Positive correlations between recognition and key business metrics

Meijer, a family-owned superstore based out of the US Midwest, has been bringing families great food, great brands, great savings, and great big smiles since 1934.

The company offers a complete one-stop shopping experience, from grocery, health and beauty care to over 40 other departments including fashion, automotive, home decor, pharmacy, electronics, pets and more.

When it comes to engaging their workforce of 70,000 team members, Meijer created an engagement strategy that focused on three goals:  Retaining top talent, fostering connections among team members, and keeping customers happy.

To achieve these goals, Meijer identified employee recognition as being key, as Fred Meijer, former chairman of Meijer, highlighted, “Team members want to be involved, needed and recognised.”

Believing that recognition can help decrease turnover, improve employee engagement and increase customer satisfaction, Meijer turned to Achievers to put in place a formal recognition programme that will not only recognise and reward team members for their daily contributions, but also engage the entire workforce and help the company achieve their core business goals.

After evaluating various vendors for the right recognition platform, Meijer decided to launch their mteam recognition programme with Achievers. (The “team” in “mteam” stands for “Together Everyone Achieves More.”)

Meijer rolled out mteam to 70,000 team members across six states in the US –  Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Wisconsin – and global sourcing offices in Hong Kong and Bangladesh.

The mteam programme offers both points-based and social recognition, and every recognition is tied to one of Meijer’s strategic goals: Customer Focus, Win With Our Team, Passion to Compete, Safety and Health.

Team members are able to redeem their points for a variety of rewards, including gift cards for Meijer’s branded merchandise store. With mteam in place, Meijer team members are easily able to recognise colleagues from their desk or on the go with their mobile device.

Taylor Dehnke, Human Resources Generalist, Meijer, said, “With a majority of our population in the stores and offline, without access to a computer, [mobile recognition] has really helped to drive a culture of recognition at our company.”

READ: Engaging employees with a future-focused recognition strategy

Since launching mteam, Meijer has seen an activation rate of 82%, where people logged on to mteam. Furthermore, 64% of team members access the site every month, while 93% of leaders at Meijer are active on the platform monthly, showing their commitment to building a culture of recognition.

There is no shortage of recognition when it comes to working at Meijer. Within just three years of launching mteam, Meijer celebrated 10 million recognition moments and became “Great Places to Work” certified for the first time. Atop of these major milestones, individual users on mteam are receiving an average of 7.7 recognitions each month.

Faith Swanson, Recognition and Engagement Manager, Meijer, concluded, “Our team members love mteam and the programme has become an integral part of our company culture. It has helped us increase team member engagement and drive business impact.”

Click here to find out more about how Meijer has managed to create a thriving culture of recognition.