If you have followed @tweetLTnow on Twitter or any of our employees on social media, you may have seen some of the recent fruit of our employee incentive program. A few years ago, Lieberman Technologies began an incentive program that allows our employees to earn Philbucks ($PB) for doing various things in the office. Here are a few examples:
- Bring in food to share – 5 Philbucks
- Ride your bike to work – 1 Philbuck
- Take a walk during lunch – 1 Philbuck
- Go out to lunch with co-workers – 2 Philbucks each
- Turn in your timecard on time – 2 Philbucks
- Attend social company outings – 5 Philbucks
- Wear a sweet top hat to the company Christmas party – 5 Philbucks
- Receive secret kudos from a co-worker – 1-5 Philbucks based on kudo
As you can imagine, after a few months of this, a person can rack up quite a few $PB. Keeping track of it would be a realy hassle if we didn’t already have software that we made to track students incentives in schools. We used our very own PBIS Rewards app to track our $PB. This also gave us a way for employees to look throughout the year and see how they were doing.
What then, you may ask, does a person do with this alternative currency? At the annual Lieberman Christmas Party (RSVP early for 8 $PB) there is an auction, and they don’t take American Express, they only take Philbucks.
The annual Philbucks auction is the boss’ way of saying thank you to the employees, and a fun way to give out some Christmas gifts to staff. As a staff member (who is killing it on Philbucks this year because I ride my bike to work so much), I see three great effects of the Philbucks on our employees.
1.) Incentives drive workplace culture better than policies.
How crazy would it be if Pat Heck said, “You guys have to go out to lunch with each other once a month,” or even better, “Dan, I see you haven’t taken a walk during your lunch break for three months and this weather is awesome. You get a letter in your file.”
There are things that the people that own and run this business value, and they help their employees as human beings live their lives, so by offering incentives it steers the company in that direction. There are numerous $PB opportunities focused on health and fitness, workplace camaraderie, and generosity.
2.) Appreciate your employees for the work they do and their work practices.
I almost didn’t put the timecard example on the list for the general public to see. We are perfect! Ok, not really. If there is a practice in your workplace that you want to improve, and even though people should be doing it anyway they aren’t, you can’t beat incentives. Just look at the crazy things people do at a baseball game to get a free T-shirt!
An on-time timecard can get you 104 $PB by the end of the year. Considering that a 3-month YMCA Family Membership went for 104 $PB at our last auction, that is no small thing. It’s the little things that add up, and encouraging your employees to adopt good workplace habits is no exception.
3.) Have a lot of fun as you all work together and accomplish your business goals
This slogan is not just something we throw around on brochures:
“If we can use technology to help a client solve a problem, make a little money, and have some fun, then we’re probably going to do it.” ~ Phil Lieberman.
When you get a room full web designers, software developers, and other smart people competing for some prizes, WATCH OUT. We use our very own PBIS Rewards app to track PhilBucks all year long, so that by scanning and tracking, we can all know where we stand as we go into the Christmas Auction. We spend about $1000 on items for our 40 employees, and then kick it off. As folks bid for items ranging from an Amazon Echo to gift cards from Starbucks, Chik-Fil-A, and even Chido Mexican, our elves take off their points using the store feature of the PBIS Rewards app.
The PBIS Rewards app is one example of the kind of work we do here at Lieberman Technologies, and our internal use of the app not only allows us to keep track of a lot of $PB during the course of the year, it also helps us to continually improve the app. Most folks would call that a win-win.