Employee Spotlight: Stacy Woodhead

Perfectionist. Outgoing. Determined.

Attention to detail is a must for Stacy Woodhead. As Senior Program Manager, she is the main contact for one of our largest clients and responsible for uploading merchandise to the site, running promotions and generating new ideas for the site. In order to manage their site, she works with merchandise, pricing, billing and trade shows.

Woodhead started at Hinda as a Program Manager in February 2007. Prior to joining the team, she worked in real estate and was introduced to Hinda through a mentor who knew the company well. She spent two years working for a client in St. Louis before moving back home to Chicago, where she later became Senior Program Manager in October 2010.

As for the move back home to Chicago, Woodhead admits it’s one of her fondest memories.

“When I come to work here, I feel like I’m working with family and close friends,” says Woodhead. “I’m not just another number.”

Outside of work, she enjoys coaching kindergarten soccer, swimming and hanging out with friends. She’s currently training for a 5K and planning her wedding, which will take place in September. As for which of those is the bigger undertaking, she doesn’t hesitate to say that planning a wedding is like a second job. It’s clear that she has her hands full, but she also has a lot of excitement to look forward to.



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Employee Engagement Helps Brand Ambassadorship

Surprisingly, most people don't associate employee engagement as part of a marketing tactic. According to an article from Advertising Age a couple of months ago, incorporating the internal workforce as part of brand marketing strategy is a growing trend. The recession decreased most of the population's trust in Corporate America and tapping into employees to spread your brand message is becoming a crucial part of marketing.

How are companies doing it? By empowering their employee base.

One way companies tap into employees as brand ambassadors is through making them social media evangelists. Southwest Airlines is one of the best examples of this. Their blog, Nuts About Southwest, is employee run with over thirty different contributors. In addition to the company blog, Southwest taps into their intranet to gain feedback from their employees in regards to topics like "most frequent customer complaints" to "what do they love most about Southwest." They also field out advertisements on that intranet to gauge feedback from their employee base.

In addition to social media ambassadors, all employees are ultimately real-life ambassadors. They represent your company on the front lines and outside the office when talking to friends. How they talk about your company and brand in regards to treatment and engagement will eventually reflect on your company. Utilizing clear communication with your employees on your overall strategy, taking in feedback and even using some recognition and rewards in that process can have a positive effect on your brand.

How are you all engaging employees for marketing purposes?

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Location Based Loyalty (Part 1): Employee Branding

Location based systems (also known as LBS to the cool kids) are not only growing in usage but in marketing practicality. We've talked about location-based marketing in posts here and here. How could these services be leverage for loyalty? Not only customer loyalty but employee recognition and internal branding? This and the next post will take a brief look at how these technologies could be used both employee and customer side.

Employee Branding

On the blog FISHDOGS Social Media, Craig Fisher talks about how to generate employee buzz using Foursquare. One complaint about "Mayorship" on Foursquare was how certain employees could become mayor simply because they were obviously at the retail venue more often than most any customer. This limited access to Mayoral rewards and benefits from the consumers actually making purchases. Fisher explains how a company could "claim" their venue on Foursquare and list their employees on the site, preventing false mayorships.

Should this discourage employees from checking in? Absolutely not.

Fisher explains how employees checking in could be "incentivized" (his words not mine) and employees could be rewarded for checking in. The company could run a separate rewards program for checkins for their employees in addition to whatever they provide their consumers. When an employee checks in, they are not only telling their social network where they are, they often comment on being there. Positive checkins provide a positive brand image for the company.

Not only will potential customers see how happy the employees are to be there, future talent will also take note. Most savvy job hunters will decide on who to work for based on employee review. Those positive Foursquare checkins are a great real-time way to attract quality talent.

Employees checking in on Fourqaure also provides further opportunity for engagement according to Fisher. Many companies don't allow social media. Not only allowing social channels at the office but leveraging them to interact further with the employee base does a lot for enhancing engagement. Checkins could eventually become a great tool for recognition.

What do you all think?

 

 

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Employee Spotlight: Adam Webber

Earnest.  Creative.

As the on-site designer for Hinda, Marketing Coordinator Adam Webber is responsible for clipping images and designing external communications. He also works closely with Helping Hand Rewards, assisting with design and new product rollout.

Webber started work at Hinda on October 11, 2010 and has experienced a fair share of excitement in his first few months. Occasionally clumsy in nature, he has already managed a visit to the doctor's office. While putting a frame together, he dropped a pane of glass on his wrist, which later resulted in six stitches. Adding insult to injury, on his second day of work, he accidentally left his car keys at McCormick Place during the Motivation Show.

Anybody who has been to McCormick Place knows that this is a terrible place to lose a set of keys.

Depsite the bad luck, Webber has proved to be a valuable addition to the marketing team, utilizing his skill set to help on a variety of different projects.

"Him being here has really helped me with sales presentations," says Benito Bustamante, Warehouse Manager. "One time I approached him at 4 p.m. and needed brochures created for a 7:30 a.m. presentation the next day. He got 'em done - and they looked great!"

Outside of working, Adam enjoys running and some triathlon training. As a fitness guru, health is a very important aspect of his life. His goal for the New Year is to compete in a Half IronMan triathlon in St. Croix. His other points of interest are the TV shows Scrubs and Seinfeld and used to love frequenting Hot Diggity Dog...until a recent food poisoning incident curbed his hot dog appetite.

Adam's recovery from a brief stint of bad luck and dedication to endurance sports has shown his tenacity as an individual. He's become a great addition to the Hinda team.

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Could You Gamify the Workplace?

Not too terribly long ago I ran across this article from Fast Company about how video games are infiltrating every aspect of our lives. The article covers everything from wellness to education. What really caught my eye was the way some corporations are using video game elements into their employee's everyday lives.

Most of the examples come from technology companies. The article first talks about IBM employees. When they have conferences, instead of spending a lot of money on travel and hotels, each employee has a virtual avatar that represents them in an online conference. The employees use these characters (that are slowly being able to look very similar to the employee) as methods of engagement with other employees across different offices...and continents. This video-game like environment helps make these events more engaging while cutting overall costs simultaneously. 

A second example came from Sun Microsystems. The company has actually developed video games as part of their employee training. Using titles like Dawn of the Shadow Specters and  Rise of the Shadow Specters, employees engage in a fictional world whose inhabitants reflect the same values as the company. Not only does this make training more engaging, it communicates company values in a fun way.

Not every company will have the resources like the two named tech giants to create a corporate video games. Very few do. Even still, there is a takeaway for everyone.

You don't have to have video game developers at your fingertips to make everyday work more engaging. Using the same basic game mechanics used in video games, there are ways to make work more engaging and fun. Using the same sort of points-style system games do, rewarding points is one way to start.

"Level Up" Your Engagement

Even "leveling up" could be applied to a company recognition program. There is a big emphasis on "badges" when it comes to loyalty programs and location-based services. The same concept could be applied inside the office. For reaching certain milestones, point-wise or some other clearly communicated metric, an employee could earn some sort of badge or "level-up" style of recognition. Zappos uses this concept inside their offices using license plates. A rookie Zappos employee is presented with a paper copy of a license plate with their name on it. After their tenure continues and they mature in the company, they eventually get normal metal license plates. From there on out, the employee receives stickers for however many years they've been there.

The above Zappos example is used in a "Years of Service" program but the concept could be applied in other styles of programs. There's a lot we could all learn from simple game mechanics.

What do you all think? Will work eventually be gamified?

 

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