrielle Thompson, senior vice president, acquisitions and total rewards at Cisco.
As with many large, global corporations, Eaton was challenged with driving a culture of recognition that made every employee – no matter their function or location – feel valued and appreciated.
Morgan Truck Body partnered with Workhuman®️ to implement a peer-to-peer team member recognition and rewards program that drives human connection by reducing cultural friction points, democratizing gratitude, and retaining skilled workers. While this can be a challenge for companies with large offline and deskless team member populations, Morgan’s story shows it’s possible.
This case study explores how CCG, Canada’s largest not-for-profit automobile association, partnered with Workhuman® to create and sustain an innovative reward and recognition solution.
This case study explores how Conga partnered with Workhuman® to launch an innovative reward and recognition solution that increases engagement and drives the business’s bottom line.
Qlik recently underwent a complete performance management transformation. Learn how Qlik worked with Workhuman, its human applications partner, to realign its people process to the pace of business.