Georgi Prisadnikov
How Marine Federal Credit Union drives connection and recognition with a hybrid workforce
Hybrid and dispersed workforces face quite a few challenges, which include connecting employees to each other and to the business, ensuring that there is visibility and awareness of initiatives across the company and recognizing all employees for their hard work. These were some of the challenges that Marine Federal Credit Union (MFCU) faced early on in the pandemic.
MFCU is a full-service financial institution that serves the military and the surrounding communities, with a mission of “working together to secure and protect your financial success.” With 13 branches across locations in North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina, combined with a hybrid workforce of frontline and remote employees, company information wasn’t reaching all employees at the right time.
The organization was also going through a brand refresh, but it was struggling to identify who MFCU is and who it serves. This led the team to start working with Reward Gateway to create a centralized, branded platform for all employees called “The Wire!”.
Creating a one-stop-shop to connect a hybrid workforce
The Wire! is an all-in-one employee engagement solution that houses employee reward and recognition, employee communications, employee discounts, employee surveys and employee benefits information. It has become a one-stop-shop for dispersed, frontline employees to stay connected on any device, at any time.
The team also needed to address the challenges of increasing visibility of the hard work happening around the business and creating a family-feel environment at work, so the team implemented a tiered-recognition approach.
A tiered approach to reward and recognition:
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Peer-to-Peer eCards: values-based eCards that shine a spotlight on desired behaviors across the organization, combined with greetings-based eCards |
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Employee Spotlight Stories: employees can nominate anyone for going above and beyond and employees are interviewed and featured in a company-wide blog post |
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Core Value Awards: a monetary award for going above and beyond to live the company’s values |
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Marty Goldman Award: named after the previous Chairman of the Board who was great at recognition, the board chooses winners for a monetary award each year from employee nominations |
Heather Shafer, Professional Development Manager at MFCU says:
With The Wire!, we’re now able to celebrate one another across the organization which wasn’t possible before Reward Gateway. The platform helps embed our company values into our everyday culture and the recognition amplifies this. Our employees and leaders are much more aligned with our culture than ever before.
Since launching The Wire! in June of 2020, there’s been a cultural transformation at MFCU. Recognition has been central to the culture at MFCU and 94% of all employees have received recognition to date, with 57% of all recognition coming from managers and 43% from non-managers. On top of that, nearly half of all employees have sent recognition. Since launch, 2167 eCards and awards have been sent, demonstrating a shift in building a culture of appreciation.
In addition to the R&R enhancements, the streamlined and strategic communications plan has resulted in a boost of two-way communications, available at any time for hybrid employees to read on-the-go. So far the team has published 188 blogs, receiving 46k total page views and 1.91k reactions from readers.
To uncover more about how Marine Federal Credit Union transformed its company culture with strategic recognition and communications, read the full story here. If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch with us and we’ll show you how we can support your unique business goals.
