How Dyson ANZ leveraged recognition to creates a more engaged workforce

Striving to create the future

Dyson is a global research and technology company. Having started in a coach house in the UK, Dyson has consistently grown since it was established in 1993. Today, it has two technology campuses in the UK spanning over 800 acres in Malmesbury and Hullavington, and a global headquarters in Singapore. Dyson remains family-owned and employs over 14,000 people globally, including 6,000 engineers and scientists. Its products are available in 83 markets internationally. The company solves the problems that others ignore with pioneering technologies that improve wellbeing and create healthier spaces.

Dyson is investing £2.75bn in the business to conceive revolutionary products and technologies. Dyson has global teams of engineers, scientists and software developers focused on the development of solid-state battery cells, high-speed electric digital motors, sensing and vision systems, robotics, machine learning technologies and A.I. investment. Since inventing the first cyclonic bagless vacuum cleaner – DC01- in 1993, Dyson has created problem solving technologies for haircare, air purification, robotics, lighting and hand drying.

Redefining recognition and reward

Business challenge

Reinventing the recognition and reward program was something that Dyson ANZ knew would spur employee engagement. A new approach to facilitating recognition would help make the program more tailored and consistent.

Achievers Employee Engagement Platform™

Guided by its core values, Dyson ANZ began to redefine its recognition and reward program goals with a focus on improving the frequency and quality of recognition.

Some Dyson ANZ team members had exposure to the Achievers platform in their roles at other organizations. They had experienced the benefits along with the positive impact the platform could have on an organization’s culture and decided this would be a good fit for Dyson ANZ.

Here are some key differentiators on why the company chose Achievers to help them kickstart their employee recognition and engagement journey:

1. A mobile-first employee experience to meet the needs of diverse employee groups.
2. Technology that excelled beyond the peer-to-peer recognition program, in areas such as the management of years of service awards, birthday celebrations, results trackers, and more.
3. Detailed reporting capabilities providing access to data and analytics to measure success and gather key program insights.
4. Seamless consolidation of Dyson ANZ’s in-house recognition initiatives into one single platform.
5. The ability to customize the platform to align with the Dyson brand and link to its core values and objectives.
6. Access to an outstanding rewards marketplace with a catalogue of thousands of options for employees to choose from, allowing employees to enjoy a memorable moment when redeeming.

Business impact

Dyson ANZ knew when it set out to implement a recognition program that there was a real need for a program like Achievers within the organization, and the positive response from their employees has reinforced their decision.

Within the first 90 days, the platform rollout, the communication associated with it and the positive energy and buzz generated has resulted in tangible business results.

Key statistics include:

• Increase in NPS score YoY
• Uplift in YoY Sales performance
• 97% activation rate
• Monthly active usage of 82%
• Uplift in employee engagement score

Platform features

The 3 aspects of the platform that have stood out for Dyson ANZ are:

1. Social recognition

The overall employee response to peer-to-peer recognition has been very positive. The platform’s ability to let employees appreciate and thank their own team members and other cross functional teams has broken geographical barriers and resulted in a strong sense of camaraderie among employees.

2. Points based recognition

Leaders have also benefited with the ability to recognize easily and further engage with their team members through allocation of points.

3. Leaderboards

The leaderboards have helped showcase top performing employees and made them more visible, inspiring others to raise their performance and experience the same form of public appreciation.

In July 2021, Dyson’s Australian Contact Centre recorded an improvement in sales performance with the Achievers recognition platform being a key driver of this success.

What’s next?

The overall response to the platform has been outstanding with leaders receiving unprompted positive feedback about the platform via casual comments, internal emails and mentions at team meetings.

As employees draw down on their points and start redeeming them for purchasing, Dyson ANZ has seen spontaneous ‘thankyous’ with employees sharing what this means to them and how the experience has made a difference to their working lives, resulting in a big uplift in engagement levels.

With its initial program objectives met, Dyson ANZ is eager to embark on the next steps in its employee engagement journey. Enabled by the strategic support provided by its Achievers program and customer success manager, Dyson continues to focus on pioneering ways to drive engagement.

Given the popularity of Achievers, Dyson ANZ plans to continue to reinforce the program’s value as an engagement hub by adding even more initiatives, such as: the ‘Feedback’ tool to engage, educate and inform employees through surveys, forms, polls, and quizzes and enable actions that have a direct impact on engagement. Dyson ANZ is also looking at testing and trialing different result driver campaigns to further drive engagement with their frontline teams— all while keeping recognition at the center of what they do.

Dyson ANZ also looks forward to rolling out Achievers to additional teams of retail experts and their retail partners. Together, Dyson ANZ and Achievers will remain partners in employee engagement, celebrating the programs’ milestones and continuing to identify new ways to deliver real employee engagement and business results.