PointClickCare gets culture right by leading with recognition

Business challenge

At PointClickCare, their mission to make a meaningful impact on the lives of millions begins with their 1,800+ employee base. The company’s commitment to their people, and the culture in which they work, is a top priority, and has been since day one. PointClickCare’s founder and CEO believes that culture is the singular competitive advantage for any organisation. It’s the differentiator that sets good apart from great — and if you want to get culture right, you have to be deliberate about it.

PointClickCare continually redefines and nurtures their company culture to keep it thriving, and their employees engaged. So, when an employee survey revealed that their people especially valued recognition (and wanted more of it), PointClickCare knew that they needed a more formalised program.

Their first venture into systematic recognition began in-house — a pilot to test the waters among employees. Despite the inaugural program’s limitations and operational challenges, the response from employees was overwhelming. Witnessing the positive impact of their in-house recognition program prompted the PointClickCare team to research more formal and large-scale strategic recognition programs — a search that led them to Achievers.

Understanding that recognition was a key driver of their culture, employee happiness, and business success, PointClickCare looked to Achievers to help them:

• Establish a program that would be readily adopted, allowing all employees to participate in recognition
• Create a culture of recognition that extended beyond the program’s boundaries
• Engage leadership in recognition across the organisation

Achievers Employee Success Platform™

After carefully comparing solutions, PointClickCare chose to partner with Achievers based on several of their key differentiators:

The platform’s ability to offer a customised employee recognition program

• Ease of use for both employees and program administrators
• Robust reporting capabilities
• Industry-leading customer service

As an organisation that truly cares about their customers and employees, it was only fitting that PointClickCare chose to name their program iCare.

Excited for the program’s ability to facilitate more meaningful and impactful recognition, iCare was rolled out to PointClickCare’s entire population across Canada and the US. Through iCare, employees were enabled to recognise against PointClickCare’s values:

PointClickCare centred their program around facilitating peer-to-peer recognition and celebrating employee milestones like birthdays and service anniversaries. Different departments within PointClickCare even have their own dedicated recognition modules within iCare that allow them to reinforce behaviors specific to that team’s success.

Originally conceived to be an in-person ceremony to unite their employees, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic meant a reimagining of the awards. PointClickCare realised that recognising and engaging their now-remote workforce was doubly important given the challenges of the pandemic, and they wanted to give their employees something fun to look forward to.

The result was a virtual, red-carpet-style awards ceremony featuring in-house musical talent and, most importantly, the opportunity for real-time connection across their employee population. The chat function available during the event exploded with comments from employees as they relished the unique chance to connect with one another, celebrate the achievements of their peers, and enjoy a little escape from the routine of remote work.

Not only did the iCare awards provide a much-needed opportunity for employees to connect, but it also created a spike in activity in iCare. Throughout the week of the iCare Awards, PointClickCare saw an average of 1.2 recognitions sent per employee, a 1,209% increase from the week prior. The iCare Awards also generated a 123% increase in social recognitions sent across the platform compared to the previous year.

Additional campaigns go online

Appreciating the ability to centralise other company-wide program, PointClickCare migrated additional celebrations into iCare.

Wellness campaigns

iCare also became a portal through which to support other organisation initiatives, such as PointClickCare’s wellness campaigns. Employees can access details of the company’s wellness initiatives and discover other internal resources within iCare.

Milestone moments

Each quarter, PointClickCare hosts a townhall that highlights service anniversaries. Those employees celebrating an anniversary that year are also invited to attend a breakfast with senior leadership. To remain agile during the pandemic without sacrificing celebration, PointClickCare utilised iCare to fill the gap created by their remote circumstances. Using iCare, they were still able celebrate these moments and showcase the accomplishments of their people.

Employee Appreciation Week

For the first employee appreciation week following programs implementation, PointClickCare chose the theme “Donut Know What We’d Do Without You” and handed out hundreds of donuts at a large-scale (prepandemic) event. This campaign energised employees and had a recognition ripple effect — PointClickCare saw a large spike in monthly active users on the platform directly tied to their employee appreciation week: Monthly active users increased by 62% over the previous month and has remained 24% higher than their previous baseline ever since.

Business impact

iCare quickly took off across the organisation — employees were eager to engage with the platform, send and comment on recognitions, and participate in the organisation’s company culture initiatives. The platform has also become a staple in the cafeteria, where a large screen displays the live iCare newsfeed for all to enjoy. Beyond the feel-good moments that the Achievers platform has enabled (and there are many!), PointClickCare has also seen a positive impact on engagement.

After launching Achievers, PointClickCare’s most recent engagement score came in at 89% which is 3% higher than the Best-in-Class Benchmark of 86%. PointClickCare’s employee engagement survey also now incorporates recognition questions, including “My direct manager provides me with recognition for good work”. With an average score of 4.35 (85% positive), PointClickCare’s results are on par with the best-in class top 10% global benchmark. As their program matures, they plan to use such engagement survey questions to monitor the impact of their formalised recognition efforts.

What’s next

The future of employee recognition and engagement is bright at PointClickCare.

After the success of their virtual iCare Awards, PointClickCare is exploring how they can integrate additional corporate performance recognition awards into the program.

Additionally, they’d like to add more quarterly awards to iCare to allow for even more recognition and celebration. PointClickCare has also received several requests from other departments interested in ways to integrate their initiatives into iCare.

PointClickCare is also committed to growing their impressive number of active users from 66% to 75% within the next year. Part of the strategy to achieve this will be a push to encourage leadership to drive incremental participation among their teams — a pursuit that Achievers will continue to support.

Partners in employee recognition for greater engagement — Achievers and PointClickCare are sure to enjoy continued program success, and more milestone moments along the way.