Gold medal winner talks rewards and recognition

Ksenia: Hello and welcome to HRD Australia. With us today we have Kylie Green. Reward Gateway's SVP of Global Consultancy. Reward Gateway is one of HRD's service Provider Awards of 2022, where it won the gold medal for the reward and recognition category. Hello, Kylie, welcome. It's great to have you with us.

Kylie: Oh, thank you. Lovely to be here.

Ksenia: So as we mentioned, you took home the gold for awards and recognition. Tell us what makes Reward Gateway so successful in this area?

Kylie: Very, very proud of the team. And there's been 650 RGs from across the globe that have been a big part of this journey, as well as many clients that have contributed to the best practice and thought leadership. There's been a number of things that I think contributed to the success. Firstly, the fact that we are focused on best practice recognition and designing programs that are really aligned to our mission, which is to make the world a better place to work. I think the other thing is constant focus on innovation. So partnering with customers to listen, to hear the needs of their customer and the world of work, which has been evolving so fast, as you know, over the last couple of years. So really partnering for with organizations to really focus on how we can bring their stories to life and storytelling, I think has been a huge part of the success of the program today and part of the innovation of how we can really help organizations to be able to celebrate the communication and the connection of their employees, how we can help provide a platform where they can share those stories and celebrate, whether it's their performance, celebrate whether it's their communication or values, and shine a spotlight on the employees that are really those advocates they'd like to see repeated and see those behaviors enhanced across the board organization.

Ksenia: Fantastic. And so let's talk a little bit about your journey. How has the company adapted or changed within the last two years, which as you mentioned, have been quite interesting?

Kylie: Yeah, it's certainly been a really very interesting couple of years. We've seen a lot of changes in the world of work. Probably the biggest transformation any of us have seen in our lifetime. And I think one of the things that particularly we've seen is moves that we've experienced within our own organization as well as within the organizations we partner with and we partner with, close to 3000 organizations supporting about 5 million employees. And across those we've seen shifts as people move to a new working environment. So the move to hybrid has been a really interesting shift that we've seen and that's been a big focus on how do we support organizations to create visibility. So when people had town hall events before where they had opportunities to high five each other and have those moments of celebration, we're now seeing people exploring opportunities for how do they digitalize their employee experience, how do they create those moments of connection, those moments of storytelling that perhaps were happening in a town hall before and create a moment where, whether it's a CEO, the leadership team or others in the business can really shine a spotlight on those that are living their values, living their behaviors. So we've definitely seen a big shift around that. We've also seen a big shift around alignment and connection between employees and wanting to be aligned to the organization and their strategic goals. And those goals are evolving as the world is moving very, very rapidly at the moment. So how they can celebrate employees that are really helping that connection to those strategic goals and driving productivity and driving performance further. So we're seeing that happen not only across people that are working in office environments, but a big focus on being able to deliver that to people that are in frontline workforces as well. So that's been really interesting to see that evolve. And I think the third thing that we've seen evolve is the way that we support and focus on our employee value propositions and how we can create an environment where we retain core and critical talent within businesses and how we support employees during what is some really challenging times. So not only celebrating, so everyone feels connected and visible within the organization, but how organizations are supporting employees with some of the cost of living challenges. So we're seeing many organization that are providing small moments of recognition and reward for employees to thank them for their contribution to their business through to organizations that are providing larger support services across not only recognition but across employee discounts and other parts of their employee value proposition. So bringing that all together into one centralized place is definitely where we're seeing a lot of evolution happening as organizations focus so much more on digitalizing their employee experience.

Ksenia: Yeah. Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit more about the next 12 months and what you see happening and what you as a company are looking to focus on. Are there any developing trends that you're going to be looking at?

Kylie: Yeah, absolutely. Lots of really exciting things happening at the moment. We are focused on many aspects of that digitalization of that employee experience. So more focus on storytelling and personalizing the storytelling to be able to celebrate employees and their individual contribution more focuses on challenges and how we can support organizations on the challenges they're running, whether that be challenges around safety, challenges around productivity, challenges around performance, and how we can bring that together into one centralized place with greater visibility for managers who are leading their organizations, keeping their finger on the pulse on what is really fast moving employee sentiment. The other big thing that we're seeing is a focus on well-being. We have recently acquired a business could move spring and move. Spring is an employee well-being initiative and we're looking at many other ways that we can enhance our ability to positively impact and support organizations with their employee well-being. So that's definitely going to be another big focus of innovation over the over the next 12 months.

Ksenia: Thanks, Kylie. And finally, how do you feel about being listed as a service provider of choice this year?

Kylie: Oh, I'm so proud. It's an incredible reflection of a lot of hard work. There's over 650 RGs from right around the globe that work really, really passionately and strongly believe in making the world a better place to work. And there is over two and a half thousand, close to 3000 clients that all regularly give us feedback around how we can continue to support their employees, to recognize their contribution, and really shine a spotlight on the contribution, whether it be performance, tenure or value based contribution their employees are making. And this for me is a lovely reflection on all the work that those clients do each and every day and all the work the employees do. So it's a lovely celebration. And I think with all of the things happening in the world at the moment, visibility matters and having an opportunity to take a moment to say, I see you and I appreciate what you do makes such a big impact to employees. So I feel really proud of the work that the team have done and this is a lovely reflection on that.

Ksenia: Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your insights with us. It's been absolutely great to have you and congratulations once again on your win.

Kylie: Oh, thank you very much. It was lovely to chat with you.