HRD Service Provider Awards 2024: Reward Gateway

Kylie Speer  00:00:07 

Hello and welcome to HRD TV. I'm Kylie Speer, and joining me today is Kylie Green, Managing Director at Reward gateway. Reward Gateway has received the gold medal in the Rewards and Recognition category at this year's HRD Service Provider Awards. Welcome to you, Kylie, congratulations and thank you for joining us today. 

Kylie Green  00:00:29 

Oh, thank you, Kylie. It's great to be here and very, very proud of the teams and everyone that's worked on the royal gateway initiative, and particularly all of our amazing clients who are always feeding back new ideas and experiences to help us to engage and improve on the platform. 

Kylie Speer  00:00:46 

Well, firstly, Kylie reward gateway empowers 8 million employees globally to connect. How have you been able to design a successful service that can cater for that vast amount of people? 

Kylie Green  00:00:59 

Yeah, yeah, it definitely is a lot of people. And what we're hearing is at that employers are facing so many different challenges, whether that be addressing cost of living, rising expectations for employees, and one of the things that we're seeing particularly is that people are needing a solution that's really recognizing where they are right now, whether where their business is currently experiencing, and so we're focusing a lot on how to provide a really personalized solution, so it's very relevant regardless of the organization's size, regardless of their structure. And we do that by providing a unified platform. So that's all designed around one centralized place that brings together the best of their reward and recognition, the best of their employee discounts their employee well being their communication, and tries to bring that all together into one place so that they can really shine a spotlight on one centralized place to help their employees with what matters most for their business and their focus and strategies right now. 

Kylie Speer  00:01:57 

While many platforms focus on a single service, reward gateway encompasses rewards, employee, survey, benefits, discounts, communications and well being. How easy is it for users to switch between each and do you anticipate adding extra initiatives? 

Kylie Green  00:02:16 

Yeah, definitely very easy for people to switch. One of the things that we designed the program with is the end user in mind. And if you think about an end user, they might finish their day at work, they'll be on the bus and train on the way home, and they might be thinking about what they're going to have for dinner. I usually am on the commute on the way home, and one of the things that they absolutely do is then log on to access, say, discounts to stretch their disposable income further while they're on there, they've got a great opportunity to actually utilize so many other elements of their employee experience. Maybe thank a colleague for something that they've done that day at work, to really shine a spotlight on your values or behaviors that they want to see repeated, and they have an opportunity to jump on and watch wellbeing videos, connect and communicate with colleagues, so perhaps what read an update from their CEOs. So what we find is that the fact that it is all designed in that centralized platform really addresses some of those challenges that we're hearing and the challenges we're hearing from employees is platform fatigue. There's so many logins, so many places to go. So by bringing it together, it really does create that unified experience that allows people to have that seamless use of the platform at any time. 

Kylie Speer  00:03:29 

Kylie, how does reward gateway integrate with existing HR systems and processes?  

Kylie Green  00:03:35 

Yeah. So one of the things that we know when people are looking at their solutions is not adding to that tech stack, not adding to that platform fatigue challenge that we talked about. So one of the things we do is integrate quite seamlessly in where your employees are already at, where they're operating at each and every day for employers. And so we integrate with over 60 systems. So everything because you'd imagine, from your slack, your workday, your Yama, your teams, right through to everything from authentication communication, but also other elements of the employee experience. And the idea behind that is to make it really simple for not only the integrations, but also the processes. From a process perspective, one of the things that we really focus on is flexibility. Organizations have existing workflows that they have in in place, and the program is designed so that people can use it to adjust the process that best suits them and reinforce the ways that they're already working. And that really allows people to have a simple way to make it feel like the platform is uniquely theirs, and really reinforce their organization strategies and make it work for them so that it becomes a seamless part of the way that people connect, communicate and engage with their colleagues every day. 

Kylie Speer  00:04:51 

Some of your users have praised the ease of using the platform on mobile devices. Did you create a bespoke Mobile. Interface, and is this the most common way users log in?  

Kylie Green  00:05:04 

Yeah. So we did. We created an app called Connect Plus, and it's really one seamless way that you can have reward and recognition, communication, well being, all in that one place. We've built it future focused, and so it's designed that over time it can evolve, and we're adding more and more layers of employee experience on there so that, again, it gets around that challenge of platform fatigue and creates a seamless user experience. So that's adding things like well beings being added recently, we've also added other elements of partnerships for both financial well being and also emotional and physical well being that people can have an end to end employee experience. In terms of usage, it's about 60% of users actually utilize the platform via the app. So we're finding it's a really popular way, not only for employees, but also for leaders. The opportunity to recognize employees on the go. You can't have eyes and ears everywhere as a leader, but you can actually have the opportunity when you're on the go to check in and get updates or great work that your employees are doing, and you can then layer on and add to that recognition moment and shine a spotlight on those values and those behaviors that you'd love to see repeated within the organization too. 

Kylie Speer  00:06:15 

Kylie, what do you feel reward gateway adds to the Australian HR sector in particular. 

Kylie Green  00:06:21 

Yeah, we're definitely focused on how we can add local flavor and local value to the Australian HR community. One of the things when we reviewed the the industry, we saw that there was a real gap in proprietary research that came out of Australia. A lot of it was focused out of the UK or the US. And while it's great, an ad does add some value globally, it doesn't really always take into account the local legislations, regulations, also the local culture. And so we've been doing a lot of work on local research, things like the workplace engagement index, add the employee paradox report, and that's all been designed to provide local inspiration and thought leadership. We've also been focused on employee events. Last month, we had over 1000 HR leaders at our industry event where they were sharing best practice amongst each other. So creating that sense of community is really important to us. And then I think that the last thing is around the technology. We're really focused on how we can innovate and lead the market with technology that's really designed around transparency. It's designed around pushing the boundaries in terms of communication and opportunities to package and promote the value proposition. Because what we saw is there is a lot of focus on a one size fits all that really does lean into reinforcing vendors. We think that the reinforcement around recognition should really link very closely back to organizations values, their brand, their value proposition. So we've been really leading the investment in innovations to really personalize for organizations their experience, and we're investing more and more in creating hyper personalization for employees too, so that experience is going to be really unique to not only each employer, but to each employee that has that benefit of choice within those organizations too. 

Kylie Speer  00:08:07 

You've mentioned wellbeing. What initiatives does reward gateway promote to support their clients with wellbeing and mental health awareness for their employees?  

Kylie Green  00:08:19 

Yeah, we definitely are focused on wellbeing, and we really tend to identify that into three buckets, mental, physical and financials. So from a mental perspective, we have access to a number of mental health initiatives that you can access through the platform. We also have a big focus on celebrating progress for employees, we know that when employees feel visible, they feel recognized, and they have their progress celebrated, that it contributes significantly to their mental health, to their engagement. So there's a big focus on that through the platform. From a physical perspective, we have a wellbeing center that is very focused on how employees can enhance their physical wellbeing, we've just launched a new solution wellbeing plus that's designed around creating connection moments for activity challenges, and that's really great for not only getting people out and about, increasing their steps, increasing their activity, but also creating moments of connection with dispersed workforce. As we're seeing more and more employees working remotely, working hybrid to create that opportunity to have a new way to connect with their colleagues wherever they are. And lastly, financial we obviously have a big focus in our solution to really help employees to stretch their disposable income, not only for themselves, but for their family further and for a lot of organizations, finding ways to help employees to reduce down that sort of those cost of living challenges is obviously really critically important as well. 

Kylie Speer  00:09:50 

And lastly, Kylie, is there any advice you're willing to share for organizations who are looking to create change in their business?  

Kylie Green  00:09:59 

Definitely. We know that if your employees are thriving, your business will be and we're certainly seeing a big focus on organizations on how they can make sure that their employees are not only retaining with their business, but highly engaged. And three things that we're seeing that organizations that are really innovating this space are doing really well equipping their managers with tools to be able to support employees well being each and every day, celebrating those milestones. So we touched on celebrating progress, but celebrating all the milestones, not waiting for end of year for a you know Employee of the Year, but celebrating all those small wins along the way, particularly in the current climate. It's a really challenging climate for folks at the moment, so celebrating every little bit of progress is really important, and then also making it easier for organizations to package and promote all those good news stories up, to shine a spotlight on all those opportunities to create moments of connection, regardless of where your workforce is at or wherever they're working, whenever they're Working, to be able to dip in and celebrate why they joined your organization in the first place, and remind them of all those things that make your business a great place to work. That's a great opportunity for people to consistently do that, because that you know, it's great at the time of induction or onboarding, but an opportunity to remind people on a regular basis is really powerful too.  

Kylie Speer  00:11:20 

Well, congratulations on your clearly well deserved accolade, and thank you so much once again for your time today. Kylie, it was really lovely speaking with you.  

Kylie Green  00:11:31 

Lovely to speak with you too. Kylie, thank you for joining me and and thank you again. It was really nice to be able to celebrate. And really this goes back to our clients for all the incredible work they do in working with their people each and every day to be able to support their engagement and to celebrate their progress on their journeys too. 

Kylie Speer  00:11:51 

And thank you, of course, to our viewers for watching the latest episode of HRD TV. We look forward to seeing you again soon.